After the anti-Semitism scandal
Elon Musk visits the former Auschwitz concentration camp
January 22, 2024, 7:10 p.m
US entrepreneur Elon Musk visits the memorial site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp. The visit is in response to an incident last year. At that time, the US entrepreneur described an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory as “actual truth”.
The owner of the short message service X Elon Musk visited the memorial site of the former German concentration camp Auschwitz. “It was very moving. And it’s deeply sad and tragic that people can do something like that to other people,” Musk said after the visit to Krakow at a conference on online anti-Semitism organized by the Association of European Jews. He will need a few days to process the impressions, Musk continued. His visit to Auschwitz was originally only planned for Tuesday.
As the owner of Twitter’s successor, He later spoke of a misunderstanding and apologized. Hate speech researchers also accused X of not taking sufficient action against anti-Semitic posts. Important advertising customers such as Apple and Disney or the computer giant IBM then stopped their advertisements on the service.
Musk emphasizes freedom of expression
The trigger for IBM’s decision was that the company’s advertisements were discovered on X alongside Nazi contributions and anti-Semitic statements. The organization Media Matters showed how advertising from IBM, Apple and the software company Oracle, among others, appeared on X alongside posts with positive statements about Adolf Hitler and the ideology of the National Socialists.
In Krakow, Musk emphasized again that the principle of freedom of expression counts for X. If someone posts a false claim, others can correct it immediately. “The tireless search for the truth is the goal of X.” If social media and freedom of expression had existed at the time of Auschwitz, it would have been impossible to hide this crime, Musk said.
The name Auschwitz is burned into the consciousness of the world as a synonym for the Holocaust and the epitome of evil. There alone the National Socialists killed more than a million people, mostly Jews. Across Europe they murdered around six million Jews during the Shoah.