Deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans. It's good,
it's good to have them. It's good to have the memorial, as
as the plaque says, so that never happens again. No, I mean,
I'm a student of history, so I'd seen the pictures, I'd seen
the videos, but it's not quite it's it hits you much more in the
heart when you see it in person. I'm still absorbing, frankly, the
magnitude of the tragedy that I witnessed. With place where the tragedy occurred,
well, I think it'll take a few days to sink in frankly, And
as was mentioned, if if they had been social media, I think you
wouldn't impossible to hide if there's been freedom of speech as well, you know,
so you know, one of the one of the first things the Nazis
did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means
of conveying information. So it's worth noting in the United States, the first
Amendment in the United States was freedom of speech. Because the people that that
came to the United States from other countries it did not have freedom of speech.
That if they had said something they could be imprisoned or killed. And
that's why the first correction to the Constitution was the ability to say what you
want to say and not be thrown in prison or killed. Yeah. Elon
is obviously the CEO of Acts, which is the largest news service on the
Internet and the place where a huge number of people, including me, get
the news. You know, you've been committed since you took over to a
much broader perception of free speech on the outlet, and that's led to a
lot of criticisms about suggestions of rising anti Semitism on the outlet as well.
I can say for my own part that the broadening of speech on Twitter,
I think has been an on x has been an excellent thing. One of
the things that I was able to do, for example, in the aftermath
of October seventh, was actually put out full footage and pictures of what exactly
was happening, so you see what really happens, so people think the true
horror, the true horror is is is something people need to be able to
see if they want to see it. And the community notes feature has allowed
for people to even when when things that are false are put up that used
to maybe pass in real time. Now you can correct all that. How
do you balance the necessity for free speech with all these critiques about you know,
what is hate speech, what is anti semitism, and how do you
balance that? Well, the general bias of the platform is in favor of
free speech, and I think at the end of the day, free speech
wins in that if somebody says something that's false, uh, especially on our
platform, you can then reply to it with the correction and then I'm a
huge plan of community notes. I've put We've put maximum resources and attention behind
community notes. So if somebody tries to push a falsehood like Holocaust denial or
something like that, they can immediately be corrected and and and you can't get
rid of the tag. It's like stuck on you. You know you,
you know. So I think it's and the overarching goal for the X platform
is to be the best source of truth in the world. So now now
you know what one can. It's it's difficult to get to perfect truth,
and sometimes people have different interpretations of truth, but one can can always aspire
to be as accurate as possible and to minimize the error between what is being
said and reality. So relentless pursuit of the truth is a goal with with
with X and allowing people to say what they want to say, even if
it's controversial, provided it provided that it does not break the law. I
think that's the right thing to do. And setting the new standard for the
town square, as they say, has allowed for more speech and more availability
of information than ever before, certainly on the platform you recently didn't just go
here, obviously after October seventh, you went to Israel and you saw the
wages of horrific anti Semitism in the various cubutim, and I saw all the
videos, saw a lot of video. Yeah, yeah, it was shocking
to see. I think maybe the most shocking thing was to see the delight
in killing innocent people, like the delight in killing kids and defenseless women and
men, and there was no remorse quite the opposite. I mean, that
requires a level of indoctrination that is extremely intense. So I think that to
solve that you have to address the source of the indoctrination. There's no one,
no one should ever be glad about killing some child. I know a
number of enormous umber of Jews, myself included a very move that you continue
to wear the necklace in remembrance of the hostages. So I want to thank
you for that, obviously, because raising the profile of the fact there's still
dozens of men, women and children. I checked before I came, so
many hostages. I hope they're alive. I hope think I'm back. So
let's talk about, you know, the the uptick and anti Semitism more broadly.
