Why would Elon Musk share and delete a tweet shifting the blame for some of history's worst mass murders away from the dictators who ordered them? Now a tweet that he had reposted and then removed stating Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn't murder millions of people, their public sector workers did.
Now, that tweet's wording suggests an attempt to redefine historical responsibility, implying that the bureaucrats, military officers, and the executioners who carried out mass killings were to blame, rather than the authoritarian leaders who orchestrated them. But is this claim rooted in reality, or is it a dangerous distortion of history? And why would Elon Musk decide that this particular statement wasn't worth keeping on his Platform X? Now history makes one thing clear.
The regimes of Stalin, Mao and Hitler were not passive machines that simply move forward under the weight of bureaucratic inertia. These leaders created the frameworks of terror that enabled their atrocities. Their hands may not have always pulled the trigger, but they signed the orders, gave the speeches, and designed the policies that ensured mass killings would happen. Now, Joseph Stalin's rule over the Soviet Union was defined by paranoia, repression, and state directed mass murder.
The Great Purge of the 1930s alone saw hundreds of thousands of executions and millions sent to Gulag labor camps. The idea that Stalin was not responsible because he personally didn't carry out these killings is absolutely absurd. He not only issued the quotas for arrest and executions, but also personally reviewed lists of people to be killed. Stalin's purges extended beyond political opponents to include entire ethnic groups.
His forced collectivization policies triggered the Halimotor, a man made famine in Ukraine that killed millions of people. His secret police, the NKVD, carried out mass shootings and engineered terror on an industrial scale to suggest that Stalin was somehow removed from these atrocities. And that flame falls on lower level officials, erases the deliberate choices that he made.
Now, Mao Zedong's rule over China is responsible for more deaths than any other dictator in history, with estimates ranging between 40 to 70 million people. His Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962 was a catastrophic attempt to rapidly industrialize China, but instead it led to one of the worst famines in human history, with millions starving to death. Like Stalin, Mouse policies were not just tragic miscalculations, they were enforced with brutal
repression. Peasants who tried to flee famine stricken areas were often executed or sent straight to labor camps. And the Cultural Revolution, which is between 1966 and 1976, unleashed another wave of violence where young Red Guards were encouraged to denounce and attack class enemies. Teachers were beating the death by students. Suspected political dissidents were tortured and publicly humiliated before being executed. This was not simply a case of public sector workers going rogue.
Mao himself encouraged and praised his violence, only stepping in when it spiraled beyond his control. Now, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime industrialized Mass murder 6,000,000 Jews were systematically killed in the Holocaust alongside millions of others, including Romani people, political dissidents, disabled individuals, and Soviet prisoners of war. The Nazis didn't commit these
crimes in a bureaucratic vacuum. They followed a clear ideological framework outlined by Hitler himself and Mein Kampf, and reinforced through speeches and policies that left no room for ambiguity. Now, the Nazi military was deeply complicit in these crimes, and the idea that these killings were merely the actions of overzealous government workers ignores the fact that Hitler built a state designed
for genocide. The s s, the Gestapo, all played their roles, and none of it would have happened without Hitler's direct influence and leadership. The tweet that Elon Musk reposted presents a logical fallacy separating the leaders from the crimes committed under the regimes. But history shows that authoritarian states do not operate on autopilot. Stalin, Mao and Hitler deliberately created systems designed for oppression and mass murder. The term public sector workers is also misleading.
It conjures an image of bureaucrats pushing papers, not the trained executioner, secret police, and ideological enforcers who carried out these killings. The s s, Stalin's NKVD, and Mao's Red Guards were not just ordinary government employees. They were carefully selected and indoctrinated to enforce these regimes and also their most brutal policies of murdering millions of people. Furthermore, the claim ignores the concept of command
responsibility. It's a legal and moral principle that holds leaders accountable for crimes committed under their authority. If a dictator orders mass murder and their subordinates carry it out, the leader is still responsible. And a Musk did repost and then remove the statement. There's several plausible explanations for this. Elon Musk does not care, and Musk's influence extends far beyond social media.
Though CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X. His words carry weight with investors, regulators and consumers. Public figures who appear to downplay genocide or reframe history in ways that excuse authoritarian rulers tend to face serious consequences. Musk may have decided that engaging with this tweet was not worth a reputational risk. I'm sure somebody at SpaceX or somebody at Tesla text Elon real quick and said, what are you
doing? This is a horrible thing to do with the stock price is going to crash. You got to delete this. And as the owner of X, Musk has spoken about making the platform a space for free speech. However, even he understands that some statements cross a line, or at least his investors do given the sheer reach of his posts, may have realized that amplifying this misleading statement was a step too far even for him.
It could be a dog whistle, too. Think about that, reframing history in ways that downplay the direct responsibility of dictators. It's not just misleading, it disrespects the memory of the victims. It also sets a dangerous precedent where mass killings can be excused as the result of bureaucratic inertia rather than deliberate policy choices and horrible, horrible people.
Murderers. Now, Musk often claims to support truth and transparency, but spreading misleading narratives, intentionally or not, undermines that stance. And if he did delete this tweet, it was likely an acknowledgement that some statements, even if they spark conversation, aren't worth promoting. Now. Let me know in the comments what you think about this. Do you think Elon Musk wanted to dog whistle people? You think he posted that to see what the reaction would be?
If it was positive, you would have kept it up, but if it was negative, take it down so his investors don't go wild and booed him off. As the CEO of Tesla, the board can get rid of him if they vote him off. It's a possibility that there could be an uprising at Tesla. There could be an uprising in society against Elon Musk in the billionaire class too. It was a horrible thing for Elon Musk to do to even repost this. But I want to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments.
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