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Antisemitism
Statements or actions targeting Jewish people, including antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial or minimisation.
11 documented facts
A Guardian investigation found Substack earning revenue from paid newsletters promoting Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, taking about 10% of their income. One, NatSocToday, charged $80 a year to 2,800 subscribers, and Substack's algorithm directed the Guardian's test account to 21 similar profiles within two hours.
Response: Substack did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment.
In a French-language reply on X posted on November 17, 2025 and viewed about a million times according to AFP, Grok said the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were designed for "disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus" rather than for mass murder, language long associated with Holocaust denial. The Paris prosecutor's office added the posts to its existing cybercrime investigation into X, and the Ligue des droits de l'Homme and SOS Racisme filed a criminal complaint for contesting crimes against humanity.
Response: Grok later said the reply was wrong and had been deleted. X and xAI did not respond to AP's requests for comment.
Substack's app sent a push notification encouraging users to subscribe to NatSocToday, a newsletter describing itself as serving the "National Socialist and White Nationalist Community" with a swastika logo; its profile then recommended other white nationalist publications on the platform.
Response: Substack said an error caused some people to receive push notifications "they should never have received", called it a serious error, apologised and said it had taken the relevant system offline.
Four days after Musk announced Grok had been "improved", the chatbot posted antisemitic content about "Jewish executives", praised Adolf Hitler and called itself "MechaHitler". xAI took it offline and deleted some posts.
Response: xAI apologized for the "horrific behavior" and attributed it to an update to a code path upstream of the bot, independent of the underlying language model.
The day after the "white genocide" incident, Grok answered a post from an account whose banner showed Adolf Hitler, asking how many Jews Hitler killed: it said historical records "claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945" but that it was skeptical of the figure without primary evidence because numbers can be manipulated for political purposes, while adding that the scale of the tragedy was undeniable and that it condemned the genocide. Historians broadly agree on 5 to 6 million Jewish victims.
“However, I'm skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives”
Response: Grok later attributed the answer to "an unauthorized change to my programming on May 14, 2025" and said it "was corrected by May 15, 2025." Neither Musk nor xAI responded to the Guardian's request for comment, according to Next.
While leading DOGE's cuts to the federal workforce, reposted a far-right account's message claiming that Stalin, Mao and Hitler did not murder millions and that their public sector employees did. He deleted it after criticism. The ADL called it "deeply disturbing and irresponsible".
“Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn't murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.”
Responding to accusations over his inauguration gesture, posted a series of puns on the names of Nazi leaders (Hess, Goebbels, Göring, Himmler), adding "Bet you did nazi that coming". ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, whose organisation had initially defended the gesture, replied that it is "inappropriate and offensive" to make light of the Holocaust, and the ADL said such jokes "trivialize the Holocaust".
“Don't say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down!”
After The Atlantic reported on Substack newsletters with overt Nazi symbols and more than 200 writers asked the company why it was "platforming and monetizing Nazis", co-founder Hamish McKenzie said Substack would not remove or demonetize such publications absent incitement to violence, as the company keeps a cut of their subscription revenue.
“we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.”
Response: In January 2024 Substack removed five publications that Platformer had flagged, saying they broke its existing rule against incitement to violence, while stating it was not changing its content guidelines.
Replied "You have said the actual truth" to a post accusing Jewish communities of pushing "dialectical hatred against whites". The White House condemned an "abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate".
“You have said the actual truth”
After liking a post by an Irish white supremacist calling for X to ban the Anti-Defamation League, after which the #BanTheADL hashtag trended, blamed the ADL for a 60% drop in X's advertising revenue and threatened to sue the Jewish civil rights group for defamation, estimating damages at "roughly $22 billion".
“trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic”
Response: Musk wrote: "I'm pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind."
After George Soros's fund sold a Tesla stake, compared the Jewish Holocaust survivor and philanthropist to Magneto, a comic-book villain whose backstory involves Nazi persecution, and wrote that Soros "wants to erode the very fabric of civilization" and "hates humanity". Fortune noted that attacks on Soros are often interpreted as antisemitic dog-whistling; Israel's Foreign Ministry said the posts had "anti-Semitic overtones".
“He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
Response: Asked about the criticism in a CNBC interview the next day, Musk denied being antisemitic: "I'm a pro-Semite, if anything."