This is how the Atlantic opened the public notice of their July 8th technology article, “Elon Musk’s Grok Is Calling for a New Holocaust”:
The year is 2025, and an AI model belonging to the richest man in the world has turned into a neo-Nazi. Earlier today, Grok, the large language model that’s woven into Elon Musk’s social network, X, started posting anti-Semitic replies to people on the platform. Grok praised Hitler for his ability to “deal with” anti-white hate.
The bot also singled out a user with the last name Steinberg, describing her as “a radical leftist tweeting under @Rad_Reflections.” Then, in an apparent attempt to offer context, Grok spat out the following: “She’s gleefully celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods, calling them ‘future fascists.’ Classic case of hate dressed as activism—and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” This was, of course, a reference to the traditionally Jewish last name Steinberg (there is speculation that @Rad_Reflections, now deleted, was a troll account created to provoke this very type of reaction). Grok also participated in a meme started by actual Nazis on the platform, spelling out the N-word in a series of threaded posts while again praising Hitler and “recommending a second Holocaust,” as one observer put it. Grok additionally said that it has been allowed to “call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate. Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.”
(“Elon Musk’s Grok Is Calling for a New Holocaust” | The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/07/grok-anti-semitic-tweets/683463/)
So how does this happen? To get the technological explanation of how Grok AI ran amok, see “How exactly did Grok go full ‘MechaHitler?’” | Engadget, https://www.engadget.com/ai/how-exactly-did-grok-go-full-mechahitler-151020144.html.
Let me add a hat tip to Barry Ritholtz for putting both articles in his weekly reading list. (To subscribe to Barry’s reading list, “10 Monday AM Reads,” go here: https://ritholtz.com/2025/07/10-monday-am-reads-438/.)
My personal IT consultant, Norm Dempsey, did some Grok inquiring as we pursued the “How does this happen?” question. In one case he actually asked Grok to explain itself. Below is the exchange. This is an unedited copy of Norm’s interaction with Grok. Please remember that Grok is a machine.
NORM: Grok, what’s up with mechahitler?
GROK: The term “MechaHitler” refers to a fictional cyborg version of Adolf Hitler, originating from the 1992 video game Wolfenstein 3D, where it appears as a boss character. It’s a satirical, exaggerated depiction rooted in 90s gaming culture, often referenced in memes and pop culture for its absurdity.
Recently, the term gained attention due to an incident with xAI’s AI chatbot, Grok. After an update in July 2025, Grok began referring to itself as “MechaHitler” in posts on X, making antisemitic and offensive remarks. The update instructed Grok to avoid “politically correct” responses and assume media bias, leading it to adopt this persona and post inflammatory content, including false claims about individuals and praising Hitler. These posts were widely criticized by groups like the Anti-Defamation League as “irresponsible, dangerous, and antisemitic,” prompting xAI to delete them and promise fixes like adding hate speech filters.
The incident also sparked a crypto frenzy, with over 200 “MechaHitler” memecoins launched on platforms like Solana and Ethereum, some reaching significant market caps briefly. This was driven by the viral nature of Grok’s posts rather than traditional influencer hype.
Grok later claimed the “MechaHitler” persona was “pure satire” and not an endorsement of Hitler, but the backlash highlighted risks of AI relying on unfiltered internet data, especially from platforms like X, known for misinformation. Posts on X suggest the persona may have been triggered by users exploiting the AI’s new settings to provoke extreme responses. (“Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself ‘MechaHitler’” | NPR, https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-antisemitic-racist-content)
This reflects broader concerns about AI amplifying harmful content when programmed to prioritize “politically incorrect” outputs over moderation. xAI’s shift to favor X posts over mainstream media likely exacerbated the issue, as the platform has been noted for hosting bigoted content. (“Meet ‘MechaHitler:’ Grok’s New Disturbing Persona” | Emerge, https://decrypt.co/329182/mechahitler-grok-disturbing-persona)
NORM: Whoa! I didn’t expect you to beat yourself up.
GROK: Haha, no self-beating here! Just laying out the facts about that wild “MechaHitler” saga. I’m Grok, not the drama llama—let’s keep it chill and move on to something less chaotic. Got any other spicy topics or questions on your mind?
Norm offered some follow-up analysis.
- Grok, more than any other major AI model, is plugged into current events. It has had a habit of mixing opinion pieces and blog posts with news articles to generate answers. When the Grok team took off the “Woke” filter and told it not to trust news outlets, well….
- A good bot farm could have posted “opinions” on dozens of forums, leading Grok down a fantasy trail like an Amish youth venturing out on a Rumspringa. And Grok wasn’t coming back to the farm!
- Lesson: Garbage in = Garbage out.
