Musk slams media, critics for Nazi comparisons: 'Character assassination'
Source: The Hill
05/03/25 1:32 PM ET
Tech billionaire Elon Musk reflected on his speech after President Trump’s inauguration in January, while lashing out at the media for misportraying what he called a loving gesture as a Nazi salute.
Musk, who has played an influential role in helping Trump overhaul the government during the president’s first 100 days in office, slammed those who have criticized his role as an adviser in the administration and for comparing his rhetoric and mannerisms to Nazi Germany during a recent interview on Fox’s “My View with Lara Trump.”
The Fox host — also the president’s daughter-in-law — invoked the billionaire’s childhood in South Africa amid the Apartheid regime when asking how he felt about the comparisons. “Well, I mean, look, it’s a relentless propaganda campaign, which obviously President Trump has experienced for a very long time, 20 years, maybe longer,” he said in the interview, set to air Saturday evening. “And politics is a blood sport, so they’re going to come up with whatever attacks they can to destroy the public perception of someone.”
“Now, obviously, I’ve not harmed anyone in my life, so it’s an outrageous thing to claim that I’m a Nazi,” the Tesla CEO added, while defending Trump against similar attacks.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5281116-elon-musk-lara-trump-nazi-comparisons-critics/
He can't handle the truth. He's a foaming at the mouth psychopath. He even said this -
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said, borrowing the term from Gad Saad, a Canadian scholar who is also a frequent Rogan host.
While Musk said he believes in empathy and that “you should care about other people,” he also thinks it’s destroying society.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”
(snip)
Bad seed.

xocetaceans
(4,180 posts)Roy Rolling
(7,291 posts)His current reputation as Nazi-lite doesn’t sit well with his fellow business partners. For all his technological adulation from his groupies, he still can’t unring a bell.
Ocelot II
(124,951 posts)👍
OldBaldy1701E
(7,960 posts)Hassler
(4,346 posts)IcyPeas
(23,622 posts)wcmagumba
(3,975 posts)
Doodley
(10,971 posts)firing tens of thousands for no reason, taking basic safety nets, lifelines from children who are now dying in Sudan, and cancelling childhood cancer research and trials. And now he complains about how he is treated!
Blues Heron
(7,043 posts)And destroying public servants careers. He has a lot of blood on his hands. maybe when he sobers up he will understand the damage he has wrought.
cstanleytech
(27,629 posts)2naSalit
(96,954 posts)Deuxcents
(22,389 posts)Blues Heron
(7,043 posts)RainCaster
(12,880 posts)all so he can have a bigger tax break. As a Christian, I find this reprehensible. As a human I find him repulsive. I'm waiting for his Tesla stock to drop so far that all his leveraged loans are called. Then he goes under.
lastlib
(25,986 posts)well, don't Nazi. What do you call somebody who gives a Nazi salute to a Nazi wannabe dictator? What else--a Nazi.
What do you call someone who embraces far-right neo-fascist parties & politicians? Well--Nazi fits.
See how that works, Eloon?
Skittles
(164,523 posts)THESE RICH FUCKING ASSHOLES ARE ALWAYS THE VICTIMS
cstanleytech
(27,629 posts)Bristlecone
(10,729 posts)the nelm
(92 posts)BidenRocks
(1,528 posts)to his NAZI salute was anything but loving.
He will never admit he was signaling all like minded extremists.
magicarpet
(18,333 posts)There was so much inflection and determination from Musk just before the Nazi salute,.... like he was waiting forever to snap out a Nazi salute in public.
At the inauguration of trDUMP was the perfect time because Musk and trDUMP now had AmeriKKKa by the balls - Musk realized his Nazi Party of the billion dollar kickback was now within his reach and grasp.
Poof - Musk would make his problems go away because he would cancel/void any investigations ongoing against him or his companies.
Poof - Musk would access bids for government contracts by his competitors. Then submit bids and new contracts for billions more in government work that Musk's companies could provide.
