From Elon Musk, asked what he thinks about companies that have stopped advertising on Twitter in response to antisemitic comments—including one of his own—posted a couple of weeks ago:
Go fuck yourself.
Musk is once again demonstrating his keen understanding of the business world here. Advertisers don't like having their ads appear next to hate speech, but Musk continues to think of routine site moderation as capitulation to the woke mind virus. In reality it's just respect for the needs of corporate sponsors. Every medium that relies on advertisers is well aware that they want a 0% chance of being associated with anything that consumers hate.
In any case, Musk seems to know very well what this means to him:
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is to kill the company,” Musk said.... If X does go bankrupt, the public will blame censorious advertisers, not him or his actions, Musk said, vowing not to bow to pressure from outside companies or critics.
Interestingly, Musk admitted during this interview that his antisemitic post "was one of the most foolish he had ever made, and said he was not an antisemite." I believe that, actually. I think he's just gotten himself so wound up with his jihad against the woke mind virus that he can barely think straight. He made the bank shot connection from George Soros funding woke organizations to those organizations favoring the interests of Black people—and his brain blurted out "Jews are anti-white." This is less an indication of antisemitism than it is the sign of a disordered mind that's developed an irrational rage against wokeness.
Nonetheless, he said what he said. What's more, the Times article says he admitted his remark was foolish, but doesn't suggest he apologized for it. That would be a pretty good first step.
I think Musk values his reputation more than he values money.
Unfortunately for him, his reputation is not what he thinks it is.
Elon Musk and the dead parrot,
https://twitter.com/flowabug/status/1730037009098371085/photo/1
Speaking of parrots:
Henry Kissinger Is An Ex-Parrot
Who is next to shuffle off?
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1729701667824681179
Is it time for a l'orange deathwatch?
What's amazing is just what an immature brat he is. I've known a whiny silver-spoon prima donna, but good lord, he's such a shithead.
Not to mention, every product he touches catches fire and explodes.
Whiny, resentful brats who would rather break their toys rather than share are going to be the death of the country. There, my old-man quota is fulfilled.
Off subject, but Kissinger dead, 100 years too late.
that's a whole lot of speculation about some elaborate connections musk made between soros, "wokeness" and jews leading to his anti-semitic bullshit instead of just accepting the much simpler explanation that he's a racist and an anti-semite.
That wasn't the first time he did it. Won't be the last, either.
Seriously. Why bother speculating?
I don't care what goes on in Musk's head. What's relevant is what he does.
And when what he does is indistinguishable from what an antisemite does? Well, anybody can do that math.
+1
👍👍👍
That would be a pretty good first step.
Hahahahano. That would suggest Musk thought he was wrong, as opposed to simply having misjudged how viciously the Woke Media would abuse him for innocently voicing his opinions. Really, if he made an error, it was to be too honest and to believe too much in what should be the promise of the American Way. Truly, if anyone here deserves an apology, it is Musk himself!
+1
After he admitted his remark was stupid he then said Pizzagate was true.
I know. The guy is off his rocker. Nasty, hateful, unimaginably rich. What a combination.
He literally apologized in the interview right after he said this. But let's not let facts get in the way of the narrative.
X CEO Yaccarino addresses Musk’s 'go f--- yourself' comment to advertisers
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/x-ceo-addresses-musks-go-f-yourself-comment-to-advertisers.html?__source=androidappshare
Musk apologized for his inflammatory comments on X during the interview and told Sorkin that a particular post, where agreed with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, was “one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I’ve ever done on the platform.”
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” he said.
He apologized for *making* the tweet, not the sentiment contained in it. I'm sure he regrets making the tweet for obvious reasons, but doesn't believe himself to be wrong about what it said.
"X CEO Yaccarino addresses Musk’s 'go f--- yourself' comment to advertisers"
His bootlicking toady said nothing of interest about his GFY comment and Musk never apologized for it. He said he was sorry for his anti-Semitic tweet, but I suspect it was because it cost him money.
Musk seems obviously to be taking a lot of some kind of drugs.
In a few months he'll be trying to buy Howard Hughes' skeleton because he needs to talk to it.
I'd be fine with that.
He has talked openly about taking ketamine and his friends say he keeps increasing the dose
Either taking a lot of drugs, or consciously _not_ taking drugs that he should be to temper what seem to be some pretty wild mood swings.
There's rumors that he's heavily abusing Ketamine.
It's not even a boycott. Advertisers aren't working together to pressure Twitter. They just see it as a bad risk for their advertising dollars. The free market in action!
