The world’s richest man is “losing his f---ing mind online,” veteran tech author Kara Swisher said of Elon Musk, who she has chronicled for decades.
During the latest episode of her podcast On, Swisher took Musk to task for “doubling down” on his controversial behavior. “I think he’s trolling us with these fascist salutes, and now he’s been tweeting Nazi-related puns,” she said.
Last week, the “First Buddy” and billionaire owner of social media platform X gave a speech at President Donald Trump’s inauguration rally at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., in which he smacked his chest and threw out his arm—twice—in a gesture that many observers were quick to liken to a fascist salute. The MAGAverse defended the move as the innocent, awkward arm-waving of an over-excited man, and at first Musk seemed to endorse that defense.
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But when that explanation failed to quell his critics, he posted a string of Nazi puns involving the key architects of the Holocaust for his 214.6 million followers. In one fell swoop he referenced Hitler’s second-in-command Rudolph Hess; chief propagandist for the Nazi Party Joseph Goebbels; convicted war criminal Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler of the Schutzstaffe.
“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Göring your enemies!” he wrote.
“His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler!” he added, concluding his painfully-cringe barrage of Nazi dad jokes with: “Bet you did nazi that coming.”
Afterward, even the ADL—which was originally inclined to give Musk the benefit of the doubt on the whole evocative gesture thing—was forced to condemn him for making jokes that “only serve to… denigrate the suffering of both victims and survivors and insult the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah.”
Or as Swisher put it: “I often say that X has turned into a Nazi porn bar, and today it really is.”
“I have to say Elon’s really trotting out all the Nazi references today,” she added. “He’s doubling down on on his behavior. I think he’s trolling us with these fascist loots and now he’s been tweeting Nazi related puns,” Swisher said.
She added that “there’s obviously not anything happening there in terms of trust and safety” on X.
