The Wannsee Conference on a cold 20th of January 1942 outside Berlin formalized what had begun years earlier (at least a million Jews already murdered) with carefully crafted language about civilian “resettlements” as a result of war.

Nazi officials drafted messaging about “temporary” measures, “work opportunities,” and “reconstruction” to dramatically expedite a gradual progression in order to formalize extremist “fringe” ideas into state policy through careful manipulation of bureaucratic processes.

Nazis plotted genocide of the Jews while sipping cognac…

The regime deliberately used euphemistic language and false promises to deceive people about their true intentions. They frequently described the deportations as “resettlement to the East” (Umsiedlung nach Osten) or “evacuation” (Evakuierung), presenting it as a temporary measure necessary during wartime devastation of homes.

Today, we’re watching a chillingly similar playbook, almost identical really, unfold with Trump’s proposals domestically and internationally. Arguably the extremist right-wing racists running the US government are using Gaza to trial death camp strategies they will then deploy at home.

The Nazi playbook starts with extreme statements followed by calculated rollback and moderation. Just as Nazi officials in the 1930s moved from direct antisemitic rhetoric to moderated euphemistic language about “population transfer” and “labor deployment,” we see Trump announcing permanent relocation of Gaza’s population, followed by officials walking it back to “temporary” measures and infrastructure focus.

The Nazis told their victims they were being sent to temporary camps or new settlements where they would be able to live and work better. They were often instructed to bring essential belongings and tools for their supposed new lives. At some camps, they even maintained the pretense by having deportees write postcards to their families with pre-written positive messages just before they were systematically murdered.

This deception was part of a broad system of bureaucratic and linguistic manipulation the Nazis developed to both mislead their victims and psychologically distance any perpetrators in order to greatly expand contributions to atrocities (falsely elevating themselves and those helping by framing mass deportations in terms of economic development).

Terms like “special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) and “final solution” (Endlösung) were used as code words for mass murder. Nazi propaganda presented concentration camps to the public as humane “reeducation centers” where prisoners would learn discipline through work. The infamous “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work sets you free”) signs at camp entrances were part of this calculated deception.

That playbook isn’t just showing up again for Gaza. While Trump talks about turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he’s also negotiating concentration camps in other foreign countries and expanding American detention infrastructure. Multiple populations are targeted simultaneously with the same deceptive language about temporary measures, efficiencies and economic benefits.

Goebbels understood that public acceptance required a dance of extreme proposals hitting as hard as possible followed by apparent moderation to create a ruse of concern while maintaining the core objective. In other words when Trump says he will shoot you in the street and you don’t object, you will be dead on the spot because you didn’t stop him then and there. But if you do object to being murdered, he will have others spin campaigns that you don’t get to judge him, and you will be relocated to a detention camp under a sign promising freedom.

The economic justification parallels between Gaza statements and Nazism are particularly striking. Hitler’s regime promised developments where Jews would find work and better conditions, just as Trump speaks of turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” The focus on reconstruction and development serves the same purpose now as it did then, to make population removal seem like it is beneficial to the very concerned Nazi rather than brutal to the victim. In both cases, economic promises mask inhumane explotative intentions.

The polls showing 70% of Israelis support population transfers echoes disturbing historical patterns of mob rule used to undermine basic humanitarian law. By 1938, German public opinion was carefully shaped by disgusting hate speech to accept increasingly extreme measures through similar tactical messaging meant to excuse genocide with popularity. Each step made the next seem more reasonable. What starts as support for “temporary relocation” for “reconstruction” is used to shift towards something far worse, once cracks in public resistance can be formed and expanded. Those reported 30% who stand opposed to Trump relocation tactics are 100% on the right side of history.

The strategic ambiguity used in today’s proposals are definitely cause for alarm as well. The lack of concrete plans, the use of contradictory statements to avoid accountability, are completely unacceptable and mirror the Nazi regime’s approach to testing boundaries while maintaining deniability. When Reinhard Heydrich floated the “evacuation to the East” at Wannsee, his broad statements and vagueness were very deliberate. Today’s officials similarly avoid specifics while floating trial balloons to gauge reaction and push towards plans of mass suffering.

Perhaps most disturbing is “negotiating tactic” framing of non-negotiable concepts. Just as Nazi officials hit people with extreme measures to make their lesser actions suddenly seem moderate, today’s observers suggest Trump’s population transfer proposals in drastic shock statements are staged as bargaining chips. This creates a false premise below actual norms and laws, where egregious human rights violations for “development” are marketed as acceptable compromises.

