Elon Musk

Elon Musk in 2015.

Elon Reeve Musk (born 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa) is an American billionaire and one of the most wealthy members of the bourgeoisie in the world. Since he developed a major public image in the mid-2010s, Musk has developed a cult of personality, especially on the internet, among enthusiasts of space travel, space colonization, AI, and other strains of techno-optimism. Musk has been associated with major companies like Tesla and PayPal, although he founded neither; Musk later faced a civil suit when he claimed founder status, which settled out of court. Musk did found SpaceX in 2002, a private spacecraft and satellite communications company which enjoys funding and support from the US government. In 2022 he bought Twitter, Inc. for $44 billion in what could be considered a failed publicity stunt.

Musk's unique style of public relations, including his marketing style and Twitter presence, could be called an example of the spectacle in capitalist society.

Biography

The Boring Company

Musk's plan to dig tunnels under cities to transport people's cars. A lot of these circuits are planned to run near existing subway infrastructure, so they are redundant, and on top of that this idea runs into problems like getting permits for all the land this would run through as well as having to avoid existing underground structures like utility lines, subway routes, pedestrian tunnels, building foundations, etc.

The supposed cost-savings the tunnels make over existing subway tunnels are neglecting the costs of the other facilities provided by subways, like the installation and maintenance of utility lines, the continuous supply of power to these lines, the installation of stations, and so forth. Considering merely the cost of the tunnel, which is only what Elon Musk focuses on, his tunnels cost about the average for what ones of their diameter and length have already, so there are no real cost savings. Other problems with these tunnels is that getting emergency services to a car in a tunnel would be very difficult, as these tunnels have only one lane. There would also have to be a very large amount of elevators, which would have to be operating unreasonably fast, especially during rush hour traffic.

Connections to the Epstein family

This picture has been making the rounds on the Internet following the arrest of Ghislane Maxwell. People have been replying to his tweets with it, to which either his fans or Elon himself will get extremely defensive; it is so big that Elon himself spoke on it a couple times, claiming it was a photobomb and that she “snuck up on him”, which is ridiculous because the photo is centered squarely on Musk and Maxwell. Epstein was in regular contact with Elon's brother Kimbal Musk and in 2011, Epstein set him up with a woman from his entourage who Kimbal ended up dating her for a year. The woman, who had previously dated Epstein, lived in an apartment building where he was known to house certain women. So even if she was legal, this woman who dated Musk's brother for a year must have had some connection and knowledge of Epstein's continuing activities. In 2012, just as Epstein had sought out in exchange for his earlier "favor" to Elon's brother, he and his entourage were arranged a private tour of Elon Musk's SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California — four years after it was revealed that Epstein was convicted for raping a minor. At that time, federal officials had further identified 36 more girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused. In 2011 Elon Musk attended an elite private dinner with Jeffrey Epstein, less than 2 years after he served a prison sentence for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. Elon repeatedly denied he went to such a dinner party, and further claims that Epstein hasn't even toured SpaceX. He claims that he refused to have anything to do with Epstein, and said that he was “obviously a creep” when he had first met him — although he would still go to a dinner party afterwards in 2011 with this "creep". After Epstein was suicided, The New York Times published a detailed account of a 90-minute-long meeting they had held with Epstein — and it had a lot to do with Elon Musk. Jeffrey Epstein claimed to be both a financial adviser and a crisis manager for Tesla and Elon.

Mr. Epstein avoided specifics about his work for Tesla. He told me that he had good reason to be cryptic: Once it became public that he was advising the company, he’d have to stop doing so, because he was “radioactive.” He predicted that everyone at Tesla would deny talking to him or being his friend.

Epstein told the reporter that he suspected Tesla and Musk would deny speaking to him, and as he predicted, Musk spokesperson Keely Sulprizio told Stewart that “it is incorrect to say that Epstein ever advised Elon on anything”. Yet another interesting bit from the interview:

Mr. Epstein then meandered into a discussion of other prominent names in technology circles. He said people in Silicon Valley had a reputation for being geeky workaholics, but that was far from the truth: They were hedonistic and regular users of recreational drugs. He said he’d witnessed prominent tech figures taking drugs and arranging for sex.”

Perhaps it should be no surprise that Elon has all these connections to Epstein given the history of the Musk family. After all, Elon Musk's dad had a child with his stepdaughter, and it is a well-known fact that pedophilia runs in families, and in fact correlates more strongly with one's genes than one's family environment.

All of the denials of Elon's involvement with Epstein are extremely shaky. His ex-wife Talulah Riley, who “wanted to respond publicly with @elonmusk’s permission”, came out with a statement denying Elon's relation to Ghislane Maxwell. Of course, all of the PR statements and Elon-approved accounts of those events are going to paint Elon as an angel, completely non-complicit and non-involved in Epstein's dealings; in spite of the wealth of photos, written statements, and other records which point in the opposite direction.