One of the things that's been hard to watch as a Jew, but
also just as an American and a Westerner has been the radical upsurge in anti
Semitic activity, just generally anti Semitic sentiment appallingly after October seven. It's been
astonishing. Actually, yes, I must admit to being somewhat frankly naive about
this. In the circles that I move, I see almost no anti anti
Semitism. And you know, there's this old joke I've got like this one
Jewish friend. No, I have like two thirds of my friends are Jewish,
twice as many Jewish friends as no Jewish friends. I'm like Jewish by
association, I'm aspirationally Jewish. So so I don't you know, I was
like, what are people talking about with this anti semitisms. I never hear
it at dinner conversations. It's like an absurdity, you know, at least
in my friend circles. But when you know, looking at the the pro
Hamas rallies in vast numbers that took place in almost every major city in the
West, blew my mind and on, including on the elite college campuses that
are supposed to be you know, if you're an elite college campus, you're
supposed to be enlightened, you're supposed to be fostering hate, and yet you
had these pro must demonstrations that Harvard, you know, Yale, including I
went to UPenn at Penn and I was like, this is unbelievable. I
mean, there's a poll recently from Harvard Harris showing that some sixty seven percent
people aged eighteen to twenty four said that the Jews were an oppressor class,
which you know, in America, Jews represent approximately seven million Jews in the
United States out of three hundred and thirty million Americans, tiny percentage of the
population. But that ideology that the Jews are in oppressor class matches up very
nicely and very closely with what is a conspiracy theory. At root, anti
Semitism is a conspiracy theory, and it's a conspiracy theory about power. And
if you read Nazi literature, the Nazis literally promoted the idea that Jews were
of course, this small case of people who were running all of the major
industries, who were standing behind all world power. Is Hitler's suggestion is that
those world jewelry that stood behind Germany's loss in World War One, and then
the Allies unwillingness to make a deal with Germany prior to World War Two,
And that theory of power and group identity is really ugly, and we see
echoes of it today. I mean the diversity, equin and inclusion ideology that
basically suggests that all of society is a vast pyramid of group identity, and
that at the very top are the people who are successful, and that those
people are exploiting everybody else, and we can tell who's successful by their group
identity, not by their level of success, by their group identity. That
matches up incredibly. It sinks up almost a vanda anti Semitism. Absolutely.
The diversity actually inclusion mean should always always be wary of any name that sounds
like it could come out of a George Orwell book. That's never a good
sign. And because it sounds like sure, diversity, equity, inclusion,
these will sound like nice words, but but what what it really means is
discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and sexual orientation and and and
it's against merit and and thus I think is fundamentally anti semitic. So yeah,
you know, the I think the whole all of the all of the
riots that were in the major cities and college campuses I think was a shocking
wake up call to I think any any any sort of civilization, well civil
minded person. Really, it's quite a shock. Now the crossover between some
of these rallies on college campuses in favor of Kamas, I mean, they
unite the weirdest coalitions maybe in human history. You'll see LGBTQ flags in favor
of Kamas, where of course, if an LGBTQ person were to be actually
in the Godly Strip, they would no longer be in the Gaza Strip.
They would be dead. Yes, exactly, that coalition is that's like seriously
out of touch. Yeah, but it isn't. But it only isn't out
of touch in the sense that there is a coalitional idea here that basically power
structures must be torn down at all costs. And if that means allying with
people who hate me, then I'll ally with people who hate me. And
the fact that that's grown in fervor since October seventh really is, you know,
as I said to me on on a personal level, quite shocking.
What do you make of the future of a West if if the West continues
to embrace that idea, well, I think we really need to stop this
principle that the the weaker normal normally weaker party is always right. This is
simply not true. If you aren't quotes oppressed or or the weaker party,
it doesn't mean you're right because if some of those you know, we weaker
groups want to annihilate you, that does not make them good. We just
we have to get rid of the rule that that if you're weaker, you're
automatically good. That's that's obviously makes no sense, you know, you know,
it often makes sense where it's like, Okay, you don't want to
beat up when someone smaller and weaker than you, But if that if that's
smaller group wants to kill you, that they're they're bad. Okay, I
mean, I'm a big believer in moral absolutism, not moral relativism. There's
good and bad in the absolute, and you judge any group or individual against
absolute moral standards, not whether they're the so called oppressed or oppressor, just
on absolute moral terms. Are they doing good things? Do they want to
motor inocent people? That's bad? It doesn't matter who they are, you
would think, But the pseudo sophisticates on college campus seem to think differently.
And so I wanted to get your take on why you think this is so
prevalent on college campus. What do you think the future of the universities in
the United States looks like? Given the fact that entire universities appear to have
been corrupted by moral relativism and this sort of perverse ideology. Do you think
that a wave of changes coming to the universities. Do you think that there
is going to be direct hiring out of high school? What is the solution
for universities in the United States as well as abroad. I think we need
to return to what what where things were or mostly were, which is a
focus on unmerit and and it doesn't matter whether you're a man. Woman.