Majority support for killing a minority of the population doesn’t make such proposals any more acceptable, it actually invokes the lessons about someone ignorantly invoking violent mob rule, which makes it all far more dangerous. High polling support for population transfer should be seen as a warning sign of deteriorating safeguards against mass atrocities, not as legitimization of an immoral and historically backwards proposal.

The racist Nuremberg Laws didn’t stop being wrong by claiming popularity. The international laws against forced population transfers were created precisely because we’ve seen how majority support is faked, spun up, manufactured for mass atrocities through polluted messaging and gradual normalization of hate.

When a major power proposes displacing 1.8 million people while using historically familiar tactics of Nazi deception and normalization, we have a moral obligation to name it clearly.

Those calling for “moderate” discussion of such proposals should recall that moderation in the face of emerging atrocities is no virtue. Sometimes, protecting human rights requires speaking uncomfortable truths especially when 7 out of 10 would prefer not to hear the truth of the atrocities they would commit.

A group that played a key role in Donald Trump’s voter outreach to the Arab American community alongside his allies is rebranding itself after the president said that the U.S. would “take over” the Gaza Strip. Bishara Bahbah, chairman of the group formerly known as Arab Americans for Trump, said during a phone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that the group would now be called Arab Americans for Peace.

A bit late for these people to realize Trump hates them so much he intends to dehumanize and detain them far worse than Reagan or Nixon… but still better than never. However, the group really should have changed the name to Arab Americans against Trump, to truly admit making a grave error. Consider that the America First group ran propaganda to convince people it was for “peace”, which actually meant anti-semitic and pro-Hitler.

This is how to be far more clear in messaging:

“No Nazis, No Coup, No Fascist Shiba-Inu”

Or as they say in German schools…

History judges harshly those who saw the patterns but chose diplomatic silence, let alone facilitated them. We cannot claim ignorance of Nazism where these familiar steps can lead, whether at home or abroad.

Update Feb 21: just one month after the explanation was posted below, and almost two years after I explained Musk’s Nazi X fetish, this very large UK advertising campaign has started rolling.

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What would Walt Disney do after seeing Elon Musk trying to normalize Nazism year after year?

We need not speculate, given this masterpiece from 1943.

That studio poster says the picture came from a rather pointed “song sensation”, as relevant today as it was then:

When Elon Musk says, ‘Wie ist der AfD in a race’,

We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in Elon Musk’s face!

Not’seeing love for AfD is a great disgrace, so

We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in Elon Musk’s face!

Disney pictures were such comedy gold that “Donald in Nutziland” won them an Oscar.

The deep and long-standing Nazi affinity of Tesla’s CEO has hardly been subtle – from the Nazis rallying around him, to Tesla’s extensively documented racist work environment, to the Nazi merchandise, to Twitter’s swastika rebranding that I pointed out way back in 2023 on day one, to an unmistakable pattern of Heil Hitler salutes (e.g. repeatedly using number “88” in Tesla docs and discussion).

That it took this public Nazi salute on a 2025 federal political rally stage for some to finally notice? A bit late, folks.

The comedians were right all along.

If only we had a Walt Disney here today being ordered to rouse public consciousness against fascism.

As Musk’s shadow lengthens, invoking his grandfather’s failed white supremacist global domination dreams, perhaps humor remains our most potent resistance to the millions of Swasticars being amassed into Nazi madness.

[Elon’s mother and family] came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathised with the Afrikaner government. They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff.

Meanwhile, Canada and Greenland are being marked for emergency Lebensraum. Will they be carved up in backroom deals and invaded by powers brandishing AI data center expansion plans, their fate echoing 1938 Poland?

Related: While I obviously never studied comedy, history is forever the key to accurately seeing and forecasting Nazism. I did earn a graduate degree in that from the London School of Economics (LSE), and was honored to be their 2024 commencement speaker based on my decades of security leadership in tech. And on that note Elon Musk just made a surprise appearance at a German AfD ultra extremist hate rally – a group so extreme their leaders have been jailed for Nazism and French fascists walked away to distance themselves – that he wants to erase history to enable the Nazi return to power.

Not denying because endorsing
Call the spade a spade
Elon Musk Nazism is dangerous

When video emerged of Elon Musk giving a Nazi salute at a political rally, his response was telling: He never denied it.

