The billionaire whose “efficiency” actions are killing and harming children and adults across the world now says Adolf Hitler and other dictators of the 20th century didn’t actually murder millions of people.
Last Thursday, Elon Musk reposted on X: “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.”
“Public sector employees” appears to be a contemporary reference to the thousands of U.S. federal employees Musk and his DOGE team are firing in a chaotic frenzy.
Musk also has falsely claimed no one has died as a result of his dismantling of USAID. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has documented on-the-ground reports of deaths and impending deaths due to those cuts.
Not only are children already dying, but the imminent death of others is easily predictable, Kristoff wrote. For example: “An estimated 1,650,000 people could die within a year without American foreign aid for HIV prevention and treatment.”
Earlier, Musk famously declared America’s greatest problem is too much empathy. He also was shown giving a Nazi salute at a conservative rally.
Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, D.C., on January 20. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
His March 13 post about three of the most notorious murderers of the last century originated with a far-right X site called Romthus, which was retweeted by another far-right site called Alice Smith. The retweet since has been removed from Musk’s site, but not before it caught the attention of a public now fixated on Musk’s every word.
“It is deeply disturbing and irresponsible for someone with a large public platform to elevate the kind of rhetoric that serves to undermine the seriousness of these issues,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
According to well-documented historical records:
- Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader from 1924 to 1953, deliberately caused the deaths of about 6 million people and was responsible for as many as 7 million deaths. That equals 4.2% of the total population of his country at the time.
- Mao Zedong, leader of China from 1949 to 1976, caused the deaths of 40 to 80 million people through starvation, persecution, prison labor and mass executions.
- Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, caused the deaths of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and the deaths of another 6 million people or more through other forms of ethnic cleansing and persecution.
It is a documented historical fact that the policies, actions and edicts of these three leaders ended the lives of 60 million to 100 million people.
Meanwhile, in America today, “public sector employees” acting on the orders of Musk and President Donald Trump are destroying careers, families, livelihoods and causing real deaths.
The irony is that Musk appears to have defended his and Trump’s work by saying they — like Stalin, Mao and Hitler — are not really the ones responsible.
That did not set well with federal employee groups, including Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“America’s public service workers — our nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians — chose making our communities safe, healthy and strong over getting rich. They are not, as the world’s richest man implies, genocidal murderers,” Saunders said. “Elon Musk and the billionaires in this administration have no idea what real people go through every day. That’s why he’s so willing to take a chainsaw to people’s jobs, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare.”
The social media site Alt National Park Service also took aim at Musk’s comparison.
“Let’s be clear — America’s public service workers are our nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians, postal workers, park rangers, air traffic controllers, and countless others who dedicate their lives to keeping our society running. They chose public service over becoming rich,” the site posted. “This kind of rhetoric isn’t just misleading — it’s dangerous. It fuels hostility toward public servants and encourages people to see them as enemies rather than the essential workers who educate our kids, protect our communities, maintain infrastructure, and provide critical services. We’ve already seen threats against federal employees escalate. Reckless statements like this only put them at greater risk.”
Musk previously endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories and has denied neo-Nazi violence. He is being sued for defamation by a recent Jewish college graduate after Musk falsely said the man was a federal agent pretending to be a neo-Nazi during a 2023 brawl. In a deposition for that lawsuit, Musk admitted under oath he did not have a full understanding of the situation.
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