Again, "wokeness" is the right's euphemism or dog-whistle for resistance to bigotry, which means supremacy of the white "race" and Christian religion. Anti-semitism has really always been part of most kinds of bigotry. When most people on the right are objecting to wokeness, they are asserting bigotry, which typically includes antisemitism. There is a peculiar conflict in evangelicals' idealization of Israel as some kind of promised land, but that does not rule out discrimination against actual Jews.
Some aspects of "wokeness" are excessive and some individuals and groups are not reasonable or fair. Everyone is susceptible to partisanship. But splitting the country on racial and religion lines has been a deliberate objective of the Republican party for over fifty years, and they are responsible for the poisonous level that partisanship has reached.
Well said.
However, the evangelical idealization of Israel is purely eschatological. They have no interest at all in the Jewish people per se -- only instrumentally inasmuch they are deemed to be fulfilling prophecy. So it's not really a conflict at all.
Your description of, or understanding of, Wokeness is incomplete:
“Again, ‘wokeness’ is the right's euphemism or dog-whistle for resistance to bigotry”
Describing Wokeness as little more than resistance to bigotry is like describing Trump’s MAGA movement as nothing more than resistance to open borders.
Sure, there’s an element of truth in each statement, and there’s even a legitimate argument that can be made in favor of each position.
But each of those descriptions is ludicrously incomplete. No matter what kernel of value each movement may contain, it is utterly overwhelmed in each case by illiberal extremism.
Wokeness is a reductive and fundamentalist creed that completely forsakes means in favor of its chosen ends. In its ostensible pursuit of its deeply flawed vision of justice, Wokeness opposes free speech as harmful, decries individuality as dangerous, and condemns dissent as (and I’m not making this up) genocidal.
And if you’re unfamiliar with these points then I’m sorry but you’ve either failed to pay attention or you’re just willfully ignorant.
The problem with Musk (and others of his ilk) isn’t an opposition to Wokeness. The problem is a stupid opposition to Wokeness. The problem is an opposition to Wokeness that’s just as reductive, misguided, and illiberal as Wokeness itself. The problem is that our extremist factions continue to further radicalize each other.
But we do in fact need more resistance to Wokeness if our free society with its open expression of contrasting viewpoints and the harmonious intermingling of its races, ethnicities, religions, ideologies, sexualities, and languages is to prevail.
That resistance to Wokeness, however, needs to be intelligent. It needs to counter puritanical rigidity with intellectual resilience. It needs to meet militant arrogance with broad minded humility. And it needs to fight unyielding cynicism with unrelenting hope.
"I’m not making this up"
Sure sounds like you are.
and it's not even broad-minded or humble bullshit
Exactly how many gallons of Kool-Aid have you consumed?
If your thesis were, "Some people take the fight against bigotry too far and turn it into a tribal marker whie appearing to forget entirely what the actual goals of the struggle are" I would probably agree with it.
People do all kinds of strange and extreme things, of course they do.
And you appear to be really really reactive to that stuff. So much that you spend your energy complaining about them instead of making things better.
I know a man for whom a sort of literalist witch hunt harmed quite materially in a manner that while unjust, was not unpredictable, since he is very combative by nature, despite have pretty clear liberal leanings.
Don't be that guy. Do the work to realize what's actually important and try not to let anything move you off that spot. Cultivate a bit of humility in the form of just listening to what other people say about their experiences without pushback. That takes a lot of discipline, but I bet you are capable of it.
By the way, I'm not suggesting you need to pay a lot of attention to what white people (I'm white) say about the experiences of black people, or native peoples or whatever. Try to go to the source, it's much more interesting and informative.
Is that the entire quote, or is he repeating? I ask because in https://sfist.com/2023/11/29/elon-musk-to-fleeing-advertisers-go-f-k-yourselves/ a somewhat longer/fuller version is given:
The fuller quote doesn’t make it any better. Advertisers are still being told to go fuck themselves, which isn’t going to make them more amenable to hand money over to Musk.
No better, but less Telephone Game.
Watched the video of Musk. Not a psychologist, but I was struck how much his behavior matched that of a man I once watched having a nervous breakdown.
Interestingly, Google has been serving up big brand ads on porn sites. That's uncomfortable for brands, but at least it's not offensive, racist, bigoted antisemitism...well, unless you're a certain brand of Christian, in which case do not smite the antisemite and scorn the porn.
Wait for the conservative backlash to Google in 3, 2, 1...
Neither are acceptable in polite company, but porn is tacitly more acceptable than racism, in that a lot more people (hopefully! I’ve not studied it!) use porn than use racism in their day to day lives, and there are less obvious victims in porn* than in racism.
*yes I’m aware trafficking and exploited victims exist and other people regret doing it years later, but most people in porn are willing participants in it, whether they’re “giving” or “receiving.” Whereas a good half or more of “participants” in racism - and 100% of the “recipients” of it - are not there willingly.
