Musk visits Auschwitz

Elon Musk revels in playing the enfant terrible of the business world. I have often argued that he wants to be to business what Donald Trump is to politics.

So, the last thing you’d expect him to do is make a solemn and contrite pilgrimage to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Yet, that’s what he did today, with his media crew in tow.

Musk tentatively agreed to visit Auschwitz in September during a live discussion on X with EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who invited the Tesla boss to ‘walk there, to feel it, to understand it, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Two months later, Musk publicly endorsed an antisemitic post on his platform claiming that Jewish communities ‘have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.’

(The Daily Beast, January 22, 2024)

Frankly, this visit reeks of performative contrition. It harkens back to the Middle Ages when rich Catholics bought papal indulgences like luxury items.

Arrogant Musk trampling Auschwitz hallowed grounds

Even in this place, steeped in the darkest of histories, Musk couldn’t resist being his trolling self. There he was, strutting around with his son perched on his shoulders. Hell, you’d think he was at Disneyland rather than a site that should evoke funereal emotions for genocidal suffering.

It’s the arrogance of the man – a congenital brat acting like he was doing his Jewish hosts a favor by visiting. So, living, as always, in his self-aggrandizing bubble, he turned what should have been an occasion of introspection into a self-serving spectacle.

The Musk cycle: antisemitism, backlash, and (faux) contrition

Nobody who knows anything about Musk can have any doubt that he will return to form. After all, he has become such a pathological troll that he’d rather have antisemites than advertisers on X/Twitter, which he has turned into a cesspool of hatred.

This infamous outburst, during an interview at The New York Times DealBook Summit no less, speaks volumes:

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk had some harsh words for advertisers who are fleeing the platform X. “Go f— yourself” Go f— yourself, is that clear? … That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.

(Fox Business, November 29, 2023)

Like a spousal abuser in a toxic relationship, Musk’s pattern is predictable: offend, backlash, a grand gesture of contrition, and repeat. The Auschwitz visit? It’s just another chapter in this cycle. Musk will continue to stir controversy, rake in profits, and then make grand gestures that amount to little more than hollow symbolism.

Regrettably, Musk’s visit to Auschwitz will change nothing. This superficial gesture only reinforces his social media pathology. He’s the PT Barnum of the performative hate that fuels the toxic culture of social media.

Thus, he will continue his antics – as the world watches, partly in horror, partly in resignation. For Musk, controversy is just another day at the office. Auschwitz was just another stop on his never-ending trolling tour.