Edge Case
Elon Musk’s edgelord tendencies are now alienating even some of his most ardent defenders.
After making what was almost certainly a double “Sieg Heil” salute at President Donald Trump’s inaugural festivities, Musk doubled down today by making a slew of disgusting puns using the names of Nazi leaders like Herman Göring and Joseph Goebbels.
“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!” the buffoonish billionaire posted on the platform he owns, a reference to Adolf Hitler’s second-hand man Rudolf Hess. “I bet you did nazi that coming.”
The egregious edgelord jokes earned Musk condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that raised eyebrows by defending his Nazi salute days prior as an “awkward gesture.”
“We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it,” posted ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt, who didn’t make any mention of his organization’s previous defense of the Nazi salute foible.
Judgment Day
Ted Deutch, the head of the more than century-old American Jewish Committee, also took Musk to task.
“Wordplay about Nazis isn’t funny,” Deutch tweeted. “It isn’t clever. And it’s dangerous.”
The South African-born businessman’s proximity to the president was also decried by conservative columnist and self-described “renegade Jew” Bill Kristol, who succinctly observed that Musk is a “senior White House official [who] thinks Nazi jokes are funny.”
Social neuroscience pioneer Matt Lieberman, meanwhile, linked Musk’s support for the Alternative for Germany neo-Nazi party to this latest stunt — and detailed what could have been.
“Many are disturbed that the world’s richest man and [second-in-command] of our country made a Nazi salute after supporting a Neo-Nazi party in Germany,” Lieberman wrote. “He could have diffused things by saying ‘My bad — I didn’t mean to do a gesture that looked like that.'”
“Instead,” the neuroscientist continued, “he said this.”
If Musk is so insistent that he doesn’t hold Nazi beliefs, he should probably refrain from making tasteless jokes about the genocidal regime — especially now that he’s stepped even more into the public spotlight with Trump.
More on Musk: Elon Musk Seen Acting Strangely Before Nazi Salute