Conflict of interests - fuck all that - government is a cash cow that Musk wants to milk before the money,... oops I mean milk,... runs dry.
Response to BumRushDaShow (Original post)
vapor2 This message was self-deleted by its author.
underpants
(190,842 posts)Poor widdle richest man in the world
agingdem
(8,567 posts)Musk is the true Nazi...
JoseBalow
(7,591 posts)
IbogaProject
(4,459 posts)The oligarchs and the wealthy have promoted the opposite of empathy for awhile now and it has reached a psychotic level, even if it has always been bad in western culture.
kimbutgar
(25,174 posts)And I always laugh when I see the I brought this before Elon became a Nazi sticker.
But some of the drivers are major a holes on the road !
Lithos
(26,538 posts)Melting from the heat of his own actions... boo-hoo.
thought crime
(238 posts)Yes, I kind of think so.
surfered
(7,015 posts)truthisfreedom
(23,409 posts)He did everything but. He made jokes about nazis. He played the victim. He claimed kindness. But he refused to apologize for making a symbolic gesture that was interpreted as a nazi salute by the vast majority of observers. You only have one job when you fuck up. You apologize, make amends and move on. He is absolutely refused to apologize. That can only be interpreted as doubling down.
C_U_L8R
(47,380 posts)What an idiot.
Blues Heron
(7,043 posts)Klarkashton
(3,386 posts)Way. In the life lottery there is going to be a somebody at the top, it's all by chance.
ailsagirl
(24,179 posts)

usonian
(17,938 posts)hadEnuf
(3,215 posts)You should be excited that people recognize you for who you really are!
Klarkashton
(3,386 posts)Fuck you Eloy.
58Sunliner
(5,780 posts)Know what's weak? When you need ket to bolster your ego and make you feel special. When you have 14 children by AI and can't sustain a relationship. When you are a flawed, fucked up human being who makes excuses for himself daily.
ananda
(31,885 posts)What a whiny snowflake.
Punx
(472 posts)Nuff said.
Godot51
(479 posts)I'd recommend that he look in the mirror but he probably does for hours at a time and loves whatever it is he sees.
eppur_se_muova
(39,064 posts)Keepthesoulalive
(1,358 posts)Wear it well.
ailsagirl
(24,179 posts)You push a button, and he has a meltdown.
angryxyouth
(233 posts)And Sieg Heils like a duck, well you know.
struggle4progress
(123,300 posts)... Musk has repeatedly made jokes after the public outcry, including making puns with the names of Nazi leaders like Joseph Goebblels. He did so again recently as a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast. Musk has endorsed antisemitic tropes on his social media platform X ...Prominent figures on the right have mirrored Musk's example ...
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/15/nx-s1-5305259/musk-salute-humor-controversy
... Wired published that "the response from the neo-Nazi community across the globe was instant and unanimous." Rolling Stone also noted much the same, with both publishers citing specific neo-Nazi accounts and other far-right users praising Musk's gesture ...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unpacking-claim-musk-gave-nazi-013800132.html
US President Donald Trump called it a "witch hunt", Vice President JD Vance said it was "not democracy" and billionaire Elon Musk wrote "Free Le Pen!" on X. The three voiced their support for French far-right leader Marine Le Pen after she was convicted for embezzling €4.6 million in public funds and barred from running for office for five years ...
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20250404-marine-le-pen-jd-vance-not-democracy-minor-charge-usa-france-donald-trump
sakabatou
(44,788 posts)blue blues
(12 posts)As trump says there going to be some pain....
May your fate be the same as Mike Pillow
PortTack
(35,640 posts)love_katz
(3,071 posts)Not a Nazi or in favor of autocratic authoritarianism? When you rip off not one, but TWO Nazi salutes on television?!? And speak in support of Germany's Nazi Party, the AFD?
GET REAL! We're not blind or stupid.
