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| - During a December 2023 trip to Italy, Musk told people to "make more Italians" as a way of maintaining cultural identity amid rising immigration. He also said: "I think we have to maintain the sort of reasonable cultural identity of the various countries or they simply will not be those countries. You know Italy is the people of Italy. The buildings are there, but really what is Italy? Italy is the people of Italy."
In early 2025, as tech billionaire Elon Musk played an increasingly visible role in U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, many people online pointed to his past comments and statements. A number of posts on X claimed Musk once said, "Italians should stay in Italy and the Japanese in Japan."
One post from late January 2025 shared a video of Musk speaking and added the text, "Then why is this South African in America?"
Musk did not use the exact words stated above. However, while speaking at an event in Italy in December 2023, he did encourage Italians to have more children to increase the population. In response to a question about whether immigration is a solution to population decline, he said immigration was not enough and Italians as a culture should not disappear.
Musk made the statement during a conference where he was the guest of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Italy has a very low birth rate, and Musk told attendees that Italians should "make more Italians" in order to preserve their population.
The interviewer asked Musk whether immigration would solve the problem of low birth rates, to which Musk replied that one could not rely on immigration numbers, adding that Italians should preserve Italian culture. He also said there should be incentives for women to have more children.
We have reproduced key moments of the conversation below (emphasis ours):
MUSK: Make sure to have children to create the new generation […] If there is not a birth rate that is at least keeping population constant, then people will disappear. […]
MODERATOR: [Some people] say immigration is important for that reason. What's your point on that? […] It's coming in Europe and it's coming in America from the south of America and in Europe from south of the Mediterranean Sea. What do you think about that?
MUSK: One can't depend on other countries for immigration. […] China could not possibly solve its population with immigration because China is currently tracking to maybe lose 40% of its population every generation. You know that would be 700 million, 800 million people […] it's a lot basically. You'd have to have the entire United States immigrate there twice every generation to simply maintain numbers just for China. [There] simply aren't enough numbers in immigration.
I think there is value to a culture and we don't want Japan to disappear. We don't want Italy as a culture to disappear. We don't want France as a culture to disappear. I think we have to maintain the sort of reasonable cultural identity of the various countries or they simply will not be those countries. You know Italy is the people of Italy. The buildings are there, but really what is Italy? Italy is the people of Italy.
Musk made the comment starting at the 1:15:10 mark:
While Musk did not state outrightly that "Italians should stay in Italy and Japanese people should stay in Japan" he did call for Italians to have more babies and preserve their culture after arguing that immigration would not solve low birth rates in the country.
However, we should note that at a different point in the discussion Musk said, "I am very much in favor of legal immigration. I think generally one should welcome to a country anyone who is willing to work hard … with a simple requirement that if somebody is going to add to a country, let them in. If it's illegal immigration and there is no filter, how do you know who is coming? You don't know." He went on to say that one requirement to let in legal immigrants could include how much respect they have for the local culture.
Meloni is a right-wing politician who has been accused by critics of being a neo-fascist. However, she has gained credibility in Italy and the European Union partly due to her efforts to curb the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. She personally invited Musk to the December 2023 conference organized by her Brothers of Italy political party and sat in the front row as he made the above statements.
Musk has long espoused views that a low birth rate will lead to population collapse and called it a greater risk than global warming. However, demographers say the population worldwide has been increasing even if it has been going down in some parts of the world.
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