Musk regularly interacts with far - right extremists across Europe. While he can speak English, it is not a surprise to interact with British ones.
What is more surprising he also interacts with German ones (while not able to speak the language, yet to understand German culture or society).
I always wondered how much of his worldview is influenced by his childhood in South Africa and the diaspora.
Him and David Sacks are both products of the the 1980s, when plenty of wealthy and educated White South Africans began leaving due to the Sanctions regime, but continued to hold onto regressive views about race, especially exacerbated by the instability of the 1990s.
Why is it ironic? Racism and right wing extremism comes in many shapes and colors. Some want to make Poland Germany again, others what to keep non-Europeans out of Europe with all means necessary
I agree. Ironic isn’t the right term because while these groups are often tied to different national identities, they often share white nationalism, conservative Christianity, etc. and have been able to agree on a common set of enemies. This would fall apart quickly if they had to govern together but it’s fairly effective until they run out of enemies.
If the sentiment that regions beyond the Oder-Neiße are part of Germany is fringe, why label Sachsen, Thüringen and Sachsen-Anhalt as Mitteldeutschland? Why is there a Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) but not an Ostdeutscher Rundfunk, as an analog to NDR, WDR, SDR? It's territory can hardly be seen as the middle of Germany. If you hold the belief that Schlesien is a part of Germany, however, that label suddenly makes sense.
The term Mitteldeutschland has a far longer history going back to the 19th century - to define a different collection of region between the big Northern Germany (then prussian dominated) and Southern Germany (then Bavarian and partially Austrian dominated). I'm not sure if it was wise to keep using it because of misunderstandings like yours, but there seem to a form of mitteldeutscher identity. And what is called Ostdeutschland ist not just MDR but also RBB and NDR. Take a look at the map: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:ARD_Karte.svg
> It is very ironic that far right extremists organise themself globally
The one that’s baffling to me is the Irish far-right movement, which is essentially a satellite movement of the British one (to the point where one of their propaganda rags, “The Irish Light” is literally a localised version of a British one called “The Light”). Given the history between the UK and Ireland, and the general attitude of the British far-right to Ireland, this is all just bizarre.
While there are a couple of Ireland-and-Northern-Ireland political parties, the far right is the only truly integrated political movement between Ireland and the UK as a whole. The whole thing is very odd. It’s er, not where you’d normally expect internationalism.
Bezos is very far from sainthood, but he is also not nearly as interesting. I make tiktoks about project management and management in general. Elon's loud management-by-exhortation style is a vivid lesson in how not to do it.
There is a fascinating contrast between his successes, like Model 3, and subsequent failures in which he stopped listening and, apparently, started telling people around him to just make it work, as in Cybertruck.
I've also covered how the 787 project and the Boeing CEOs of that time are the origin of a lot of Boeing's trouble today, and how Jack Welch was an epic bullshitter, but Elon puts them in the shade for the number of fascinating examples. What's interesting about Tim Cook is how he can make large bets, lose some of them, like the Apple Car, and not create drama, but it's not as interesting as dead chimps and useless holes.
Is the issue that they don’t provide a platform to Nazis—sometimes literally Nazis or descendants of Nazi collaborators, as we see here in mainland Europe?
I’ve seen him retweet a false narrative from a local known guy deep in the Blood, Soil, Honour, and Loyalty scene, who has made headlines for posting the most vile content imaginable even going to camps in East-Europe to "train for the race war". And when people makes him aware, he doesn't care one bit.
But that’s not even the main problem. If he claims to be a free speech absolutist, why does Twitter overlook racial slurs and violent threats but deem the word 'cisgender' problematic?
> I don't see this kind of attention given to figures like Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, or Warren Buffett.
All three work hard to stay out of the public gaze.
For example, Tim Cook kept his sexuality under wraps for decades until he was outed in the media, Warren Buffett almost never criticized sitting officials and living in Omaha means he's out of the media gaze, and before Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO he was notoriously private about his personal life (and is more than making up for it post-CEO life and thus shielding Jassy)
Lots of billionaires are notoriously private - can you name the top 50 richest Americans without resorting to Wikipedia or Forbes?
I barely know anything about America, and I honestly don't care. It's just weird seeing everyone talking about every little thing Elon does, scanning Twitter for every mistake or comment he makes.