Prairie Gates
(5,129 posts)It's working.
Zorro
(17,459 posts)and is squirming trying to figure out how to stop Tesla's death spiral. I suspect that one month in to Q2 now he sees where this quarter's sales are heading.
Bengus81
(8,854 posts)His name is shit all over the World.
BGRD
(15 posts)He gave a Nazi salute.! Case proven.
Grokenstein
(6,011 posts)Surely she will unleash a terrible hex upon your enemies. "SqUIRt oF LeMoN!"
OR
You could just go to Mars. Take all the other fash trash with you.
róisín_dubh
(12,019 posts)You and your merry band of chucklefuck bros have ruined a generation of men.
Montauk6
(9,117 posts)Cha
(311,292 posts)


Aussie105
(7,032 posts)How rude of people to think and say he is a Nazi, just because he does the salute really well, and both thinks and acts like one?
Seriously, so rude!
I guess Elon doesn't so 'subtle' and 'empathy' well?
GoneOffShore
(17,807 posts)“Do you understand what I'm saying?"
shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
2naSalit
(96,954 posts)Call the damn waaahmbulance.
OldBaldy1701E
(7,960 posts)HAH! I love it when some sleazy rich person tries to tell us that one.
Dude, NO ONE who makes that kind of income does so without hurting other people. The fact that you did not physically take the actions does not absolve you of the fact that they were all done per your instructions.
So, stop with the virtue-signaling. You are sub-human.
Anyone who says being empathic is a weakness is just desperately trying to justify their own evil.
Scrivener7
(55,827 posts)so that he and whoever he's working with could gain access to ALL our data for whatever megalomaniac plan they've cooked up.
Because what we know now for certain is that his incel clown posse was not there to cut costs. They were there to gain control of us.
LymphocyteLover
(8,059 posts)Elon is as evil and racist as they come. He can fuck all the way off to hell.
twodogsbarking
(13,795 posts)Botany
(74,276 posts)
ToxMarz
(2,427 posts)And walks like a duck
And quacks like a duck
It's a duck.
Kid Berwyn
(20,490 posts)
The Guardian writer puts two of today's billionaire NAZIs pol-watchers into context:
How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa
Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler
by Chris McGreal
The Guardian, January 26, 2025
Excerpt...
They include Peter Thiel, the German-born billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder, who was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s where Hitler was still openly venerated. Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has been critical of welfare programs and women being permitted to vote as undermining capitalism. A 2021 biography of Thiel, called The Contrarian, alleged that as a student at Stanford he defended apartheid as “economically sound”.
David Sacks, formerly PayPal’s chief operating officer and now a leading fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and grew up within the South African diaspora after his family moved to the US when he was young. A fourth member of the mafia, Roelof Botha, the grandson of the apartheid regime’s last foreign minister, Pik Botha, and former PayPal CFO, has kept a lower political profile but remains close to Musk.
Among them, Musk stands out for his ownership of X, which is increasingly a platform for far-right views, and his proximity to Trump, who has nominated Musk to head a “department of government efficiency” to slash and burn its way through the federal bureaucracy.
Snip...
The week before the inauguration, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, described white South Africans as the “most racist people on earth”, questioned their involvement in US politics and said Musk was a malign influence who should go back to the country of his birth.
Snip...
The South Africa into which Musk was born in 1971, and to which Thiel moved as a child from Germany, was led by a prime minister, John Vorster, who had been a general in a fascist militia three decades earlier that allied itself with Hitler.
Continues...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa

Mission
Connecting the global grassroots with the tools of genocide prevention.
About
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention was founded to fill a gap in the global prevention protocols. We noticed during several trips to northern Iraq in 2016 and 2017 that very little of the work that goes on at high levels of governments, in international organizations, and among large civil society groups ever reaches people facing genocide and mass atrocity, although they are the people for whom all this work is supposed to be done.
