Why Elon Can't Apologize
Why Elon Can't Apologize
Though clearly wrong and anti-Semitic, the "No retreat, no surrender" mantra is the anthem of the right-authoritarian cult of masculinity
Elon Musk’s great wealth — and the value that most of the world places on such materialism — is a massive obstacle to any sort of self-development. Not that he even sees the need to improve himself. By his reckoning, why should Musk work on himself when he has already won at Capitalism? Nonetheless, Elon, at the age of 52, definitely needs to do some serious “renovations.” We all do, of course, especially when one gets up into their 50s. But Elon, who grew up in apartheid South Africa, has greater challenges than most middle-aged human beings. His beginnings, of which admittedly he had no control, hold vast influence over his present persona.
Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High School in apartheid South Africa two years before Nelson Mandela was released from prison. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a hell of a lot of ideological baggage to unpack, much less to transcend. The New York Times did a very good an nuanced article on the subject a year ago, well worth reading.
Elon Musk is unlikely to change because he doesn’t see — or even comment in the Times article — on the problem at hand. People like Elon — right-libertarians — find the whole concept of “work on oneself” to be a tad too woke. A tad too “New Age-y” in tone as well as far too perfumed in its iteration. They prefer things to remain the way they have always been, only coincidentally with white, heterosexual men at the apex of the food chain and everyone else at the bottom, in their service.
But, circling back — What is all the present Elon fuss all about? From Kyle Chaika of The New Yorker:
“Last Wednesday, an account on X named @breakingbaht posted a message that read, ‘Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.’ The post went on to espouse a line of conspiratorial thinking that is sometimes called the ‘great replacement’ theory, suggesting that Jews were driving “hordes of minorities” to supplant white people. @breakingbaht has less than six thousand followers, and the account’s casual, blatant antisemitism might easily have passed with little notice. Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of X last October, the company has slashed its content-moderation staff, and countless virulent posts proliferate daily. This time, though, Musk himself replied, telling @breakingbaht, ‘You have said the actual truth.’
Musk often posts on X upward of a dozen times a day, to more than a hundred and sixty-three million followers, and he had expressed shades of antisemitism and racism repeatedly on the platform before. But this time, amid a brutal Israel-Hamas war, with antisemitism and Islamophobia inflamed around the world, he seemed to have finally crossed a line.
Imagine the privilege! It is nothing short of astonishing that one of the richest men in the world — a tech billionaire who’s name comes up in conversation between the Biden and Xi at their world-rearranging summit — cannot conquer his own inner demons. That he is allowed to traverse norms to such a degree until he reaches that “line,” the limits of acceptable civilized discourse. Is the inner-scape more difficult to conquer than the outer?
Elon won’t apologize. The problem with Elon here is that he disparages work on oneself as being part some leftist "Woke" project, something to be abhorred as naught else but soyboy. This is part and parcel of the right-wing cult of hyper-masculinity of the sort that considers it a fine idea to invite the President of the UFC to speak at the National Republican Convention. Nothing to see here, folks, everything is perfectly normal. Musk has a lot of Afrikaner Nationalism — another perversion of hyper-masculinity — to work out of his system, but he cannot even begin to do so if he dismisses work on oneself at the outset as an enterprise altogether too twee.
It would be so much easier to ignore Elon Musk as an eccentric Tony Stark-inspired character, advancing the technological development of humankind all the while charmingly flawed, if he weren’t so influential and thus dangerous to democracy. Then there is also the anti-Semitism and the anti-Blackness. In taking over and systematically toxifying X/Twitter, which 20% of Americans use, he has contributed nearly as much intellectual pollution to the American political landscape as Trump.
He is not sorry or guilty about turning X/Twitter into a cesspool of bigotry, of election denial, of anti-vax sentiment and in general of misleading information. Because being of the libertarian-right means never having to say you are sorry. Apologies are for sissies, it is a sign of weakness, a retreat. This is why it is unlikely that Musk will ever apologize for his amplification, despite being caught polluting the Commons with antisemitism.
The "no retreat, no surrender" mantra is the anthem of the right-wing cult of hyper-masculinity underlying the global authoritarian wave. And one can see why this movement would resonate so powerfully with Elon, who grew up as part of a privileged minority that attained and kept its power through the systematic dehumanization of the nation’s majority population. As someone born in sub-Saharan Africa I cannot help but imagine what an insane notion it is that the Boers could even consider a long-term conquest of South Africa. Just imagine the shady intelligence alliances and extra-curricular murders must have been involved in holding South Africa as long as it did? And what was the influence of that unnatural state of being on the pedagogy of the children of privilege?
But can Elon himself see how much he is influenced by his own past? I mean, he’s one of the world’s richest men so, according to the rules of capitalism, doesn’t that mean he’s won, according to the rules of the game he’s been playing? From John Eligon and Lynsey Chutel of the NYT:
“We were really clueless as white South African teenagers. Really clueless,” said Melanie Cheary, a classmate of Mr. Musk’s during the two years he spent at Bryanston High School in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, where Black people were rarely seen other than in service of white families living in palatial homes.