I wouldn’t call promoting obvious propaganda from the leader of a far right political party a little thing, particularly given the context (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots ). Like, the most charitable possible interpretation is that he is _extremely_ gullible, to the point that he’s incompetent to have a platform at all and should have his tweets reviewed by a grown-up.
In this case it's because he controls a major social media platform. He is in charge of the obsession itself.
It was true before that, and that's because he likes being outrageous in a way that Bezos, Cook, and Buffett don't. We could obsess about them if they wanted it, but they don't seem to want it. They're not totally silent in public but they tend to avoid being especially obnoxious.
Musk bought the platform precisely so that he could amplify his own voice and opinions. It's no surprise that people pay attention.
Beyond the obvious answer that Twitter was influential in the tech industry and many people here worked there or used open source projects which had ties there, Musk gets a lot of attention because he seeks it out. He really likes to portray himself as the hero-industrialist saving the world from dysfunctional “politically-correct” governments which was common in the 80s and 90s sci-fi novels he almost certainly was exposed to at a young age. A lot of people here really wanted that to be true - the dream of rockets to Mars, brain interfaces, etc. is cool and the way he talks about “real engineering” sounds really appealing to anyone who’s cranking out CRUD apps at an MBA-dominated company.
He could have kept his mouth shut and enjoyed that reputation for the rest of his life, but he seems to crave being in the limelight and especially painting himself as some kind of hero standing up to orthodoxy. When he bought Twitter, a common comparison was to an alcoholic buying a bar and I think that’s really true. He’s thrown away billions on incredibly bad business decisions starting by locking himself into an agreement to pay twice as much as Twitter was worth, financed in a way which immediately created a huge cash flow problem, and promptly drove away enough advertisers to make the problems even worse.
Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, etc. would likely not have bought it in the first place but if they had, it wouldn’t have been amateur hour. They would have paid an appropriate amount, had a business plan which makes sense when sober, and above all they wouldn’t be spouting off in public giving people reasons to leave and linking it so heavily to the corporate brand. If Jeff Bezos was secretly an extreme Republican, he’d be talking in public about how taxes should be lower to help strengthen business or the other kinds of anodyne statements which are priced in for billionaires. If he wanted to funnel money to an extremist candidate or cause it’d be run through industry groups and PACs explicitly to avoid giving Amazon customers a reason to hesitate the next time they’re shopping. Tesla is getting slaughtered because a huge fraction of their prospective buyers have been forced to recognize that their money goes to someone with views they strongly oppose - the CEO of Toyota probably has beliefs I don’t share but I don’t know any of them and it’s not linked to the brand identity, whereas the number of people view a Tesla as a MAGA hat on wheels must be giving their marketing department daily stress headaches.
> and the way he talks about “real engineering” sounds really appealing to anyone who’s cranking out CRUD apps at an MBA-dominated company.
Tbh, I think this bit is aimed squarely at laypeople. Even people who only work on CRUD apps would likely raise an eyebrow at, say, the “print out your last 60 days of code for review” thing. His ‘hardcore engineering’ thing is blatantly absurd to anyone in the industry, but… maybe convincing to people who aren’t?
True, I’m just thinking that a lot of the people I saw being total fanboys hewed pretty closely to the new IT dude who is convinced they’re destined for greatness just like their hero and then they wouldn’t have to do that boring stuff their boss insists on.
"The fake piece, purportedly written by a senior news reporter for the Telegraph and mocked up in the newspaper’s style, said camps in the Falklands “would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity”."
So, where is this fake article in the style of the Telegraph? Was it clearly satire? Or did it look authentic?
The most important piece is missing. Poor journalism.
Look, I realise it is tradition, on this here website, not to actually read the article, but in this case you, er, apparently read a bit of it but ignored the screenshot of the offending tweet, complete with fake news piece? Like, come on.
EDIT: Though, actually, the thing you quote doesn’t appear in the article at all. Are you commenting on the wrong article or something?
32 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 96.3 ms ] threadIt is very ironic that far right extremists organise themself globally (or earlier on European level like identarian movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identitarian_movement )
Him and David Sacks are both products of the the 1980s, when plenty of wealthy and educated White South Africans began leaving due to the Sanctions regime, but continued to hold onto regressive views about race, especially exacerbated by the instability of the 1990s.
" what to keep non-Europeans out of Europe with all means necessary " I guess thats far more popular.
Most Germans aren't aware of the German speaking minority in Silisea.
