Billionaire Elon Musk was widely criticized after he told attendees at the Atreju Festival in Rome, Italy, that the "culture of Italy, Japan and France will disappear" if those nations don't reverse their low birth rates.
Musk attended the event, which was hosted by the far-right Brothers of Italy party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, over the weekend, using it as an opportunity to push replacement theory, a conspiracy theory that states White European populations and their descendants are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples.
His remarks were applauded by the event's far-right attendees, who have voiced concerns about Italy having one of the lowest birth rates in the world.
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Watch again: Elon Musk speaks at Giorgia Meloni's right-wing political festival in Italyyoutu.be
Musk said:
"I really want to emphasize that it’s important to have children and to create the new generation. And as simple as it sounds, if people do not have children, there is no new generation."
"I’m very much in favor of humanity expanding and creating a bright and exciting future for the world. But fundamental to the furtherance of human civilization, is having humans. As simple and basic as that sounds."
"Every year, I look at the birth rates, and it’s kind of a bit depressing because birth rates seem to decline every year."
Musk stressed the importance of creating incentives to make it easier for women to have children and support those children, cautioning that "If there is not at least a birth rate keeping the population constant, then people will disappear."
When prompted by the moderator to address the notion that migration from regions like the southern border in the United States or northern Africa and the Middle East in Europe could offset declining populations in advanced urban Western societies, Musk highlighted the dwindling populations in countries such as China and Japan as further examples.
He said:
"One can’t depend on other countries for immigration, and in fact, if you look at say the population worldwide, it’s almost everywhere in the world, and it seems to be a function of almost how – once a country industrializes, once a country urbanizes, the population conveniently starts to decline."
"We don’t want Japan to disappear, we don’t want Italy as a culture to disappear, we don’t want France’s culture to disappear, I think we have to maintain a sort of reasonable cultural identity of various countries or we simply will not be those countries."
Musk later shared footage of his remarks to X, formerly Twitter.
His remarks were widely criticized.
This isn't the first time Musk has brought up the falling birth rates of countries, and people read between the lines then as well.
Meloni's right-wing coalition government, comprising Matteo Salvini's far-right League and former PM Silvio Berlusconi's center-right Forza Italia, has directed significant attention toward combating Italy's population decline. Approximately €1 billion has been allocated for initiatives supporting families with children.
However, amidst this effort, Meloni has targeted LGBTQ+ families with children. The prime minister advocated for the removal of queer mothers from children's birth certificates, insisting on listing only the biological parents on these official documents.
Additionally, her government is intensifying measures against gestational surrogacy, an already prohibited practice in Italy. Proposals aim to criminalize citizens' use of surrogates abroad, threatening offenders with a potential two-year imprisonment and a hefty €1 million fine.
Curiously, there was no mention by Meloni regarding Elon Musk's experience of having one of his children through a surrogate with his former partner, Grimes, in 2021.
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