Uh, you know what race you are, what beliefs you have? What
matters is you know, how good are you at your job or what are
your skills? You know, you know, you could be a three legged
green martian. You know, where's a kimono and drinks the X milk?
Who cares? It doesn't matter. You know what matters is like how good
is your work? That's it. That that that's that's the that's the least
sort of racist access you can be. It's just care about the work that
somebody does and not anything else. That that's what that's what the folks needs
to be to return to. Yeah. Yeah. It seems as though you
mentioned earlier the sort of problems of attacks on the meritocracy, and one of
the claims is that there's no real meritocracy, there's a pseudo meritocracy, that
basically all these institutions are run for the benefit of those who run the institutions.
And it feels like there is some truth to the idea that institutions have
lost credibility with the people, particularly in the West, and in the backlash
to that, I think that there's now, you know, sort of an
idea that if we do away with all institutions and all limits on moral behavior
than that that somehow is better. But there needs to be a recapturing of
the institutions, or at least a rebuilding in place of those institutions new things.
And that's something obviously that you're very focused on, not only with expert
your other companies, is building new things, innovation, try and create our
way out of the problems that we've created for ourselves. Yeah, I think
generally with people should always be worried that they may have either consciously or press
mostly subconsciously internalize the notion of a zero sum game or a fixed pie.
And if you're internalized that that there's that everything zero sum, meaning like in
order for me to get ahead, someone else has to not get ahead,
or for me to have stuff, someone else must not have stuff. If
you have that axiomatic flow, then then then that's what it needs to be
done to fix that axiomatic flow, because it is false. There's it's not
a zero sum game. We can absolutely grow and have grown, and the
evidence is overwhelming that we have grown the output of goods and services. We
have many things today that we did not have in the past. We are
far more prosperous all of humanity. It's far more prosperous today than it was
at the times in the past. I mean, it wasn't that long ago
where you know, we would count a good year as one where well,
the Buponic plague wasn't that bad, only killed ten percent you know, we
uh, not that many people stopped through the winner. We only lost you
know, five percent of our population due to raids from other tribes. You
know. Basically, life used to be very rough in the old days,
and it's if they could see us now, they'd be like, what are
you guys complaining about? This is amazing, you know, not having to
worry about food, food for I mean we were we were food constrained for
you know, probably the last one hundred thousand years until recently. So you
know, really the present day future is amazing compared to the past. And
anyone who doesn't think it's amazing, it's not a good student of history.
So I think we live in the most interesting of times and probably the best
of times. One of the things that I would hope that that and I
think you're part of this, is a coalition of meritocrats standing up for the
meritocracy is going to be deeply necessary in a future where trust has been fragmented
with so many institutions. We're going to have to stand up and loudly say
that merit still exists, and that merit is individually based, not not based
on innate characteristics of some sort. So you mentioned earlier you know that you're
aspirationally Jewish, that you surround yourself with that, that you're surrounded by so
many Jews. So are you part of the Jewish conspiracy? What exactly is
the maybe that'll please the haters online? Yeah? No, I mean I
just so. Yeah. I grew up around a lot of Newish people.
I went to Hebrew preschool Racial Spiro in South Africa. My name is very
Jewish. Oh, I will tell you that for the past ten years,
as people have assumed in my community that your Jewish until I informed them otherwise.
Yeah, Elon is a prett Jewish name. He's super Jewish. Yeah.
And then I went to Israel when I was thirteen, you know,
I mean, you know, visited Masoda. I'm certainly checking the boxes on
a lot of things. And like I said, most of micros of Jewish
just worked out that way. So sometimes I yeah, I guess maybe I
forget that. Maybe am I Jewish? I'm Jewish as racially Jewish. So
you know, when when you hear critiques about acts right about the amount of
anti Semitism on X, what are the metrics that you're seeing from the inside
about the amounts of anti Semitism or quote unquote hate speech because it's always a
vaguely defined term hate speech on your platform. Yeah, I mean the outside
orders that we had done, at least the ones that we've had done,
show that there was the least amount of anti semitism on X if you look,
if you look at all the other social it's never going to be zero
if you've got six hundred million people on a platform, expecting it to be
anything to be zero is extremely unlikely because you've got six hundred million people on
a platform. But when they compare us to Instagram, TikTok's actually got a
lot of anti said, is pretty terrifying. People will not checked out TikTok.
