As the backlash against Elon Musk continues after the Tesla CEO made a straight-arm, Nazi-like gesture during his speech Monday at U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the billionaire posted a series of Nazi-related puns on X Thursday to his more than 210 million followers.
Musk made reference to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and leading members of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler.
“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down!” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.
“Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming,” Musk added.
Earlier on Thursday, Musk quoted a video of French President Emmanuel Macron touching his heart and raising his hand in the air to a crowd. The tweet said, “Did anyone accuse President Macron of being a Nazi?” Musk added, “Seriously.”
“If I see one more damn Nazi salute in my feed, I’m gonna lose my mind. This algorithm sucks!!” Musk wrote in another post.
Musk also joked that the “recommendation algorithm of this platform sucks,” and said he wanted to talk to the manager — himself.
“It was astonishing how insanely hard legacy media tried to cancel me for saying ‘my heart goes out to you’ and moving my hand from my heart to the audience,” Musk added in a later post.
The Tesla CEO has been defending his gesture at the inauguration rally and first responded to the accusations that his gesture looked like a Nazi salute on X several hours after he left the stage.
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
“Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” Musk wrote.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a New York-based organization that campaigns against antisemitism, came to Musk’s defence following the backlash, but now they’re changing their tune after Musk’s recent posts on X.
They had initially claimed that Musk “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is now condemning the statements Musk made on X Thursday, writing, “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.”
“@ElonMusk, the Holocaust is not a joke,” Greenblatt added.
ADL’s main account on X shared a statement after Greenblatt addressed Musk’s latest posts.
“Making inappropriate and highly offensive jokes that trivialize the Holocaust only serve to minimize the evil and inhumanity of Nazi crimes, denigrate the suffering of both victims and survivors and insult the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah,” the ADL group wrote in a statement.
As of this writing, Musk has yet to address the latest criticism from the ADL.
Earlier this week, the image of Musk making the gesture at Trump’s inauguration rally was projected onto Tesla’s Gigafactory in Berlin-Brandenburg.
‘Heil Tesla’: Musk’s straight-arm salute projected onto carmaker’s gigafactory
The image featured Musk making the gesture alongside the words “Heil Tesla.” U.K. activist group Led By Donkeys and Germany’s Centre for Political Beauty were behind the display, and posted a shared Instagram post from the two groups. “Tesla Gigafactory, Berlin. #LedByDonkeys,” the caption read.
Led By Donkeys also shared a mini-doc on Instagram Thursday, with the caption, “The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is promoting the far right in Europe. Don’t buy @teslamotors. Location: Tesla Gigafactory, Berlin.”
Musk has not publicly responded or reacted to the projection of the image on the Tesla factory.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
