ohOtherwise, it would be news that the CEO of one of the world's largest companies endorsed and shared a fabricated headline published by the leader of a fascist party. For Elon Musk, that happened just Thursday.
Unusually for Musk, his post was a retweet of a tweet by Britain First co-leader Ashley Simon, who shared a fake Telegraph headline about British rioters being held in the Falkland Islands, which he deleted shortly after sending it. The 30-minute livestream on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022, garnered almost 2 million views.
Musk's outspoken criticism of the government has surprised many since unrest began across the UK last week, but it is just the latest sign that the billionaire is heading down a path of radicalisation.
After making his fortune in the dot-com boom and then from his involvement in PayPal, Musk invested in Tesla in 2004 and eventually became its chief executive. For a while, he presented himself as you'd expect of a former software executive running an electric car company, speaking at length about the risks of climate change while also launching and investing in projects that fit a broad vision of improving the future of humanity, including SpaceX, OpenAI and The Boring Company.
But starting in 2020, Musk's public profile began to shift. He'd always been a fairly active user of Twitter, but when the pandemic hit, he began posting much more frequently and for the first time faced the world of fact-checking, as soft-spoken claims about the danger and duration of the pandemic led to calls for his account to be suspended for spreading misinformation.
In his personal life, Musk's relationship with his family has been turbulent: His relationship with Claire Boucher, better known as the musician Grimes, began to fall apart in 2021. Boucher, mother of at least three of his 12 children, ended up in court over custody.
Around this time, Musk began sending Grimes “right-wing memes and conspiracy theories,” according to biographer Walter Isaacson, to which Grimes responded, “Is this from 4chan or something? You're really starting to sound like a far-right person.”
At the same time, his daughter Vivian She came out as transgender and changed her name.She declared that she no longer wanted to have “any kind of association with my biological father.”
Musk himself has cited Vivienne as the reason for his political switch, telling pop psychologist Jordan Peterson: [his] son [sic]essentially,” and concludes that his son was “killed by the virus of the awakened mind.”
“Many people who are radicalized have a formative personal experience that serves as a cognitive catalyst for their radicalization journey,” said one radicalization expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “For Musk, it appears that was his daughter's gender transition.”
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The expert also believes Musk is essentially a man with “few beliefs beyond those that enrich him, and a strong desire for attention and validation. Since beginning his right-wing radicalization, he has received a flood of the latter from the far right, building for himself the largest echo chamber in the world that will only continue to grow.”
The expert added: “What's remarkable is that he experiences little to no consequences for his actions and is successful in blackmailing reality to make people comply with his beliefs.”
In July, Musk announced the creation of a political action committee, America PAC, which will “largely but entirely” support the Republican Party because it supports “meritocracy and individual freedom.” Musk did not say how much he planned to donate to the PAC, but previous reports had suggested he was considering donating as much as $45 million a month.
The extent of Musk's political transformation has even led to concerns about his health. In March, he He said he was not drunk “almost all the time.” He claimed that his use of ketamine to treat depression during his X posting sessions was unrelated to his social media presence.
Source: www.theguardian.com
