Elon Musk and American Politics

Here is a small view on Musk's view of South Africa today.

https://www.thedial.world/articles/news/issue-10/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-south-africa-myths

This is a great article with a lot of fascinating information which I have never read or heard before. It describes a rich kid from a very racist family in S. Africa, at the time of the change from all-white rule to majority-rule, leaving his country to avoid conscription, illegally coming into America. It describes a young man who was raised by someone a lot like Donald Trump. It even appears their personalities fit together like Musk and his father. I can easily imagine Musk as the primary adviser to Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign.

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In July, the tech entrepreneur commented on a Florida media personality's post on X that alleged that South Africa's "black party" was encouraging a genocide against white South Africans. "They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa," Musk commented, and asked why president Cyril Ramaphosa was "say[ing] nothing." The claim was a layer cake of stale myths and gibberish that few South Africans — even those concerned about white people's future in the country — bothered to amplify: The political party to which the original poster referred is not South Africa's "black party." More than 80% of South Africans are black, but the Economic Freedom Fighters hold only 11% of seats in the parliament. And the fringe allegation that black South Africans intend to massacre white people has circulated for decades, attaching itself to some new potentiality when the original theories, like that the genocide would begin the night Nelson Mandela died, don't pan out. Musk's concern, however, was taken up by a range of non-South African white supremacists: Patrick Casey, founder of the Neo-Nazi Group Identity Evropa, posted, "In 2016 South African white genocide was a fringe issue — now, the richest man in the world, who also owns Twitter, is drawing attention to it. Things are moving in the right direction!"

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Some things Isaacson [author of a biography of Musk] recounts are extremely unlikely to have happened as he describes them. In the 1980s, Isaacson claims, as a young teen, Musk and his brother once "had to wade through a pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife still sticking out of his brain" while getting off a train to go to an "anti-apartheid music concert"; at these concerts, "often, brawls would break out." But there were no explicit "anti-apartheid concerts" in South Africa in the '80s. The apartheid government strictly censored music, and bands that played songs with lyrics perceived to criticize apartheid — or even bands with members of different races — were regularly harassed and arrested. "I cannot believe the 'knife in the head' story," Charles Leonard, a DJ and journalist who attended many gigs in apartheid-era Johannesburg, told me. "The concerts I attended were always peaceful."

"The 'wading through blood' is invented, I'm sure," Shaun de Waal, another Johannesburg journalist who covered 1980s South African society, said. By the late 1980s, crime in South Africa had increased significantly and by 1991 the country had one of the highest murder rates of any in the world on a per capita basis. But violent crime was far rarer in the heavily policed areas around the Johannesburg railway stations and in the white-only neighborhoods where Musk grew up.

Musk and his brother Kimbal, Isaacson writes, said that "their father is a volatile fabulist, regularly spinning tales that are larded with fantasies, sometimes calculated and at other times delusional." Isaacson writes that Musk left South Africa in 1989 principally to get a break from his dad. That story strikes other South Africans as bizarrely incomplete. Whenever a white boy in his late teens left South Africa in the 1980s, he was ipso facto escaping conscription.

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Over the last few years, Musk has seemed to work off the theory that if your false statements are diverse enough in content and size, and if some sound like jokes, you can develop a reputation as an admirable troll rather than as a dangerous liar. The more varied and hyperbolic someone's yarns are, the less they seem to demand or even allow for detailed factual rebuttals.

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Here is a background story on the Trump + Musk connection.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3178774/exclusive-elon-musk-says-destiny-of-america-is-on-the-line/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Pmax_USA_Magazine_21-June-Intent-Audience-Signals&gad_source=5

This article is about Musk and the Immigration issue.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-06-03/elon-musk-immigration

So first of all, Musk and his brother appear to have come into America and stayed illegally. They benefit tremendously from being here. Apparently Elon Musk wants immigration reform, but not at the cost of having other changes which he doesn't like tied to it.

This article talks about Musk and government, how he wants to reshape it, and some paranoia.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-trump-endorses-pac-administration-cabinet-connection-rcna178549

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On the campaign trail, Musk has at times dramatized the stakes of the election for himself. In an October appearance with talk show host Tucker Carlson, he alleged that Harris might want to exact "vengeance" on him personally if she wins the election.

"If he loses, I'm f----d," Musk told Carlson, referring to Trump.

Laughing, Musk added, "How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?"

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I don't suggest jailing Musk. That's his bizarre fantasy, I suppose. I suggest learning about him in order to have a more clear idea of what he might influence a Trump administration to do.