Mr. Musk left South Africa shortly after graduation at 17 to go to college in Canada, barely ever looking back. He did not respond to emails requesting comment about his childhood.
Mr. Musk has heralded his purchase of Twitter as a victory for free speech, having criticized the platform for removing posts and banning users. It is unclear what role his childhood — coming up in a time and place in which there was hardly a free exchange of ideas and where government misinformation was used to demonize Black South Africans — may have played in that decision.
With all due respect to the reporters and The New York Times, I think it is fairly clear what role his childhood played in a lot of his decisions. And those decisions have their consequences, as we are all witnessing at present. This is precisely why Elon Musk cannot be tossed aside lightly as some slightly-right “Tony Stark manqué.” He is more than just a man of some inspirational business influence, he is a big technology and media figure with the power to amplify — even supercharge — his mental garbage, the stuff he has not as-of-yet conquered in his own inner-space. And the consequences have come to punch him in the pockets. As Oliver Darcy at Reliable Sources sets the grim tableaux:
Days after the billionaire conspiracy theorist endorsed an antisemitic post on his hate-drenched platform, X, there is mounting pressure for others to take additional action against the unhinged businessman.
Musk's attention, however, has not been focused on profusely apologizing to the public for his reprehensible remarks, nor has it been on ensuring his advertisers that he takes their complaints seriously. Instead, it has been on threatening and trying to exact revenge on critics.
It's a critical juncture for the Musk-owned company.
Indeed it is.
Finally, why is this so important to me? We have two hot wars going on, Sudan looks about ready to explode and a Presidential election. Why Elon? Aside from the obvious news value, there are some personal involvements on my side. I have been on X/Twitter for more than a decade and made many real-life friends and business connections on the platform. I’ve gotten freelance writing work, joined the #Resistance during the Trump Presidency, live-blogged countless Oscars and elections — midterm as well as Presidential. I cannot count the number of hours that I have spent on X/Twitter.
Despite that history, I am on the verge of leaving the microblogging platform — for Threads? Bluesky? — largely because of the toxicity and because of the algorithm, which has blunted my voice to a fraction of what it once was. Also, because so many of my friends in media have quite simply abandoned the platform altogether. I am holding on to X/Twitter right now almost entirely on nostalgia of what our love was like before Elon fucked the whole shit up. So consider this newsletter post as much of a rant against the over-extended, over-privileged owner of the once-lovely joint as much as an analysis of his inability to acknowledge that he’s got a lot of work to do — on himself.
“Vulavula, a new AI tool that Lelapa released today, converts voice to text and detects names of people and places in written text (which could be useful for summarizing a document or searching for someone online). It can currently identify four languages spoken in South Africa—isiZulu, Afrikaans, Sesotho, and English—and the team is working to include other languages from across Africa … The lack of AI tools that work for African languages and recognize African names and places excludes African people from economic opportunities, says Moiloa, CEO and cofounder of Lelapa AI. For her, working to build Africa-centric AI solutions is a way to help others in Africa harness the immense potential benefits of AI technologies. ‘We are trying to solve real problems and put power back into the hands of our people,’ she says. There are thousands of languages in the world, 1,000 to 2,000 of them in Africa alone: it’s estimated that the continent accounts for one-third of the world’s languages. But though native speakers of English make up just 5% of the global population, the language dominates the web—and has now come to dominate AI tools, too. “ (Abdullah Tsanni/Technology Review)
“Unlike movie stars who launch cosmetic lines or record an album, Sharon Stone has pivoted to painting. With two gallery shows under her belt, the Oscar nominee talks to Avenue about making art vs. movies, her obsession with snakes, and why she loves Amelia Earhart.” (Avenue)
“Through his post-presidential years, Jimmy Carter has become well known for saying that his relationship with Rosalynn was ‘the most important thing in my life.’ Since most people are aware of Jimmy Carter only as a kindly former president—he left office before most of today’s Americans were born1—this may come across as a golden-years bromide. But when Jimmy Carter was rising to power, and wielding it, the unshakeable bond between the two of them was an important element of political reality. Anyone in the Carter realm in those days knew that the judgment the President would take special care to hear was that of the First Lady. And she would take care to be sure he heard it! I do not mean that she overstepped—though that appearance is of course the occupational hazard of political spouses (mainly wives) who dare express policy views. Rather I mean that a president whose long days were filled, like every president’s, with impossible decisions and incessant demands, felt there was one person he could fully trust. Trust to tell him the truth even when that truth was inconvenient. Trust to deflate or kid him when he got too puffed-up. Trust always, always to have his best interests in mind. Both Carters took flak in the press because Jimmy Carter invited Rosalynn to sit in on Cabinet meetings. He didn’t care; he wanted her there, because he so respected, valued, and needed her judgment.” (James Fallows)