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Liam O'Dell
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Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images
With X/Twitter owner Elon Musk being called out at least twice this year for making the false claim that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was a “socialist”, one might have thought that he’d take some of the responses on board, but this week has seen the Tesla boss once again argue that the fascist was a “far left socialist”.
As a reminder, back in January he responded to another X/Twitter user to argue “Hitler was a far left socialist” as “his party was called the national socialists”, and then in August, he tweeted about what he called the “inescapable logic” that “Hitler was a far-left socialist” and “therefore, socialists are Hitler”.
Now, in his latest push of the same argument, Musk shared a video from another account and added: “Hitler was a far left socialist. Literally in the name of his party!”
But thankfully, other users were once again on hand to point out just how wrong his claim was, with Melanie D’Arrigo of the Campaign for New York Health writing: “Hitler was a far-Right fascist whose party was named the National Socialist German Workers' Party to attract working-class voters. Then he banned the Social Democratic and Communist parties, and sent socialists and communists to concentration camps”:
Zack Beauchamp sarcastically tweeted: “North Korea is a democratic republic. Literally in the name of the country!”:
Mail on Sunday commentator Dan Hodges asked: “How do you confront basic historical ignorance of this magnitude?”:
Journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote: “He’s been pushing this nonsensical ahistorical far right line for a while. Of all his dumb and/or dishonest takes, this may be his worst”:
Podcaster Ryan Knight pointed out Grok disagreed with Musk and added: “Never deleting this app”:
And evan loves worf responded by sharing a meme which said: “’National socialists were socialist’ aight dig in bro since it’s called a urinal ‘cake’”:
Per Britannica, the Nazis were not socialists “in any meaningful way, and certainly not after 1934”.
“In April 1933 communists, socialists, democrats, and Jews were purged from the German civil service, and trade unions were outlawed the following month. That July Hitler banned all political parties other than his own, and prominent members of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps,” it states.
And the Holocaust Encyclopedia notes the Nazi Party - formally known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party - was a “far-right racist and antisemitic political party” which “sought to woo German workers away from socialism and communism and commit them to its antisemitic and anti-Marxist ideology”.
Its article goes on to add ‘National Socialism’ was a “racist and antisemitic political theory” and the Nazi Party campaigned to eradicate ‘Marxism’ which it used to mean “both communism and socialism”.
Why not read…?
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- Musk has donated a staggering sum to support Republicans in midterms
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