Did Elon Musk say Italians should stay in Italy and the Japanese should stay in Japan? No, that's not true: While speaking at a right-wing political event in December 2023, the tech billionaire argued that countries shouldn't rely on immigration to maintain their populations. Instead, he suggested that governments should promote higher birth rates and offer incentives for families to have more children.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X on January 27, 2025. The video's caption said:
Elon Musk says Italians should stay in Italy and the Japanese in Japan.
Then why the hell is this White European South African in North America?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Feb 6 16:45:47 2025 UTC)
This post did not provide any evidence to support the assertion that Musk said the Italians should stay in Italy and the Japanese should stay in Japan.
The video
The video in the social media post comes from a longer talk (archived here) Musk gave on December 16, 2023, at a right-wing festival hosted by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. In the 35-second clip in the post, he said:
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 this sort of reasonable cultural identity of the various countries, or they simply will not be those countries.
Italy is ... the people of Italy. The buildings are there, but really what is Italy? Italy is the people of Italy.
The short clip doesn't give the context for what Musk was talking about, which was the declining birthrate of many industrialized nations. He argued that immigration wasn't the answer to a country maintaining its population. Leading up to the quote in the social media post, he said at the 1:14:35 mark of the full talk:
Fundamental to the furtherance of human civilization is having humans, as simple and basic as that sounds.
Every year, I look at the birthrates and ... it's kind of a bit depressing because birthrates seem to decline every year. ...
My biggest advice to leaders, to government leaders, and to the people in general would be to make sure to have children to create the new generation. ...
Any incentives that can be done to incent the new generation, to make it easier for a woman to have children and to support the children, I think would be very wise.
Then, as an example, Musk talked about how it was important to protect the cultures of Japan, Italy and France, suggesting they'd lose their identities with too much immigration.
The complete video of Musk's talk in Italy is embedded below:
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