KRAKOW, Poland — Pushing back against accusations of antisemitism, Elon Musk has in recent months visited Israel, hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Tesla factory in California and repeatedly insisted he bears no animus toward Jews.
On Monday, he took his penitence tour to a new level, declaring himself “aspirationally Jewish” after a visit to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in southern Poland, where he lit a candle in memory of the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Musk, the owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, stirred outrage — and an exodus of advertisers — in November when he endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth.” The post accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites” and supporting the immigration of “hordes of minorities.”
The White House denounced Musk for “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”
He quickly apologized for his intervention, saying “it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” He has been scrambling since to calm the outcry and halt the flight of advertisers.
But his atonement has come in fits and starts. After apologizing for giving a thumbs-up to an antisemitic conspiracy about Jews conspiring to dilute the white population, he used an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times to tell unhappy advertisers to get lost in vulgar terms and accused them of trying to blackmail him. He also threatened to take legal action against the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has complained about the rise in antisemitism on X.
He is now back to presenting his less pugnacious, more understanding side.
Speaking later at a conference on antisemitism organized by the association in the nearby Polish city of Krakow, Musk said he had been “somewhat naive” about the dangers posed by anti-Jewish sentiment because “in the circles I move in, I see no antisemitism.”
“Two-thirds of my friends are Jewish,” he said. “I’m Jewish by association. I’m aspirationally Jewish.”
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