Powerful letter, I really like how he says it’s important to speak out!
a so-called inventor whose greatest invention is his own image
Beautiful.
I appreciate the distinction between Elon being ideologically a Nazi and Elon being transactional i.e. “in” with Nazis.
I guess it’s preferable that he’s not a Nazi per se, but I don’t really see a point in acting any differently based on that distinction. Fuck Nazis and equally fuck Nazi sympathizers.
I don’t think a value judgement is valid here. It’s all bad and the magnitude of bad isn’t relevant anymore.
What this changes is our ability to predict his future actions and how to react to them. We can immediately dismiss any ideological arguments that he makes, as they are all transactional to him. ie:
Free speech claims mean nothing from him, it is merely a tool to accrue more power (obvious).
He works to prevent climate change through Tesla (maybe less obvious?).
We can predict he will (try to) ditch any affiliation with Nazism if it becomes clear there is no path to future power.
We can predict he will sell state secrets as soon as the potential rewards outweigh the risks.
I don’t think trying to evaluate whether this makes him better or worse is valuable. I think being able to better understand his motives provide us the ability to predict his future behavior.
Fuck Elon Musk
