Tesla Fires Manager Who Complained About Elon Musk’s Nazi Jokes

Tesla has fired a manager after he wrote a LinkedIn post criticizing Elon Musk’s jokes about Nazis, according to a report from the New York Times. And it’s a great reminder that not only is Musk currently destroying the U.S. government through massive cuts that will change America’s way of life for generations to come, he’s still making time to be a vindictive prick to workers at the half dozen companies he currently controls, like Tesla, X, and SpaceX.

The fired Tesla manager, identified as Jared Ottmann, worked with the electric vehicle company’s battery suppliers, according to the Times. And Ottmann didn’t appreciate the jokes that Musk made after the billionaire gave two Nazi-style salutes the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20.

“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down!” Musk wrote on Jan. 23. “Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming.”

Goebbels, Goring, and Himmler were all Nazis, instrumental in their own ways for the deaths of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. And many people saw Musk’s jokes as in poor taste, especially after the salutes he gave just a few days earlier.

Ottmann expressed his disapproval of Musk’s jokes on LinkedIn, sharing a screenshot of Musk’s tweet and writing, “Well, we have seen it coming. Elon’s behavior, whatever the underlying motivations, are well documented.”

Ottmann went on to explain that he’d raised “the issue” with Musk internally multiple times since 2022, including with managers, HR, legal compliance, and investor relations. It’s not immediately clear what Ottmann is referring to regarding “the issue” but Musk has been accused repeatedly of racist and antisemitic behavior.

One of the most galling incidents known publicly was in Nov. 2023 when Musk agreed with an extremist account that was floating a conspiracy theory about Jewish people. Musk replied with “You have said the actual truth.”

Ottmann wrote in his LinkedIn post that “Tesla as a company has remained silent” and that Musk’s post of Nazi jokes “name drops genocidal assholes as a joke and has 308,000 likes.” The post has over 55 million views at the time of this writing.

“The silence from Tesla is deafening. What’s a mensch to do?” Ottmann concluded.

As the Times notes, Musk doesn’t tolerate dissent of any kind at his companies, despite often calling himself a free speech absolutist. Nine employees of SpaceX were fired in 2022 after the billionaire made jokes about the sexual harassment complaint against him. The employees wanted SpaceX to distance itself from the company founder, but they found themselves without a job.

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment. Gizmodo will update this post if we hear back, but we’re not going to hold our breath. Musk dissolved Tesla’s PR office in 2020. The billionaire says he prefers to speak directly with the people on his platform X, which seems true. Especially if speaking to the people directly involves some jokes about Nazis.