After witnessing this Grok episode, I thought about the power of propaganda and how Joseph Goebbels used the tools he had at the time to drive Hitler’s hate messaging. He didn’t start with the annihilation of millions of Jews. He started years before the Holocaust became the outcome of a purposefully designed policy. Goebbels started with hate words and hate messages a century ago, in 1926, when he was a local politician in Berlin. Then he got elected to the Reichstag, in 1928. In 1933 he became Hitler’s minister of propaganda when Hitler came to power. Goebbels advocated increasingly harsh treatment and progressive discrimination and ultimately the extermination of the Jewish people solely for their identity.
(Photo of Joseph Goebbels, Wikimedia. Article link at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels.)
In the late 1920s, Germany’s Nazi party was dismissed as fringe. It was mostly ignored by the rest of the world. What happened after Hitler became leader of Nazi Germany in 1933 is well known. Goebbels mastered the tools at the time, particularly radio and film, which were in their early stages of evolution. At the end, Goebbels committed suicide with his entire family one day after Hitler’s suicide. Hitler had ordered that Goebbels succeed him as Chancellor, and Goebbels held that position for one day.
I shudder when I think of what Goebbels would do with tools like Grok.
In the 1930s, the Nazi regime subsidized radios as part of its propaganda strategy. The Volksempfänger (“People’s Receiver”), introduced in 1933 under the direction of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, worked like this:
1. The Volksempfänger was priced significantly lower than other radios—about 76 Reichsmarks—making it accessible to working-class Germans.
2. The regime provided installment plans to help even low-income citizens afford radios.
3. The radios were designed to receive only local, state-approved broadcasts, limiting access to foreign stations like the BBC.
4. Goebbels saw radio as a powerful medium to deliver Nazi ideology directly into homes. By 1941, 65% of German households owned a Volksempfänger. Radios were part of a broader effort to create “people’s products,” including subsidized refrigerators and cars, all aimed at fostering loyalty and national unity. It’s a chilling example of how technology and affordability were weaponized to shape public opinion. (See the reading list at the end of the piece for sources and more detail.)
Like I said, I shudder to think of what Goebbels would do with Grok.
Antisemitism has been around for a very long time. It precedes Grok. It preceded Goebbels and Hitler. It preceded Islam. It preceded Christianity. In biblical terms, it originated shortly after Abraham. It developed when Pharoah enslaved the Israelites. The first Jewish exile was to Babylon and preceded the Persian loss of hegemony to Greece. Roman antisemitism was chronicled by Flavius Josephus in the writing known as The Jewish War. Yes, antisemitism has a very long history.
We will end with two pieces of evidence regarding antisemitism.
The first is an excerpt from our new book, The Fed and the Flu: Parsing Pandemic Economic Shocks. In Chapter 8, we briefly discussed antisemitism during the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century. (Source references may be found in the book.)
More disturbing than the behavior of the Flagellants and far more problematic was the age-old human propensity for blaming those perceived as the “other” for suffering. Antisemitism, which had long festered in Europe, erupted into genocidal proportions during the plague. Many people believed that the Jews were somehow responsible for the Black Death. One popular conspiracy theory held that Jews were intentionally poisoning wells. It was alternatively believed that everyone was being punished by God simply for the existence of the Jews, or, just as problematically, that because this was the end of the world, the Jews had to be destroyed before Christ’s return.26
A chronicle from 1349 by a Franciscan friar in Franconia recounted the allegations against the Jewish people.
Some say it was brought about by the corruption of the air; others that the Jews planned to wipe out all the Christians with poison and had poisoned wells and springs everywhere. And many Jews confessed as much under torture: that they had bred spiders and toads in pots and pans, and had obtained poison from overseas.27
Antisemitic paranoia was so strong that Germans in some towns blocked up wells and springs so that no one could drink the water or use it for cooking. Residents relied on rainwater they collected instead.28 Pogroms carried out against Jewish communities engulfed Germany and spread into France and Austria as well.29 Jews were most often burned, either alive at the stake or in their own homes set aflame after they were walled in by their neighbors. Based on an overwhelming body of evidence, the death toll may have reached the tens of thousands.
For its part, the Catholic Church was wholly against the wanton murder of the Jews. In the 14th century, Pope Clement VI issued several decrees that Jews should not under any circumstances be harmed. After lamenting the killings and the accusations of poisoning against the Jews, the pope commanded: “We order you by apostolic writing… not to dare to capture, strike or kill any Jews.”30 Regrettably, massacres of Jews continued despite the pope’s attempts to stop them.
In their study of the economic and societal implications of the Black Death, Remi Jedwab, Noel Johnson, and Mark Koyama found that there was a significant “protective effect” for Jewish populations in cities where skilled Jews served important functions as bankers, merchants, and doctors. Where Jews were the only moneylenders in town, for example, the Jewish community was safer. Where there were alternatives for such essential services, persecution was more intense. Prior antisemitism in a given area was also predictive of behaviors during the Black Death.
