X owner and Tesla founder Elon Musk said Monday that diversity-focused hiring practices are “fundamentally anti-Semitic” after touring the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.
“Diversity and equity, inclusion – we should always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come from a George Orwell book,” Musk said during an interview with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at the conference European Jewish Association Poland.
“What it really means is discrimination based on race, gender or sexual orientation, and it is anti-merit and therefore, in my opinion, fundamentally anti-Semitic,” he continued.
Musk has spoken out loudly against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in recent weeks, saying those policies are racist in a series of Posts on Xformerly Twitter.
“Racial discrimination that DEI engages in is literally the definition of racism,” he wrote in a post earlier this month.
Musk's comments came Monday after he visited the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Oswiecim, Poland. His visit comes after Musk suffered backlash for spreading anti-Semitic messages on X and his own views.
Musk faced backlash in November after he appeared to support an anti-Semitic post on X, calling it “absolute truth.” Later that month, numerous major companies decided to stop advertising
Musk also claimed on Monday, without evidence, that audits had shown there was less anti-Semitic content on X compared to other platforms. “The external audits we've done show that X has the lowest level of anti-Semitism when you look at all other social apps,” Musk said during the event.
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