I mean, the algorithm is absolutely pushing into a programmance material. Yes,
it is, so I believe it's we have TikTok has like five times
the amount of anti semitism per post than we do. So it's not like
I said, it's not gonna be zero, but to the best of our
knowledge, it is has the least amount of anti semitism of any platform.
Legacy media has spent an awful lot of ink on you. There's been a
lot of attempts to paint you as anti semitic, or paint X as anti
semitic. Where do you think that's coming from? Well, why why does
the legacy media seem to have you, particularly in the last year and a
half in the crosshairs so much. Well, I mean, the reality is
that X is competition for the legacy media. So your X is is where
people go to get the most current news and learn about the world. So,
you know, the legacy media is our direct competitors. So they're really
going to find trying every angle to try to cancel X. I mean,
that's I mean, if you want to know why things happening, look at
the incentives. You know. So, and legacy media has had a tough
time with respect to usage. The numbers I saw was that the sort of
traditional print cable television viewership went down something like twenty last year. On the
other hand, X point up roughly that's same, roughly twenty thirty percent.
So it's a direct competition for people's attention. So if there's some attactic and
levy against me, they won't. It seems as though one of the other
matters is not just direct competition between the media and X, but also that
the legacy media, for most of my life up until the past, you
know, fifteen years, performed what they saw as a gatekeeping function. They
were the ones who got to define the narrative. They were the ones who
got to determine what was appropriate news and what was inappropriate news. And then
even after social media arose in the early days, there was this sort of
the sort of things that you articulate were actually articulated by virtually all the social
media heads. Mark Zuckerberg used to say the kinds of things that you say.
Jack Dorsey used to say the kinds of things that you said. And
then there seemed to be an institutional takeover by a lot of legacy media types
in terms of the kinds of rules and restrictions that were placed on what you
could and could not say on these platforms. Who would get banned, who
would not get banned, advertisers weaponized against particular particular outlets if those outlets didn't
follow the dictats that they were put forward by by these types. And it
seems like since you took over, one of the biggest objection of all is
that they're not performing the eight keeping function anymore someone else's. Well, yes,
I mean I don't think that there should be a gate keeping function by
a small number of individuals. I mean, really, if you say,
like for newspapers in America, there are about five editors that decide what what
gets put on the front page or what what to focus on or what not
to focus on, and most of the other the most of the other papers
just copy them essentially. So but is that really what we want. We
aren't just a handful of people deciding what what they think is important or or
should it be that the people decide what's important? And I think it should
be sort of an organic thing where the people decide what's important and what to
focus on, not just a handful of editors. And yeah, they don't
like the fact that this power has been taken away from them, but I
think it should be. I don't go back to something that you said a
little bit earlier talking about the idea that on a moral level, you know,
there's nothing that suggests that that simple weakness is itself virtue. That a
weak person can be virtuous but doesn't necessarily mean that they are. A powerful
person can be, you know, the victimizer, but doesn't necessarily mean that
they are. That logic carried forward, particularly to what's going on in Israel
right now, has been, in my opinion, entirely pernicious and wrong.
There's this idea that because Israel is a powerful, militarily sophisticated country that is
doing its best to limitsvillian casualties in one of the most population dense areas of
the world, in which you have terrorists or honeycombed throughout every aspect of society,
building literally hundreds of miles of tunnels, the entire London subway system worth
of tunnels underneath the ground, that somehow, you know, Israel targeting those
systems and killing a lot of people. Because when you kill terrorists, unfortunately
they're embedded among civilians. It's terrible and it's horrifying. With every one of
those deaths is on terroristcript that in beds itself with civilians. There's been this
this, this logic has been mapped onto that conflict that smaller and weaker means
morally virtuous because victimized. Yeah, it really has come completely full circle from
or hider needy degrees from what has historically been the case. So through most
of history, the operating principle has been might makes right. So yeah,
for really, up until bottom times, might makes right was the if you
were stronger, you were right. Now we've sort of flipped it to know
if you're weaker, you're right. But neither is true. There is there
is a rightness independent of strength or weakness. Just because somebody is strong,
it doesn't mean they're right, and doesn't because somebody is weak doesn't mean they're
right. You have to look at morals in the absolute. So on a
broader level, elan Or you talk a lot about your hope for humanity and
say that you're somebody who really loves humanity, which is why you talk about
expanding humanities, reach out to the stars. When you go to a place
like Auschwitz, or when you walk the villages like he boots very after October
seventh, does that change your opinion of humanity or does it reinforce what you
think humanity can be on both the positive side and on the negative side.