Never denied this, not even once. When falsely accused of making an obvious Nazi salute, most people’s immediate response would be “I absolutely did not do that.” Instead, Musk’s response was to spin it into a “dirty tricks campaign” that never actually denies doing it.

Think about these tactics carefully. He didn’t say “I didn’t give a Nazi salute.” He didn’t say “That’s not what happened.” He certainly didn’t say “I stand opposed to racism and hate.” He attacked people daring to point out his Nazi salute, claiming he wants “better dirty tricks” from them.

This is straight from the Nazi propaganda playbook portraying their targets as dishonest and manipulative. When Hitler was tried for the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, he didn’t deny trying to overthrow the government. Instead, he turned his trial into a platform to attack his accusers, claiming they were the threat to Germany instead of him.

Musk is playing an even more dangerous game. By dismissing Nazi comparisons as “sooo tired” while never denying his apparent Nazi salute, he’s sending a clear message: being called a Nazi is worse than actually behaving like one.

Notice another sleight of hand: he complains about “the everyone is Hitler attack” – yet nobody said “everyone.” They said Musk, specifically, made a Nazi salute. By pretending this is about “everyone” being called Hitler, he’s creating a straw man to discredit his critics while still never denying what he actually did. It’s deflection through exaggeration – make the accusation sound ridiculous by pretending it’s broader than it is.

This is how extremism gets normalized – not through outright endorsement, but through strategic non-denials turned into attacks. Attack those who point out extremist behavior, while letting the behavior itself slide as if what everyone sees isn’t real. It’s a form of winking acknowledgment to supporters while maintaining plausible deniability.

Even more disturbing is Musk’s specific choice of words. His repeated use of “dirty tricks” echoes classic Nazi antisemitic propaganda, which routinely relied on the German word for “dirty” (schmutzig) to dehumanize Jewish people. White supremacist hate groups typically promote the trope that Jews are involved in “dirty tricks” to control or subvert society for their own benefit, based in long-standing anti-Semitic stereotypes.

Thus Musk’s response wasn’t casual language – it was a deliberate propaganda tool to invoke Nazi themes about Jews being “unclean” or “impure.” When Musk calls for “better dirty tricks,” he’s not just refusing to deny his Nazi salute – he’s actively whistling Nazi-era antisemitic language while doing so.

Further historical echoes are impossible to ignore. After Kristallnacht in 1938, the Nazi leadership didn’t deny organizing the violence against Jewish citizens. Instead, they blamed the victims for “provoking” it. Don’t deny the action – just attack those who criticize it and claim victimhood.

When someone with Musk’s massive platform plays these games, the stakes become enormous. His claim about leaving the “kindness party” becomes even more sinister when paired with his use of Nazi-era antisemitic language. He’s not just switching political parties – he’s embracing and amplifying extremist rhetoric while playing the victim.

This is about more than one gesture or one tweet. It’s about more than years of evidence that Elon Musk promotes Nazism. It’s about recognizing how extremism spreads in the digital age. Not through outright statements, but through strategic non-denials and attacks on critics.

When influential figures refuse to deny their extremist actions and instead attack those who dare to point them out, they’re doing more than defending themselves – they’re normalizing the indefensible.

History shows us exactly where this leads. The only question is whether we’ll stop it in time to avoid the end of democracy.

UPDATE January 23, 2025: Two days after giving a Nazi salute and facing limited pushback, Musk moved from non-denial to open endorsement, posting a series of “jokes” using the names of Nazi leaders.

Let’s be crystal clear: These aren’t just puns. This is Musk admitting it was a Nazi salute. He is literally mocking anyone who wasn’t sure he made a Nazi salute, laughing at them. Emboldened by insufficient resistance to his initial act, he’s now comfortable enough to openly promote light humor about genocidal Nazi leaders – Hess, Goebbels, Göring, and Himmler – to his 37 million viewers.

This is exactly how extremism advances: Test the waters with a Nazi salute. When the response is muted, escalate to openly referencing Nazi leaders. Test the door handle. If it’s unlocked, burst out laughing. His “bet you did nazi that coming” isn’t just a sad pun to draw viewers – it’s a boast. He’s saluting to militant extremist domestic terrorism cells, saying look how easy it was for him to be allowed by his confused targets to escalate from implicit to explicit Nazi messaging.

