Elon Musk’s Rehabilitation Tour Features Claim X ‘Could Have Saved Millions of Lives’ During Holocaust

AP Photo/Michel Euler

Elon Musk visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland on Tuesday before appearing at an event that featured a video arguing the Holocaust might not have been as bad if his social media platform X existed at the time.

The owner of X, formerly Twitter, toured the infamous camp on Monday alongside conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA). The visit came about two months after Musk traveled to Israel in the wake of a backlash towards his promotion of anti-Semitic content on X — and his railing against advertisers who left X because of it.

Following the Auschwitz visit, Musk and Shapiro joined the EJA at a conference in Krakow, where the tech billionaire claimed to have been “naïve” about the prevalence and dangers of anti-Semitism.

“In the circles that I move, I see almost no anti-Semitism,” Musk said. “I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. I’m, like, Jewish by association. I’m aspirationally Jewish.”

During the presentation, Musk renewed his (questionable) claim of being a free speech absolutist while pointing out that the Nazis suppressed the press and free speech.

Musk made his case after Margolin played a video that dramatically imagined what it would have been like if Twitter was around during World War II.

One mocked-up post from this alternative historical timeline read, “The Nazis told the Jews to get inside the synagogue – entire families, infants in their mothers’ arms, right? They’ve closed the doors and windows with metal bars and then SET IT ON FIRE! OH. MY. GOD. The world must know!” The video ended with the draft of a post that said “If we had X in 1939, how many lives could’ve been saved?”

According to Margolin, “X could have saved millions of lives.”

Musk agreed. “If there had been social media, I think [the Holocaust] would have been impossible to hide,” he said. “If there had been freedom of speech, as well. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information… Relentless pursuit of the truth is the goal with X, and allowing people what they want to say — even if it is controversial — as long as it doesn’t break the law.”