At the end of the day, there is no concrete evidence yet that 100% proves that Elon was directly complicit in Epstein's activities. However, there is an abundance of evidence that shows that at the very least, he was heavily involved with Epstein.

Support for the 2019 Bolivian coup

Bolivia has the world's largest proven lithium reserves at 21 million tons, over a quarter of the world's total. Musk however says he gets his from Australia. Bolivia had a coup in 2019 whose primary motivations included opening up its lithium reserves to foreign capitalists, with Bolivian president Luis Acre claiming Musk and Tesla were involved. On Twitter, he had this to say about the coup:

We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.

Even worse, this was right after he said "Another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people", despite receiving billions of dollars in government subsidies himself and underpaying his workers.

Acquisition of Twitter

In 2022, Elon Musk acquired the popular social media platform Twitter, a move which has proven disastrous for the site and its users. Almost immediately after the acquisition of the site, Musk fired most of its dedicated workforce (including moderators) in a matter of days, restricted access to the site's API, harming third-party and open-source clients, made account creation mandatory to view posts, along with other harmful policies.

Propaganda representing Musk's cult of personality and policies resulting in ex-Twitter becoming a far-right "alt-tech" platform.

Musk received support from right-wing supporters of freedom of speech when he announced his intention to reduce censorship on the platform. However, it has been shown that the self-induced lack of moderation, in tandem with Musk's insistence that Twitter become a "free-speech platform," resulted in a massive increase in hate speech while resulting in an inconsistent, often right-leaning interpretation of "free speech". This includes at least one instance where Musk directly ordered the suspension of one left-wing activist's account, apparently on political grounds.

In late July 2023, Musk abruptly initiated the process of rebranding Twitter to "𝕏," following an ad-hoc, day-long poll to decide upon a new name and logo. The rebranding has caused widespread confusion amongst users and has otherwise proceeded sluggishly.

Myths and misconceptions

Elon Musk is not that self-made

Elon Musk's father bought half of an emerald mine in the mid-1980s which according to Business Insider, "would help to fund his family’s lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers." Despite this, Elon denies this was the case and instead says that he was a hard worker throughout his youth, ending up with about $100,000 in student debt anyways. Such claims, though, are hard to believe coming from someone who allegedly once naively sold his parent's gems to a New York jewelry, while his father talked about how financially set they were: "We were very wealthy [...] We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe.".

Elon further attributes much of his understanding and background in engineering to his father, who himself comes from a privileged background.

Views and positions

Downplaying the COVID-19 pandemic

Elon Musk has a vested interest in generating maximum profit, even if means seriously risking the health of his workers in particular and the populace in general. He has insistently tried to make the pandemic look less severe so that his employees will continue manufacturing products, for instance by promoting studies that suggest doctors are inflating case numbers for financial reasons, or that the vast majority of fatalities in Italy are due to other causes. He promoted a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine, and has further compared COVID-19 to the common cold. He also frequently characterizes the disease as a "panic": on March 6, he said simply “The coronavirus panic is dumb”, and on the 14th he said the “danger of panic still far exceeds danger of corona”, as part of a larger thread promoting chloroquine as an effective treatment. On March 19, he predicted that the US would see close to zero new cases by the end of April — a claim which was by evaluation dramatically wrong.

The intensity with which he downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic makes a lot more sense when considering that he gets massive multi-million dollar payouts if Tesla makes a certain amount of profit. In quarter 1 of 2020, this amount was $720 million that he received in stock options, which he barely achieved in time and which was likely due to him keeping factories open as the pandemic worsened, and which ultimately resulted in over 130 of his employees contracting the disease.

Cringe compilation

• "Twitter is the Dark Souls of social media. Reddit is Bloodborne. Insta' is Zelda."
• Saying Elizabeth Warren reminded him of his friend's angry mother for saying the "rigged tax code" should change even though she did not actually mention him (it seems he dwelt on this for a while because 13 minutes after this he added on by calling her "Senator Karen")
• Calling a British diver who rescued children from a Thai cave "pedo guy" and repeated the allegation several times, but later claiming he had never intended it literally
• Posting the art of Twitter user TodoNintendoS without permission and just replying "No" when told to credit the artist
• His 69/420 jokes:
  • Selling short shorts for "$69.420"
  • "Due to inflation 420 has gone up by 69"
  • Tweeting he was considering Tesla private for $420 per share, a 20% premium over the then-current price (he was charged by the SEC for this with civil securities fraud and a judge ruled Musk knowingly made a false statement with this tweet)
  • Offering to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share when each was around $40
• Joked he was a cat girl and then posted a "selfie" of a character that was in fact a werewolf
• All his other attempts to come off as relatable with fellow kids-type memes

See also

• Online right — much of his support base can be included in this grouping, and he in many ways embodies right-wing internet culture
• Henry Ford — a similarly reactionary capitalist
• Thomas Edison — another bourgeois "inventor"