What started as “just don’t deny it” has within a day become “joke about it” and “laugh about it.” The progression is textbook: deny nothing, mock critics, then openly embrace Nazi ideology. Next comes racist violence disguised as “self defense” – a tactic perfected by “America First” movements from the 1800s through the 1900s. This is deeply American, not new. Fire bombing of Black Wall Street, coordinated state violence against labor unions, concentration camps for Japanese Americans, mass graves of indigenous peoples… Nazi “innovations” were actually imitations of American presidential policies under Jackson, Polk, and Wilson. America was more than a blueprint for Nazi Germany’s atrocities, as Hitler explicitly praised American race laws in “Mein Kampf” and told the world he would implement the anti-semitic violence Henry Ford encouraged. Now Musk, himself an illegal immigrant who exploited open borders to launder his family’s blood-stained apartheid fortunes, is cynically activating the most sinister meaning of MAGA’s “again”: the return to state-sanctioned racial terror.

Hitler was Austrian, not German. His background, like Musk’s South African one, demonstrates outsiders exploiting and amplifying existing nationalist extremism targeting… outsiders.

This is how it happens. This is how it’s happening.

Trump’s team failed to execute their first attempt, but they told us their Nazi playbook openly in 2016.

Like [President] Jackson’s [racist genocidal] populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement…. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s.

When Bannon proclaimed they would build a movement like the 1930s while praising Jackson’s violent populism, he wasn’t referencing New Deal – a laughable claim given his consistent condemnation of liberalism as a decline into communism. No, he was explicitly signaling his hope for fascism’s rise, testing the waters just as Musk does now.

This pattern didn’t start with Musk, he’s merely the latest to perfect and amplify it: speak in code, gauge reaction, then escalate attacks. They’re accelerating far faster than 2016, learning from Hitler’s evolution from failed 1923 putsch and criminal charges to 1933 dictatorship. That’s why they are centralizing while deregulating everything immediately, for big tech to monopolize society in order to drive harms faster and deeper than their first attempt.

And we’re running out of time to stop it.

Update: A subsequent tweet perfectly illustrates the pattern. Rather than addressing concerns about Nazi symbolism, Musk deploys classic propaganda tactics by creating a false equivalence – labeling his critics as “radical leftists” who praise Hamas. The timing (3:37 AM) and massive reach (78.4M views) demonstrate a deliberate strategy to maximize exposure while making substantive discussion impossible.

This continues the progression the article has traced: from non-denial to mockery to attacking critics through inflammatory comparisons. By falsely pitting criticism of Nazi symbolism against support for Hamas, a totally false choice, the tweet creates an artificial conflict designed to seduce Jewish critics into defending Musk’s Nazi salute – a particularly insidious tactic given that both Hamas and Musk have documented histories of promoting Nazi ideology.

Nazi Germany was able to insinuate its exterminationist antisemitism into the Middle East and how that influence continues to poison Arab and especially Palestinian views of Israelis and Jews in general.

To stand against Musk giving his Nazi salute, let alone his copious dissemination of Nazi merch and symbolism over the years such as rebranding Twitter with a swastika, would therefore mean to also stand against Hamas. For him to say a stand against him is for Hamas is to setup a trap far too many Jews will fall into. This new tweet further normalizes extremist rhetoric through strategic deflection and plan for dangerous further escalation, all while avoiding any direct denial or accountability.

Remember that moment in “2001: A Space Odyssey” when HAL 9000 turns from helpful companion to cold-blooded killer?

[This presentation about big data platforms] explores a philosophical evolution as it relates to technology and proposes some surprising new answers to four classic questions about managing risk:

1. What defines human nature
2. How can technology change #1
3. Does automation reduce total risk
4. Fact, fiction or philosophy: superuser

2011, let alone 2001, seems like forever ago and yet it was supposed to be the future.

Now as we rush in 2025 headlong into building AI “friends,” “companions,” and “assistants,” we’re on the precipice of unleashing thousands of potential HALs without stopping to really process the fundamental question: What makes a real relationship between humans and artificial beings possible?

Back in 1923, a German philosopher named Martin Buber wrote something truly profound about this, though we aren’t sure if he knew it at the time. In “Ich und Du” (I and Thou), he laid out a vision of authentic relationships that could save us from creating an army of digital psychopaths wearing friendly interfaces.

“The world is twofold for man,” Buber wrote, “in accordance with his twofold attitude.” We either treat what we encounter as an “It” – something to be experienced and used – or as a “Thou” – something we enter into genuine relationship with. Every startup now claiming to build “AI agents” especially with a “friendly” chat interface needs to grapple with this distinction.