I think it is actually human nature to love humanity unless you're indoctrinated otherwise.
So I think the actual default for most people is to love humanity and you
love being around their fellow humans. You can take for example, like what's
one of the worst punishments in prison is solidary confinement, and all softwary confinement
means is that you don't get to hang out with the other prisoners, which
which might not be the best group of people to hang out with, but
even that is considered a terrible punishment to not be able to hang out with
other prisoners. So, in truth, I think in our nature we all
love humanity unless we are indoctrinated otherwise, and so we have to stop that
indoctrination. So how do you think that people ought to pursue that, Because
obviously we have seen indoctrination at a wide variety of levels, ranging from soft
indoctrination in various schools in the West, very very hard indoctrination that you see
and for example the Gaza Strip where kids are literally unfortunately at very young ages,
they have graduation ceremonies that we've seen tapes of where they're re enacting kidnapping
of Israeli soldiers or killing of Israeli soldiers for example. That fundamentally has to
be addressed or they will not be peace. The education of kids and Gaza,
the indoctrination of hate into kids in Gaza has to has to stop.
So it's you know, when I was in Israel, I was like that
was my top recommendation is that you've got to make sure you know, I
understand the need for this to to inbate Gaza. And unfortunately, some innocent
people will die, there's no way around it. But the most important thing
is to ensure that afterwards that the indoctrination where kids are taught from as soon
as they can understand language that their goal is to kill Israelis. And and
if you're told that from when you're a toddler, well you're going to believe
it. And that needs to stop. Yeah, on a technological side,
what do you think can be done there, because actually this is one of
the areas where you know, the Gaza strip has been famous for its Internet
access. You know, they're they're there. There are a lot of places
around the world where the government puts an extraordinarily heavy hand on the flow of
information. You're mentioning that the Nazis first thing they did was take over the
entire press mechanism inside Germany and then inside the occupied areas of Europe. But
that obviously happens all over the world right now. And one of the things
you do Starlink for is to try and open up some of those avenues of
information. But what what what what can you do? What what? What
it's worth? Also, the Nazis engaged in extreme censorship within Germany for antithing
anything that was pro Summitic. I'm not sure how. I don't know how
many people are aware of that, but you were that they censored any Prosemitic,
anyone who tried to defend the Jews in Germany, any anything prosemitic was
was censored. So yeah, I think freedom of speech and rigorous pursuit of
the truth is the way, is one way to get her to defeat hatred.
You know, when when I look at the un way, well,
when I look at the United States, one of the things that it seems
to be breaking down, and when any the first element, historically maybe the
last element of a society in a state of mental decline is a vast outbreak
of anti Semitism. This is what was happening, and not not the German
but historically countries that are in a state of decline tend to have wild outbreaks
of anti Semitism. And it seems to me that one of the key things
that can reverse that process is the rebuilding of local institutions. And as local
institutions break down, you see sort of this fragmentation of the population at large.
How do you merge the need for technological development with the building of those
local institutions, families, churches, schools, now the kinds of things that
societies are built upon. Yeah, actually, I should say there were really
three things that were my strong recommendation visiting Israel. One is, obviously one
has to get rid of Hamas fighters who where reform is impossible, their only
goal is to kill Israelis. They're got to be either killed or imprisoned,
because otherwise they will simply kill more Israelis. Then the second thing is you've
got to change the indoctrination in the schools so that kids are not taught to
hate from the moment they are two years old. And then the third thing
is, which is a very hard thing to do in this situation, is
conspicuous acts of kindness to the people in Gaza. Conspicuous acts of kindness to
the people in Gaza. It's just that much harder to hate someone if you
do nice things for them, even if they bite, they try to bite
your hand when you do it, keep doing it. And you look at
the Marshall Plan after, you know, look at world look at the difference
between World War One and World War Two. Where after World War One,
Germany got an unfair share of the blame. It led to immense betterness.
