Elon Musk’s biographer called him a “sociopath” after the MAGA billionaire’s 2024 visit to the Auschwitz death camp was dismissed by someone else at the event as nothing more than a “photo-op.”
Musk, who has emerged as one of Donald Trump’s top allies, has faced renewed allegations of antisemitism since he made an evocative gesture while speaking after the new president’s inauguration. Some said the gesture bore an uncanny resemblance to a Nazi salute.
The X owner’s visit to Auschwitz in January 2024 has been used as a point in his defense, and Musk has dismissed the Nazi comparison as “pure propaganda” (yet decided to take the opportunity to joke about Nazis on X).
On Wednesday, though, the partner of Gidon Lev, the 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who was the guest of honor at Musk’s much-publicized visit to the death camp, shared a scathing perspective on the event.
Elon Musk visits Auschwitz-Birkenau with European Jewish Association (EJA) Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Ben Shapiro, and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev in Oswiecim, Poland. / Yoav Dudkevitch/European Jewish Association via Reuters
“I chatted with Elon Musk. I spent hours with him and walked with him through Auschwitz. I stood with him, looking at the nauseating heaps of hair, luggage, and shoes flooded with violet light meant to preserve it,” Julie Gray wrote on Facebook.
“Is Musk an antisemite?” she continued. “People, actually, it’s worse—he doesn’t care whatsoever… He was unmoved by the experience.”
Her criticism was unsparing.
“Elon did not care. He was about his press junket and his bodyguards. I was ten feet from him as he posed for the cameras of his entourage,” she wrote. “He was utterly detached. He cared about how he looked. When he placed a wreath at Auschwitz and Gidon was overlooked, he walked away with the cameras whirring. This is Elon Musk. A sociopath, if ever there was one. To deduce, from this visit, that he is a friend of the Jews is desperately naive.”
Seth Abramson, an award-winning writer who identifies himself as a biographer of Musk, took to X to share Gray’s story and agree with her assessment.
“This is absolutely chilling,” he wrote on Thursday. “He truly is a sociopath.”
Representatives for Musk did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Musk’s visit to Auschwitz came after the tech founder and his platform faced accusations of condoning antisemitism in late 2023.
On a personal level, Musk sparked outcry when he responded to an X user who accused Jews of “hatred against whites” by writing, “You have said the actual truth.”
He eventually apologized for the post and called it “one of the most foolish, if not the most foolish” thing he had ever done on the site.
Around the same time, a number of large companies, including Disney and IBM, decided to stop advertising on X after their content appeared alongside antisemitic white nationalist content.
Musk was accompanied on the trip by his then 3-year-old son, known as “X,” and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish.
The accusations of antisemitism were renewed in light of the straight-armed salute Musk made on Monday.
While many commentators online deemed the gesture brazenly antisemitic for its resemblance to the Nazi salute, Musk found an unlikely defender in the Anti-Defamation League.
The organization, which battles antisemitism, suggested that Musk made “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”
The ADL changed its tune just two days later, condemning the Nazi “jokes” Musk then proceeded to make, which referenced “Goebbels” and “Göring.”
Now, Musk is preparing for the launch of his Department of Government Efficiency, the newly created agency that Trump has named him to lead.
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