> Douche

No accounting for taste

> born into ... wealth

It's a very minor thing in the big picture to be born into a 3rd world country like South Africa's top 1%.

> criminal wealth

His dad likely had some dodgy dealings, but there's every indication that he made the bulk of his money legally. Anyway, how does that reflect on Musk? Did we go back to "sins of the fathers"?

> organisations he ends up in needs to protect themselves from.

Ah yes, it's pure coincidence that so many of these organizations go on to absolutely kick ass. Let's check in on the EV situation at, say, GM or BMW in an alternate universe without Tesla. Or on the progress at ULA or Blue Origin.

> fascist

I don't think you understand what that word means. A key part of fascism is unlimited government control - the exact opposite of what he wants.

> grifter

He sells stuff? I guess that's bad in your eyes?

> who's entered into politics

How very dare he!?

> rapists, genocidaires and people on the far right,

Nice linking those three things together.

▲

cess11 7 months ago | parent [-]

Apartheid was a crime. SA occupying and running mining operations in other countries was criminal. Profiting from it means you're accumulating criminal wealth.

Mistaking first-mover advantage and access to extreme amounts of funding for "kick ass" is quite weird.

No, that's not a characteristic of fascism. He's impressed by and promotes nazis, maintains his wealth through corporativism, and so on.

No, it's that he makes wild promises, takes money and then don't deliver on them that makes him a grifter.

▲

FredPret 7 months ago | parent [-]

Just going to drill into a couple of aspects of your rant.

First, fascism is a totalitarian ideology. You could have googled it yourself instead of parroting what The View tells you. It demands 100% subordination of individual interests in service of the state. Here's a quote from Mussolini: "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist" [0] From his support of Trump and DOGE, we can conclude that he's the opposite of a fascist and wants to reduce the state. He's much more Millei than Mussolini. This is so elementary I'm a little confused as to why I have to spell it out.

Here's some more homework for you: [1]. Words like Nazi and Fascist and Communist have meanings. If we want to have a civilized society, we must first respect the meanings of words so that we can have a conversation.

Second: name a Nazi that Musk likes. Before you say Trump, here's Trump's Fine People speech. Watch the whole thing, then tell me he's a Nazi. Then also keep in mind the massive "Trump calls Nazis Fine People" hoax the media has been banging on about ever since: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGKbFA7HW-U

Here's one of him disavowing the KKK many times over a long period: https://x.com/TimRunsHisMouth/status/897112536574828544

Third, Musk is known for making wild promises, many of which are as yet undone. Nobody would care who he is if that was all there is to him. But some of his wild promises are real and part of everyday life.

Fourth, if you think he wins due to extreme funding, go read the stories of Zip2, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX. All of the above teetered on the brink of nonexistence due to being bootstrapped by Musk who was then strapped for cash.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

▲

cess11 7 months ago | parent [-]

Fascism is a phase under capitalism where ideology breaks down and the people in power are split between going into hiding and panicked power grabs through any means available. Typically it involves ultra-nationalists taking formal political power and increasing the capitalist totalitarian impulse.

The state is much, much more "all-embracing" today than what Mussolini could ever have imagined, and has been for a long time, decades.

Musk wants a more total influence on the world, he doesn't want anyone to be able to say something negative about him, for example. He wants to eradicate large swathes of people, explicitly by making it impossible to talk about them and in practice it will likely boil down to the destruction of their bodies once that fails.

You're obviously sympathetic to this neo-fascist movement. Let's hope you'll manage to leave, because by now it looks like the resistance to it has to get violent.

▲

FredPret 7 months ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	cess11 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		I'll consider setting up a terrarium but it'll take a month or two to get started. Where I live there is no grass outdoors at this time of year but I can probably find Festuca rubra seeds in the back of certain stores.