It's what allowed Hiplert to rise to power, was the embittered German soldiers from
World War One. And but then you look in contrast to what happened after
World War Two. You had the Marshall Plan, so you had, you
know, you had the United States coming in and actually funding the rebuilding of
Germany and the rebuilding of Japan. How often does that happen in history?
But look at the results, no war with Germany, peace with Japan and
Germany for now soon it will be almost a century. So when you look
at the state of the West right now, yeah, somebody maybe it's all
the doom scrolling. But when you when you look at the state of the
West right now, you're very optimistic. It sounds like, you know,
I find it hard to be optimistic in this moment. It's been a very
ugly couple of years, you know, from Ukraine to the current conflict in
Israel Kamas, to domestic politics in the United States and where else. It
seems like there's a lot of polarization, a lot of fragmentation. What do
you think is the future of the West. Can we come together around any
sense of shared common values, especially given the fact that everybody is kind of
drinking from the fire hose of information. One of the downsides about the upside
of information is the availability. The downside is you know, choice paralysis and
overload. I mean, you can definitely get information overload, associate information coming
at you these days because you can get all the world's information in real time,
and it's impossible for a one human to digest all that, you know,
I think, I think there are some things that we can agree on,
well, most people would agree on, are cool and inspiring, like
humanity, going to the moon. You know, if you ask, probably
kids almost anywhere in the world. What's the coolest thing humans have ever done?
I think a lot of kids would say, we went to the moon,
you know, And so I think we want to continue that spurt of
exploration, you know, speaking of kind of growing the pie. And it
is that we want to, I think, have a dream that we can
be a space bearing civilization, a multi planet species, a multi stellar species,
and go out there among the stars and discover the nature of the universe,
that we can collectively seek greater enlightenment to better understand this incredible universe we
live in. I find that break compelling. I think I think most people
would find that very compelling. I think embedded in that it's also, as
you say, that core value of meritocracy. Because it's one thing to say
man can go to the moon. It's another thing to say I can be
part of man going to the moon. And a meritocracy suggests that you can
be part of that. It's not just that human beings are capable of doing
the thing, it's that you can be a part of that thing if you
work hard enough, if you innovate enough, if you try hard enough.
And so societies that seem to have given up on that also seem to have
given up on going to the moon. Societies that are so reflective about their
own supposed flaws. The United States has this problem right now that they are
unwilling to simply say freedom is pretty phenomenal and meritocracy is the greatest thing that's
ever been invented, and we should hold on to that, and that's what's
going to allow against them that stops us from going to the Moon, or
to Mars, or to anywhere else. Yeah, I mean, and there's
many wonderful interesting things that are happening besides space exploration. Obviously, as time
goes by, we improve our ability to cure cancer, to cure many diseases.
There's increased access to information. And people talk a lot about inequality,
but what about the equality of access to information? That's incredible. You know,
right now, if you've got, you know, a very cheap electronic
device at an in an internet cafe, you can access all of the lectures
of MIT for free. You can access almost any book, you can learn
anything. This is an equality of access to information that was unthinkable even twenty
thirty years ago. You can teach yourself how to do anything for free.
That's amazing. Maybe there's like too muchocus on the things that are unequal,
but we should we forget about the things that are equal and that have improved
inequality so much like access to information. You know, that's one of the
things that we're trying to help out with Starlink is provide access internet internet access
to people who don't have internet access or where it's too expensive for them to
afford. Because once you have internet access, you can learn anything and you
can sell your your your products and services. So I think that's that's pretty
amazing. I mean, you know, that's sort of like if we're going
to count our flaws, we should also count our blessings. Yeah. One
of the things that I think is amazing about what you've been doing on is
that it's not just you know, the the business side of you that's important.
Obviously, you become this unbelievably you know, large figure looming in the
public imagination, and that means that when you tweet, it has you know,
impacts that is that is very large. How do you decide when to
tweet? Sometimes to memory, sometimes it's sometimes it's joking. Sometimes it's these
long thought out posts. How do you decide when did she how do you
inform yourself on on the topics that you're tweeting about? Well, I did.
