Elon Musk Reaffirms “Aspirationally Jewish” After Visiting Auschwitz

Billionaire Elon Musk declares himself “Aspirationally Jewish” and pushes back against the accusations of being antisemitic. On Monday, Musk visited a former Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz in Southern Poland. He also lit candles in the memory of millions of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. It is seen as his effort to undo the reputational and financial crisis he has been facing after supporting an antisemitic post online.

The X owner traveled to visit the former death camp in Poland along with Ben Shapiro and Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the founder and chairman of the European Jewish Association, respectively. He spoke at the annual conference of the European Jewish Association in Kraków later in the day. Musk said, “Most of my friends are Jewish… I’m Jewish. Aspirationally Jewish.” Musk revealed that he had been very naive about antisemitism because he had never seen it in his circles. He also said, “Two-thirds of my friends are Jewish.” He also said the same thing about being aspirationally Jewish in September 2023, in a conversation with Ben Shapiro. “I don’t know if I’m sort of genetically Jewish… I’m aspirationally Jewish,” he said.

It comes after Musk was criticized for endorsing an antisemitic post on X in November 2023. The post made accusations about Jews pushing “hatred against whites.” It said that the Jews “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” Supporting this theory, Musk said, “You have told the actual truth.” He also criticized the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish group that fights against antisemitism. “The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat. It is not right and needs to stop,” Musk tweeted.

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