Billionaire Elon Musk — who’s long used his X (formerly Twitter) platform to stoke anger at immigrants and support antisemitic conspiracy theories — has spent the past day spreading and praising claims that “White people are on the verge of extinction,” Somali immigrants have “no right to be in America,” and nonprofits who support them are committing “treason and should be met with force.”
Musk quoted or reposted numerous statements from other accounts, peppering his reposts with approving commentary like “true” and “simply a fact.” A number were related to the Trump administration’s ongoing investigation of alleged public assistance program fraud in Minnesota, where many defendants are part of Minnesota’s sizable Somali American community. He reposted commentary about a case involving a Somali immigrant who was convicted earlier this year of sexually assaulting a child, as well as other cases in which immigrants committed crimes.
The accounts included UK far-right figure Tommy Robinson, who Musk reinstated on X after he was banned from the platform for “hateful conduct” in 2018. “NGO’s in Minnesota are getting paid $2,375 for every Somali immigrant they bring into the United States,” Robinson’s post said, apparently referring to a one-time federal resettlement fund payment meant for “basic needs” like food and furnishing. “This is treason and should be met with force.” Another repost from an account with 1.2 million followers, Wall Street Apes, asserted that “overall Somalis have no right to be in America, especially North Dakota and Minnesota. They don’t integrate into our societies. They carry over their clan mentalities.” (The post was quoting a video by another influencer, who said his truck had been rear-ended by an immigrant.)
Musk, who has 14 (known) children, offered his own more substantive statement about white birthrates. “If current trends continue, Whites will go from being a small minority of world population today to virtually extinct!” he wrote on December 2nd. He also repeated his long-running assertion that immigration is a plot to put Democrats in power, a belief linked with his long-running support of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that immigrants are being “imported” by liberals (and particularly Jews) to displace white Americans. “The far left imported voters to gain power and it worked,” he wrote, quoting a post that falsely claimed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “wasn’t even elected by Americans.”
Musk’s posts also emphasized his alignment with President Donald Trump — who has feuded with Musk repeatedly despite their close collaboration in the past year. Musk reposted a December 2nd video of Trump saying “I like Elon a lot” and “I think we get along well,” as well as a video of White House adviser Stephen Miller. Earlier this week, Trump said that immigrants from Somalia “contribute nothing” and that “I don’t want them in our country.”
Years ago, Musk’s statements would likely have raised alarm among advertisers on the platform he has owned since 2022. IBM and Apple, among others, pulled ads from the platform in 2023 after Musk praised a far-right poster’s call for white pride and agreed with antisemitic, anti-immigrant statements. But Musk responded with a campaign of legal harassment, and Trump administration officials worked conditions discouraging dropping ads from platforms like X into a major ad company merger proposal. Earlier this year, one ad consulting firm CEO told The Wall Street Journal that brands were “afraid of the legal and political ramifications” of not advertising on X.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