I was about to say I disagree with you because I think there are more people that are racist then there are that watch porn. But then I re-read your comment and realized you said "use racism". So I would think you are correct.
The point I was going to make is that there are degrees of racism. It's not some litmus test. For example, there's a big difference between laughing at a comedian's racist joke and burning crosses on a black person's front yard. I think the vast majority of people have some degree of racism.
Ya think? 🙂
I suppose it depends on where you draw your line on the spectrum of unconscious bias to malicious racism.
Friendly reminder that Musk cops to self-medicating with ketamine, an astoundingly bad idea under the best circumstances, and thus, likes to play with his forty billion dollar toy while deep in the depths of a k-hole.
Bank shot connections? He's just getting more and more royally frustrated that the world simulation he sponsors in his head isn't obeying him-- keeps running away from him, dammit! That's no way for his matrix to treat him!
How dare the universe not comply with the visions in his head! He's rich goddammit!
Ketamine brain :-/
Would have far preferred Dave Leonhardt as the interviewer. That guy is far too deferential.
For instance, it’s obvious Musk is a bog typical antisemite, seeing conspiracies everywhere. And this guy just lets him get away with it.
Still using the Xitter? I’ve not ever seen the value. By now it’s hilarious that people are abused and harassed there. They must like it deep down.
"The advertisers" are "responsible" for wrecking Twitter just like Hamas is "responsible" for all those Gazan victims of Israeli bombing and missiles strikes.
I can believe that Musk is not the kind of antisemite implied by the tweet he called "the actual truth." And he certainly is in some kind of disordered mental state. But he's been promoting and publicly agreeing with white supremacist and hard right tweets (or is it "xits" now?) for quite some time. I think he must have had some Nazi-adjacent opinions as a pre-existing condition.
Oh, Kevin. This is hardly the first time Musk has said something anti-semitic. No doubt he's a spoiled brat who got himself tied up in knots, and who enjoys fancying himself someone willing (eager?) to poke the bear, etc. etc. But my experience tells me there's something to be learned from who bear-pokers go after when they're in bear-poking mode. On an individual basis, I mean. In Musk's case, it's the left (of course) and, for our purposes here, it's Jews.
He sure sounds like an anti-Semite to me.
Ironically, Musk comes from a time when apartheid South Aftrica was Israel's dearest friend in the world (excluding Uncle Sucker, of course.)
since Melon Musk seems intent on re-creating the cesspits of 4-chan, maybe he should see how much advertising revenue said cesspits actually generated
cuz i'm not sure a xitter-level debt load is sustainable under a 4-chan-level income stream
Kevin, this post meeds a correction. Musk literally apologized for it in that interview. The mainstream media doesn't like him and prefers to lie, so it may not have been in the article you read but it's on lots of sites and it's on video in the interview: X CEO Yaccarino addresses Musk’s 'go f--- yourself' comment to advertisers
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/x-ceo-addresses-musks-go-f-yourself-comment-to-advertisers.html?__source=androidappshare
Musk apologized for his inflammatory comments on X during the interview and told Sorkin that a particular post, where agreed with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, was “one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I’ve ever done on the platform.”
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” he said.
Did he apologize for all of the other antisemitic posts?
Or the one supporting Pizzagate?
I haven't seen a lot of video of Elon, but I did with this appearance, and is he always this deeply, uncomfortably Asperger's-y, or is this a recent development? Because he looks profoundly ill at ease with the whole "understanding how to respond like a neurotypical human being" thing.
An apology could have been a good first step. A bit late for that now.
Also, for such an (allegedly) smart guy, he's confused about what "blackmail" is. Did he graduate from college?
I completely disagree. Musk is an unreconstructed child of apartheid, whose father was a virulent antisemite. He kept it well hidden until he had enough money to not worry about it anymore.
After all, immediately after his mea culpa on his antisemitic post, he said this:
"During the sit-down, interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Musk about his post agreeing with an X user’s accusation that “Jewish communities” push “hatred against whites.” After ostensibly expressing regret for the post, which led to companies like Disney and Netflix pulling ads from X, Musk effectively reversed course. “Prominent people in the Jewish community,” he claimed, helped fund “demonstrations for Hamas in every major city in the West.”
He added: “If you generically, without condition, fund persecuted groups … some of those persecuted groups, unfortunately, want your annihilation.”
(source: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-interview-advertisers-antisemitism-rcna127374)
He's so sorry he doubled down on it. The man is a flat out bigot who, for a while, thought he could make more money playing a normal person.
People are speculating whether the White South African Apartheid is having his coming-out party, now that he feels comfortable expressing himself freely on his platform that celebrates racism as protected speech.