Why would Elon Musk share and delete a tweet shifting the
blame for some of history's worst mass murders away from the
dictators who ordered them? Now a tweet that he had reposted
and then removed stating Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn't murder
millions of people, their public sector workers did.
Now, that tweet's wording suggests an attempt to redefine
historical responsibility, implying that the bureaucrats,
military officers, and the executioners who carried out
mass killings were to blame, rather than the authoritarian
leaders who orchestrated them. But is this claim rooted in
reality, or is it a dangerous distortion of history?
And why would Elon Musk decide that this particular statement
wasn't worth keeping on his Platform X?
Now history makes one thing clear.
The regimes of Stalin, Mao and Hitler were not passive machines
that simply move forward under the weight of bureaucratic
inertia. These leaders created the
frameworks of terror that enabled their atrocities.
Their hands may not have always pulled the trigger, but they
signed the orders, gave the speeches, and designed the
policies that ensured mass killings would happen.
Now, Joseph Stalin's rule over the Soviet Union was defined by
paranoia, repression, and state directed mass murder.
The Great Purge of the 1930s alone saw hundreds of thousands
of executions and millions sent to Gulag labor camps.
The idea that Stalin was not responsible because he
personally didn't carry out these killings is absolutely
absurd. He not only issued the quotas
for arrest and executions, but also personally reviewed lists
of people to be killed. Stalin's purges extended beyond
political opponents to include entire ethnic groups.
His forced collectivization policies triggered the
Halimotor, a man made famine in Ukraine that killed millions of
people. His secret police, the NKVD,
carried out mass shootings and engineered terror on an
industrial scale to suggest that Stalin was somehow removed from
these atrocities. And that flame falls on lower
level officials, erases the deliberate choices that he made.
Now, Mao Zedong's rule over China is responsible for more
deaths than any other dictator in history, with estimates
ranging between 40 to 70 million people.
His Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962 was a catastrophic
attempt to rapidly industrialize China, but instead it led to one
of the worst famines in human history, with millions starving
to death. Like Stalin, Mouse policies were
not just tragic miscalculations, they were enforced with brutal
repression. Peasants who tried to flee
famine stricken areas were often executed or sent straight to
labor camps. And the Cultural Revolution,
which is between 1966 and 1976, unleashed another wave of
violence where young Red Guards were encouraged to denounce and
attack class enemies. Teachers were beating the death
by students. Suspected political dissidents
were tortured and publicly humiliated before being
executed. This was not simply a case of
public sector workers going rogue.
Mao himself encouraged and praised his violence, only
stepping in when it spiraled beyond his control.
Now, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime industrialized Mass murder
6,000,000 Jews were systematically killed in the
Holocaust alongside millions of others, including Romani people,
political dissidents, disabled individuals, and Soviet
prisoners of war. The Nazis didn't commit these
crimes in a bureaucratic vacuum. They followed a clear
ideological framework outlined by Hitler himself and Mein
Kampf, and reinforced through speeches and policies that left
no room for ambiguity. Now, the Nazi military was
deeply complicit in these crimes, and the idea that these
killings were merely the actions of overzealous government
workers ignores the fact that Hitler built a state designed
for genocide. The s s, the Gestapo, all played
their roles, and none of it would have happened without
Hitler's direct influence and leadership.
The tweet that Elon Musk reposted presents a logical
fallacy separating the leaders from the crimes committed under
the regimes. But history shows that
authoritarian states do not operate on autopilot.
Stalin, Mao and Hitler deliberately created systems
designed for oppression and mass murder.
The term public sector workers is also misleading.
It conjures an image of bureaucrats pushing papers, not
the trained executioner, secret police, and ideological
enforcers who carried out these killings.
The s s, Stalin's NKVD, and Mao's Red Guards were not just
ordinary government employees. They were carefully selected and
indoctrinated to enforce these regimes and also their most
brutal policies of murdering millions of people.
Furthermore, the claim ignores the concept of command
responsibility. It's a legal and moral principle
that holds leaders accountable for crimes committed under their
authority. If a dictator orders mass murder
and their subordinates carry it out, the leader is still
responsible. And a Musk did repost and then
remove the statement. There's several plausible
explanations for this. Elon Musk does not care, and
Musk's influence extends far beyond social media.
Though CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X.
His words carry weight with investors, regulators and
consumers. Public figures who appear to
downplay genocide or reframe history in ways that excuse
authoritarian rulers tend to face serious consequences.
Musk may have decided that engaging with this tweet was not
worth a reputational risk. I'm sure somebody at SpaceX or
somebody at Tesla text Elon real quick and said, what are you
doing? This is a horrible thing to do
with the stock price is going to crash.
You got to delete this. And as the owner of X, Musk has
spoken about making the platform a space for free speech.
However, even he understands that some statements cross a
line, or at least his investors do given the sheer reach of his
posts, may have realized that amplifying this misleading
statement was a step too far even for him.
It could be a dog whistle, too. Think about that, reframing
history in ways that downplay the direct responsibility of
dictators. It's not just misleading, it
disrespects the memory of the victims.
It also sets a dangerous precedent where mass killings
can be excused as the result of bureaucratic inertia rather than
deliberate policy choices and horrible, horrible people.
Murderers. Now, Musk often claims to
support truth and transparency, but spreading misleading
narratives, intentionally or not, undermines that stance.
And if he did delete this tweet, it was likely an acknowledgement
that some statements, even if they spark conversation, aren't
worth promoting. Now.
Let me know in the comments what you think about this.
Do you think Elon Musk wanted to dog whistle people?
You think he posted that to see what the reaction would be?
If it was positive, you would have kept it up, but if it was
negative, take it down so his investors don't go wild and
booed him off. As the CEO of Tesla, the board
can get rid of him if they vote him off.
It's a possibility that there could be an uprising at Tesla.
There could be an uprising in society against Elon Musk in the
billionaire class too. It was a horrible thing for Elon
Musk to do to even repost this. But I want to hear what you
think. Let me know in the comments.
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