I do put post a lot on the x platform, you know,
sometimes one hundred times a day, so and once in a while I'll do
something dumb, for sure, But I I really, you know, I
try to say things that I think are interesting or funny. I mean,
there must be some reason why one hundred and sixty nine million people follow me.
I guess, I don't know. I must be keeping them amused and
so amuse entertain you know, have opinions on something. Sometimes they're wrong,
sometimes they're right, and you know, for things like community Notes, it
applies to me as well as it applies to anyone else. So if I
say something that's incorrect or you know, not full context, then community notes
will correct me very quickly. So but it's only me doing these posts.
Ever, I don't have a team or anything. So in fact, I
generally would recommend for leaders of the world to just literally post your own stuff
and once in a while you make a mistake, don't worry about it,
so nobody bats a thousand So obviously we're visited today. You know. The
big takeaway always is ever again. I think that the question that a lot
of Jews worldwide asked after October seventh, and after that wild up surge of
anti Semitism which we've seen the Jew hatred that continues now, is whether never
again really for a lot of people met never again between the years nineteen thirty
nine and nineteen forty five, or whether it actually means never again like right
now, as in, if there's a genocidal group that wish just to kill
lots of Jews, is that something that you wish to stand up against right
now? And when you look out at the world, in the state of
the world, you know the video that EJ put up a moment ago suggesting
that the Holocaust would have been somewhat mitigated, or people may have had more
information or been able to certainly been able to escape earlier. I mean,
one of the things that's astonishing, obviously about the history of the Holocaust is
how many Jews because they were only getting partial information, it was slow,
and it was gradual, and by the time they wanted to get out,
it was just too late for them to get out. What are your hopes
that never again is a real thing? I mean, I certainly hope there's
not another hologhost. How realistically is it? I think I think it's unlikely,
Frankly, so at least if you say, like I mean, I
could be naive, But I think the probability of a Holocaust in the West
is extremely tiny, you know. I think if you look at say that
the you know, the Nazis, I think he had like a got like
a third of the vote or something like that when he was first semi he
was sort of sort of semi elected and then did basically a coup. And
but but think of all the people that fought to destroy Nazism. That the
millions and millions of people that fought and died to destroy Nazism. That's the
vast majority of the West opposed, even in those days, opposed Nazism and
fort and died. And my grandfather was in World War Two for almost six
years. All his friends got killed. He was the only one of his
friends to survive, and he was severely traumatized, like he really just couldn't
even talk afterwards. Most of that time was in East Africa, North Africa,
Italy. The only reason he's even alive, frankly, is because towards
the end of the war, they gave like an aptitude test because he was
just a corporal. He didn't graduate high school so it wasn't eligible for officer
school, and they plucked him out, probably right before he died, and
sent him to work for British intelligence in London, which is where he met
my grandmother. You know. So he was one of the people fighting to
stop the Nazis and many along with millions of others. You know. So
let's not forget that the vast majority of the west Ford and died to stop
Nazism. So I had the chance to briefly meet your three year old today
is a fun, adorable I have three year old of my own, so
I can there are all very similar. But you know what, as you're
you have some kids who are much older. You have you know, kids
who are who are younger. Obviously when it comes to teaching them about things
like the Holocaust and anti Semitism, how do you address those topics. Well,
my kids are pretty well read, so they they read a lot of
history that they're not ignorant on the subject. I mean maybe the three year
old is sure, I would hope, yes, you can't read, So
my kids are very well read so red, but I you know that I've
had some sort of disturbing conversations with sort of some say nephews or some some
family members not not my kids, but kids of family members where I was
actually shocked to see anti semitism or or at least Yeah. One disturbing conversation
was you know, saying that the you know that we deserve to have the
trade towers destroyed because of our terrible foreign policy. I was like, this
is what they're teaching you in elite New York high schools. This is messed
up. Well, Elon, I think I personally Jews all over the world.
A lot of people in this room want to thank you for not only
visiting Auschwitz, but also for visiting Israel after October seventh, and for the
strong world voice you've been on behalf of the fight against anti Semitism. It's
great to spend time with you. Thank you so much, thank you,
thank you for having me