The one that’s baffling to me is the Irish far-right movement, which is essentially a satellite movement of the British one (to the point where one of their propaganda rags, “The Irish Light” is literally a localised version of a British one called “The Light”). Given the history between the UK and Ireland, and the general attitude of the British far-right to Ireland, this is all just bizarre.
While there are a couple of Ireland-and-Northern-Ireland political parties, the far right is the only truly integrated political movement between Ireland and the UK as a whole. The whole thing is very odd. It’s er, not where you’d normally expect internationalism.
I don't see this kind of attention given to figures like Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, or Warren Buffett.
There is a fascinating contrast between his successes, like Model 3, and subsequent failures in which he stopped listening and, apparently, started telling people around him to just make it work, as in Cybertruck.
I've also covered how the 787 project and the Boeing CEOs of that time are the origin of a lot of Boeing's trouble today, and how Jack Welch was an epic bullshitter, but Elon puts them in the shade for the number of fascinating examples. What's interesting about Tim Cook is how he can make large bets, lose some of them, like the Apple Car, and not create drama, but it's not as interesting as dead chimps and useless holes.
Like “why don’t people give attention to these people for doing a thing they don’t do” is a weird take.
I’ve seen him retweet a false narrative from a local known guy deep in the Blood, Soil, Honour, and Loyalty scene, who has made headlines for posting the most vile content imaginable even going to camps in East-Europe to "train for the race war". And when people makes him aware, he doesn't care one bit.
But that’s not even the main problem. If he claims to be a free speech absolutist, why does Twitter overlook racial slurs and violent threats but deem the word 'cisgender' problematic?
All three work hard to stay out of the public gaze.
For example, Tim Cook kept his sexuality under wraps for decades until he was outed in the media, Warren Buffett almost never criticized sitting officials and living in Omaha means he's out of the media gaze, and before Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO he was notoriously private about his personal life (and is more than making up for it post-CEO life and thus shielding Jassy)
Lots of billionaires are notoriously private - can you name the top 50 richest Americans without resorting to Wikipedia or Forbes?
It was true before that, and that's because he likes being outrageous in a way that Bezos, Cook, and Buffett don't. We could obsess about them if they wanted it, but they don't seem to want it. They're not totally silent in public but they tend to avoid being especially obnoxious.
Musk bought the platform precisely so that he could amplify his own voice and opinions. It's no surprise that people pay attention.
He could have kept his mouth shut and enjoyed that reputation for the rest of his life, but he seems to crave being in the limelight and especially painting himself as some kind of hero standing up to orthodoxy. When he bought Twitter, a common comparison was to an alcoholic buying a bar and I think that’s really true. He’s thrown away billions on incredibly bad business decisions starting by locking himself into an agreement to pay twice as much as Twitter was worth, financed in a way which immediately created a huge cash flow problem, and promptly drove away enough advertisers to make the problems even worse.
Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, etc. would likely not have bought it in the first place but if they had, it wouldn’t have been amateur hour. They would have paid an appropriate amount, had a business plan which makes sense when sober, and above all they wouldn’t be spouting off in public giving people reasons to leave and linking it so heavily to the corporate brand. If Jeff Bezos was secretly an extreme Republican, he’d be talking in public about how taxes should be lower to help strengthen business or the other kinds of anodyne statements which are priced in for billionaires. If he wanted to funnel money to an extremist candidate or cause it’d be run through industry groups and PACs explicitly to avoid giving Amazon customers a reason to hesitate the next time they’re shopping. Tesla is getting slaughtered because a huge fraction of their prospective buyers have been forced to recognize that their money goes to someone with views they strongly oppose - the CEO of Toyota probably has beliefs I don’t share but I don’t know any of them and it’s not linked to the brand identity, whereas the number of people view a Tesla as a MAGA hat on wheels must be giving their marketing department daily stress headaches.
Tbh, I think this bit is aimed squarely at laypeople. Even people who only work on CRUD apps would likely raise an eyebrow at, say, the “print out your last 60 days of code for review” thing. His ‘hardcore engineering’ thing is blatantly absurd to anyone in the industry, but… maybe convincing to people who aren’t?
So, where is this fake article in the style of the Telegraph? Was it clearly satire? Or did it look authentic?
The most important piece is missing. Poor journalism.
EDIT: Though, actually, the thing you quote doesn’t appear in the article at all. Are you commenting on the wrong article or something?