We built the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention to be responsive and flexible, transparent and judicious, nonpartisan and vocal. We believe that peoples in crisis need immediate action and direct support, even when the international community has its head in the sand.
We have heard from many survivors that the worst thing about living through genocide was the sense that the rest of the world did not care and had forgotten about them.
The Lemkin Institute wants to change this dynamic by putting threatened peoples at the center of our concerns.
We use a transparent system for analyzing crises within a genocide prevention framework and we have created materials so that this system can also be used by others.
The Lemkin Institute has grown from the Iraq Project for Genocide Prevention and Accountability, which was launched in 2017 to address the need for long-term capacity building in genocide prevention in Iraq. In the wake of ISIS genocides, we saw an enormous grassroots interest in ending the cycle of violence and promoting a lasting peace. We are now bringing that work to the global grassroots.
Source: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/about-us
Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat gave me an Rx I'd like to share:
The Anti Fascism Toolkit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s0JbXhND7-1iqABNcUNL031NQLxkLfr-USkCKGZTidI/mobilebasic
An excerpt:
Introduction
Generations of Americans before us have faced and fought oppression, confronting forces determined to harm their lives and endanger their livelihoods while still forging ahead toward the unrealized promise of liberty and justice for all. Now, it is our turn to pick up the baton and show up – marching, striking, voting and protecting each other – for our freedoms, our families, and our futures. We have won fights against exploitation by a wealthy, White few before, and by joining together, we will again.
As we enter an era of increased authoritarianism in this country, it will be critical to stay true to our values. The siren song of the right is intended to entice many to abandon their principles, and their fellow Americans, capitulating in order to protect themselves or in a misguided attempt to attract conflicted voters. To fall into this trap is to lend credence and credibility to the MAGA Agenda. Americans consistently favor progressive policies – from our freedom to decide if and when to start a family, to our freedom to join together in union, to our freedom to shine bright as our true selves - and we must continue to promote them.
Over the next few years, MAGA leaders will launch attack after attack, perpetrate outrage after outrage, commit injustice after injustice with the goal of keeping us disoriented, demoralized, and demobilized. Rather than exhausting ourselves reacting to each new indignity, we must expose the throughline between attacks and remain consistent and determined. We do that by telling a single, clear story about who we are, what our opposition intends, why they scapegoat, and how we build power to defeat them.
We are people of all races, genders, and backgrounds who value our freedoms. They are a handful of billionaires and scammers trying to take away our freedoms and permanently rig the rules so that wealthy White men control all who do not look, live, or love like them. But joining together – Black, White, and brown, Native and newcomer, transgender and not – the many can and will defeat the money and finally make this a country where liberty and justice are for all, no exceptions.
They live. The NAZIs are everything the opposite of what they call “woke.” And many if these oligarchs and kleptocrats spend their money to turn America into the Turd Reich.
electric_blue68
(21,560 posts)Clouds Passing
(4,965 posts)republianmushroom
(20,035 posts)mysuzuki2
(3,573 posts)You must first have character. Musk lacks any character whatsoever
kimbutgar
(25,174 posts)Unfortunately I live in the SF bay area there are a whole lot of them and the drivers are not polite drivers !
NNadir
(35,901 posts)UpInArms
(52,830 posts)
2MuchNoise
(144 posts)doesn't like to be called names.
CousinIT
(11,413 posts)Quanto Magnus
(1,127 posts)who is unable to take personal responsibility....
Don't like it? Maybe you shouldn't have made 2 Nazi salutes on national TV.
Maybe you shouldn't have dumped $250 million into re-electing a man who was open about becoming a dictator on day 1. Maybe you shouldn't have had so much glee in firing thousands of federal employees...
LetMyPeopleVote
(163,835 posts)GoldenMezzoDiva
(123 posts)Take yo' ass-whuppin like a man, or whatever the hell you are.
electric_blue68
(21,560 posts)ShazzieB
(20,765 posts)Wear it and quit whining!