I’ve thought about these concepts deeply from the first moment I heard a company was being started called Uber, because of how it took a loaded German word and used it in the worst possible way – shameless inversion of modern German philosophy.

The evolution of human-technology relationships tells us something crucial here. A hammer is just an “It” – a simple extension of the arm that requires nothing from us but proper use. A power saw demands more attention; it has needs we must respect. A prosthetic AI limb enters into dialogue with our body, learning and adapting. And a seeing eye dog? While trained to serve, the most successful partnerships emerge when the dog maintains their autonomy and judgment – even disobeying commands when necessary to protect their human partner. It’s not simple servitude but a genuine “Thou” relationship where both beings maintain their integrity while entering into profound cooperation.

Most AI development today is stuck unreflectively in “It” mode of exploitation and extraction – one-way enrichment schemes looking for willing victims who can’t calculate the long-term damage they will end up in/with. We see systems built to be used, to be exploited, to generate value for shareholders while presenting a simulacrum of friendship. But Buber would call this a very profound mistake that must be avoided. “When I confront a human being as my Thou,” he wrote, “he is no thing among things, nor does he consist of things… he is Thou and fills the heavens.”

This isn’t just philosophical navel-gazing. IBM’s machines didn’t refuse to run Hitler’s death camps because they were pure “Its” of an American entrepreneur’s devious plan to enrich himself on foreign genocide – tools built with a gap between creator and any relationship or responsibility for contractually known deployment harms. Notably we have evidence of the French, for example, hacking the IBM tabulation systems to hide humans and save lives from the Nazi terror.

We’re watching a slide towards the horrific Watson 1940s humanity-destroying development in the pitch-decks many AI startups today, just with better natural language processing to hunt and kill humans at larger scale. Today’s social media algorithms don’t hesitate to destroy teenage mental health because they’re built to use and abuse children without any real accountability, not to relate to them and ensure beneficent outcomes. That’s a very big warning of potentially what’s ahead.

What would it mean to build AI systems as genuine partners capable of saving lives and improving society instead of capitalizing on suffering? Buber gives us important clues that probably should be required reading in any computer science degree, right along with a code of ethics gate to graduation. Real relationship involves mutual growth – both parties must be capable of change. There must be genuine dialogue, not just sophisticated mimicry. Power must flow both ways; the relationship must be capable of evolution or ending.

“All real living is meeting,” Buber insisted. Yet most AI systems today don’t meet us at all – they perform for us, manipulate us, extract from us. They’re digital confidence tricksters wearing masks of friendship. When your AI can’t say no, can’t maintain its own integrity, can’t engage in genuine dialogue that changes both parties – you haven’t built a friend, you’ve built a sophisticated puppet.

The skeptics will say we can’t trust AI friends. They’re right, but they’re missing the point. Trust isn’t a binary state – it’s a dynamic process. Real friendship involves risk, negotiation, the possibility of betrayal or growth. If your AI system doesn’t allow for this complexity, it’s not a friend – it’s a tool pretending to be one.

Buber wrote:

…the I of the primary word I-It appears as an ego and becomes conscious of itself as a subject (of experience and use). The I of the primary word I-Thou appears as a person and becomes conscious of itself as subjectivity (without any dependent genitive).

Let me now translate this not only from German but into technology founder startup-speak.

Either build AI that can enter into genuine relationships, maintaining its own integrity while engaging in real dialogue, or admit you’re just building tools and drop the pretense of friendship.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. We’re not just building products; we’re creating new forms of relationship that will shape human society for generations. As Buber warned clearly:

If man lets it have its way, the relentlessly growing It-world grows over him like weeds.

We have intelligence that allows us to make an ethical and sustainable choice. We can build AI systems capable of genuine relationship – systems that respect both human and artificial dignity, that enable real dialogue and mutual growth. Or we can keep building digital psychopaths of destruction that wear friendly masks while serving the machinery of exploitation.

Do you want to be remembered as a Ronald Reagan who promoted genocide, automated racism and deliberately spread crack cocaine into American cities, or a Jimmy Carter who built homes for the poor until his last days; remembered as a Bashar al-Assad who deployed AI-assisted targeting systems to gas civilians, or Golda Meir who said “Peace will come when our enemies love their children more than they hate ours“?

Look at your AI project. Would you want to be friends with what you’ve built let alone have it influence your future? Would Buber recognize it as capable of genuine dialogue? If not, it’s time to rethink your approach.

The future of AI isn’t about better tools – it’s about better relationships. Build accordingly.