World’s Richest Man Calls on Jews to Take DNA Tests to Prove They’re Jewish
Is Elon Musk an antisemite?
Is he, perhaps, like Henry Ford in more ways than one?
The world’s richest man has always denied being an antisemite, and yet there is the rather inconvenient matter of his record.
And, no, I’m not just referring to the way in which Musk-owned Twitter has become a cesspit of open racism and antisemitism; an online refuge for neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists.
I’m talking about Musk himself.
Remember in 2023 when he responded to a Twitter user who accused Jewish communities of pushing “dialectical hatred against white people” by saying: “You have said the actual truth”? Outrage followed, and some advertisers fled his platform. He eventually apologized and went to Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro on what looked a lot like a rehabilitation tour.
Remember in 2025 when he celebrated Trump’s inauguration by giving what looked to a lot of people – including Nazis – like a Nazi salute? The ADL, which never misses an opportunity to accuse a supporter of Palestine of being antisemitic, rushed to his defense, describing it only as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”
Remember how he continues to support and amplify the far-right AfD party in Germany, which has been plagued by scandals involving Nazis and Nazi rhetoric?
You might think that would be enough controversy involving one billionaire and antisemitism.
Apparently not.
On Thursday, Musk went further. On the social media site that he owns, he decided to question Jewish racial identity in a really weird, pseudo-sciency, even eugenicky way.
Here is the original poll from a random Twitter account, followed by Musk’s response. Read it for yourself.
Seriously: What possesses a normal, non-racist, non-antisemitic person to engage with a question like this in the first place?
And what possesses them to answer it by suggesting that if Jews who look white cannot provide DNA evidence of their Jewishness, then they must actually be white and their Jewish identity must be “all in their mind.”
Or as one user quote-tweeted in response to Musk’s comments:
So why am I leading today’s ‘First Draft’ with this one insanely racist, clearly antisemitic post?
Two reasons.
First, because it is actually a very big deal when the richest person on Earth, who also owns one of the most influential communications platforms on Earth, starts publicly dabbling in ideas about Jews, bloodlines, DNA, appearance, and racial authenticity. (You remember the people who did that back in the 1930s and 1940s, right?)
To quote political commentator Brian Beutler, reacting to Musk’s post: “The man using his vast fortune to bail out GOP candidates across the country says many white-skinned Jews don’t look super Jewy, and thus may not have Jew blood in them, freeing them to be white if they could just get over themselves. Some subtle antisemitic undertones there.”
“Subtle” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, obviously.
But there is a second reason this matters – and it goes far beyond Musk.
Elon Musk is the single biggest donor to the Republican Party. He plans to spend at least $100 million in more than a dozen House and Senate races in the upcoming midterms. And on the very same day that Musk was opining about Jewish identity and DNA, his America PAC “disclosed the first $800,000 of that spending in 15 races,” according to the New York Times.
So, will we now see a frenzied news cycle in which Republican candidates taking money from Musk are asked to disavow his comments about Jewish identity? Will reporters chase those candidates through the halls of Congress asking whether they agree that a Jew’s Jewishness can be determined by their skin color or DNA?
Will Republicans be asked to condemn Elon Musk?
Haven’t we spent the past few weeks watching media organizations obsess over Abdul El-Sayed ally Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer, and demanding Democrats condemn him? Piker has never said anything comparable to Musk when it comes to Jews and Judaism. Nor does Piker fund the Democratic Party with nine-figure sums.
Musk funds the GOP. In Michigan, for example, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent Mike Rogers is now being boosted by Musk’s cash. So, will he be asked to denounce and disavow the world’s richest man?
How about Senator Susan Collins in Maine, who castigated former Democratic opponent Graham Platner for his alleged antisemitism? Will she be asked to comment on the man who just pumped $170,000 into her campaign? Rep. Mike Lawler of New York co-sponsored the Antisemitism Awareness Act and has denounced Hasan Piker on his two Twitter accounts more than half a dozen times. Does he now have to distance himself from Musk, who just gave him $10,000 this week, after also giving him over a million dollars in 2024?
How long will the brazen double standards of our soft-on-GOP mainstream media continue?
And how long will we be expected to pretend that the ongoing row over Hasan Piker is actually about antisemitism?
Because Elon Musk is right here in front of us saying this grotesque antisemitic stuff day after day, on a platform he owns, while pouring millions of dollars into Republican campaigns.
What did Musk write in that post?
“People are what they appear to be.”
Perhaps we should take him at his word.