Elon Musk says 'I'm not a Nazi' and the online hate he gets in general is 'pretty stressful'
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
- Elon Musk says he's not a Nazi following backlash to a gesture he made last month.
- Musk said to Joe Rogan that you can't be called a Nazi if you're not actively committing genocide.
- "What is actually bad about Nazis — it wasn't their fashion or their mannerisms, it was the war and genocide," he said.
Elon Musk says he's not a Nazi and that the online hate he's been receiving is "pretty stressful."
In a three-hour episode of Joe Rogan's podcast on Friday, Rogan and Musk discussed a recent incident that fueled accusations that the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO made a Nazi gesture.
While speaking to the crowd at President Donald Trump's inauguration celebration in January, Musk made a gesture that caused many to question whether it was intended to be a fascist salute.
For example, the former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Michel Friedman, told a German outlet that Musk's action was a disgrace and, in his opinion, very clearly a "Heil Hitler" salute, The Guardian reported. US Rep. Jerry Nadler also condemned the gesture in a post on X, several Jewish organizations spoke out against it, and Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Musk to clarify his intentions.
Meanwhile, The Anti-Defamation League argued in a post on X that it was "awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute."
Social media sites including Musk-owned X have since been swarmed with users accusing the billionaire of condoning Nazism.
In response to the controversy, Musk wrote on X at the time, "Don't say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would've been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming," turning the names of prominent Nazis into puns, followed by a crying-laughing emoji.
On Friday, Musk told Rogan that the persistent criticisms are "ridiculous," and that the gesture was not a Nazi salute, joking, "Now I can never point at things diagonally."
"Hopefully people realize I'm not a Nazi. Just to be clear, I'm not a Nazi," Musk said, laughing.
Musk then argued that if you're not committing genocide, then you can't be called a Nazi.
"What's relevant about Nazis is like, are you invading Poland? And if you're not invading Poland, maybe you're not" a Nazi, he said. "You have to be committing genocide and starting wars. "
"What is actually bad about Nazis — it wasn't their fashion or their mannerisms, it was the war and genocide," he added.
At another point in the episode, Rogan asked the billionaire how he personally deals with hate and attacks against him.
"It's pretty stressful," Musk answered, taking a much more serious tone. "They actually want to kill me. They say so online. There's like Reddit forums where they don't just want to kill me, they want to desecrate my corpse."
It's not just Musk's arm gestures that have led critics to debate whether he supports Nazi ideologies. The frontman of the White House DOGE office has also supported Germany's far-right political party, the Alternative for Germany party, which is fiercely nationalistic and anti-immigration. Leaders of the AfD party have repurposed Nazi slogans, urged Germany to stop apologizing for its past crimes, and said the Nazis are just a "speck of bird poop" in Germany's long, successful history.
Musk did not respond to BI's request for comment.