Sir Stephen Fry has made a brutal joke about Elon Musk after the X founder was accused of doing a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
Musk, 53, sparked global outrage when he put his hand on his chest before extending his arm into the air after giving a speech at Washington DC's Capital One Arena last week.
He made the gesture twice in a move that some critics likened to the fascist salute used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Amid the controversy, Fry repeated a joke he’d been told comparing Tesla founder Musk to the Nazis.
“I heard a very good joke yesterday,” the QI host, 67, told Stig Abell on Times Radio on Thursday.
“Someone said, ‘Musk is not a Nazi... Nazis made really good cars,’” he went on, before bursting out laughing.
Abell joked, “Don't put that on Twitter, he'll find you Stephen!” and the actor replied: “Oh, my God. My God, he will.”
Musk denied that he had done a Nazi-style salute after the online criticism earlier this month.
The richest man in the world wrote on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The 'everyone is Hitler' attack is sooo tired.”
His ex, musician Grimes, with whom he shares three children, spoke out against his actions after fans threatened to “cancel” her online.
The Canadian singer said she was “happy to denounce Nazism,” before adding: “I am not him. I will not make a statement every time he does something. I can only send love back into a world that is hurting.”
Elsewhere in his interview, Fry said he wanted to “destroy” social media, saying it has “polluted” our culture and children’s minds.
The comedian said, “I left Twitter the day he bought it,” referring to Musk’s mult-billion dollar takeover of the platform, now known as X, in 2022.
“I always hated, absolutely hated Facebook, never, never trusted or liked it at all. But Twitter, I just thought, wow, it's wonderful. It's like a beautiful swimming hole, [a] beautiful river where you can all swim."
The actor said the “beautiful swimming hole” where Twitter users had “all made friends with each other” suddenly saw “turds floating on the surface”.
Fry hit out at Musk’s “free speech” argument, which has seen hate speech rise on the social media platform.
The director insisted some guidelines need to be put into place to “weed” out hateful posts.
“Is a gardener an enemy of free growth because they do a bit of weeding?” he asked.
“That's all I'm saying. We need to weed. We need to make the growth strong and healthy so that everybody can enjoy the garden because it's otherwise a mess.”