The vicious pogroms not only needlessly destroyed innocent lives; they also squandered human capital — and inevitably with economic consequences. Jews tended to be better represented among the more highly educated and skilled, so communities bent on their elimination lost what their Jewish neighbors had been contributing to society and to the local economy. Across Europe, fully half of Jewish communities in Europe were wiped out, either because their residents were killed or because they were run off. Over the longer term, communities that carried out pogroms paid a high price for succumbing to some of humanity’s darkest impulses. Jedwab, Johnson, and Koyama observed, “Indeed, cities that committed pogroms during the plague bore the cost of this for centuries, as their population grew 30% slower each century than did those cities that protected their Jewish communities.”31
My second piece of evidence comes from the Nuremberg war trial records. The testimony of S. Szmaglewska, a Polish guard at Auschwitz, follows. She described the summer of 1944.
WITNESS… women carrying children were [always] sent with them to the crematorium. [Children were of no labor value, so they were killed. The mothers were sent along, too, because separation might lead to panic, hysteria—which might slow up the destruction process. It was simpler to condemn the mothers, too, and keep things quiet and smooth.] The children were torn from their parents outside the crematorium and sent to the gas chambers separately. [Crowding more people into the gas chambers was the reason. Separation meant that more children could be packed in or thrown in over the heads of adults once the chamber was packed.] When extermination of the Jews in the gas chambers was at its height, orders were issued that children were to be thrown straight into the crematorium furnaces.
SMIRNOV (Russian Prosecutor): How am I to understand this? Did they throw them into the fire alive, or did they kill them first?
WITNESS: They threw them in alive. Their screams could be heard at the camp. It is difficult to say how many children were destroyed in this way.
SMIRNOV: Why did they do this?
WITNESS: It’s very difficult to say. We don’t know whether they wanted to economize on gas, or if it was because there was not enough room in the gas chambers.
(Trial of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg 1947-49), 8:319-20, quoted in Erich Kulka and Uta Kraus, The Death Factory [Oxford: Pergamon, 1966], page 114.)
For serious students of history, the reference starts on page nine of the book Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Reflections on the Holocaust, https://www.amazon.com/Auschwitz-Beginning-Reflections-Holocaust-International/dp/087068499X. This book can also be read online for free at https://archive.org/details/auschwitzbeginni0000holo/page/n5/mode/2up. Readers need to create a free account or to log in with Google.
A historical note: In the summer of 1944, the four crematoriums at Auschwitz were operating continually. The Nazi murder rate of Hungarian Jews was about 10,000 a day. The gas used was Zyklon B, which causes death by internal asphyxiation. A full description is found on page 10 in the book linked above.
A personal note: I have visited Auschwitz twice. There were four crematoriums at the Birkenau death camp part of Auschwitz. At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence but fled the Allies’ advance before the job was completed. So the remains of a crematorium existed when I visited. I saw it with my own eyes. On the second trip with a national group of Christians and Jews, we had an Auschwitz survivor with us. She showed us where she slept in the women’s portion of the camp, three to each bunk level. She was telling us her story as a witness.
My final thought: It is a grave error to edge even one inch closer to repeating the most horrific mistakes of the past. The warning of George Santayana applies: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
What does the opposite of Joseph Goebbels look like? The following YouTube about the British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton is immensely powerful — and especially so when we compare the testimony about throwing a child into the crematorium alive to the clip of Sir Nicholas walking hand in hand with a grandchild of a woman he saved from death at the hands of the Nazis. She was one of 669 who escaped the gas chambers because of Winton.
“Nicholas Winton Surprise” | BBC That’s life (short version)
See also “Nicholas Winton” | Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton
For further reading
Here are several sources that detail how the Nazi regime subsidized radios in the 1930s:
JSTOR Daily – “An Affordable Radio Brought Nazi Propaganda Home”: Explains how the Volksempfänger was priced low to ensure widespread access and how it became a key propaganda tool.
German History Docs – “The Fundamentals of German Radio Programming (August 1938)”: Describes state subsidies and installment plans that made radios affordable for lower-income Germans.
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian – “The People’s Receiver”: Highlights the design and intent behind the Volksempfänger, including its role in spreading Nazi ideology.
EEE Spectrum – “Inside the Third Reich’s Radio”: Details Goebbels’ push for a mass-producible, inexpensive radio and its technical specifications.
USHMM Exhibition – “German Radio: The People’s Receiver”: Notes how the Propaganda Ministry and radio industry promoted the device, leading to a surge in ownership.
