Jokes about critics

Musk responds to criticism with a Nazi pun

Elon Musk makes fun of his critics.(Bild: APA/AP)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has mocked criticism of him for making a gesture similar to a Hitler salute. He posted a provocative play on words on his X platform. He also showed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Emmanuel Macron making similar gestures.

The tech billionaire published a series of sentences in which he replaced certain words with the names of influential Nazis who organized and carried out the persecution and murder of millions of Jews alongside Adolf Hitler: Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring.

Elon Musk has turned to the extreme right. But was this gesture just a clumsy thank you to Donald Trump's voters?(Bild: AFP/ANGELA WEISS)

An example of a sentence in which he presumably replaced "yes" with the name Hess: "Don't say Hess to Nazi accusations." At the end he put an emoji laughing tears. It is not the first malicious reaction to the outrage following his gesture.

"Holocaust is not a joke"
The chairman of the human rights organization Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote on X about Musk's post: "We've said it hundreds of times and we'll say it again: the Holocaust was a uniquely evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to trivialize it. Elon Musk, the Holocaust is not a joke."

A short time later, the Trump adviser posted a video of Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger showing a fellow bodybuilder posing properly at competitions in a stock shot, and France's President Emmanuel Macron waving after a speech (see posts below). Both protagonists show similarly suspicious arm movements. Musk also remarked about Arnie: "He's Austrian too."

Netanyahu defends Musk
Following the furor over Musk's appearance after Trump's inauguration, the Anti-Defamation League called for prudence in these troubled times and wrote about the entrepreneur's gesture: "It appears that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said that Musk was being unfairly slandered and was a friend of Israel. The entrepreneur is a close advisor to the new US President Donald Trump.