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In addition to being a visionary tech disruptor, Elon Musk is also a shitposter extraordinaire—and it risks getting him further into trouble with ethnic minorities.
The richest man in the world seemingly enjoys getting a rise out of people on Twitter, and deftly alternates between posting content he knows will rile his critics to subsequently playing the victim when an avalanche of online anger ensues.
On Tuesday he was called out for spreading content that might be offensive to Jews, accused of making a seemingly ignorant and insensitive decision for someone as intelligent as Musk.
“Smart? Maybe,” Musk wrote on Tuesday in response. “Does dumb stuff, definitely!”
Three Musketeers
The latest controversy began earlier on Tuesday when he shared a meme depicting himself, Kanye “Ye” West and Donald Trump as the fictional Three Musketeers, each respectively running a separate microblogging social media website: Twitter via Musk’s holding company X, Parler and Truth Social.
While Musk has a complicated relationship with fellow free speech advocate Trump, whom he portrayed in a less flattering look in the meme, he has a longstanding friendship with the arch-conservative musician.
The problem is Ye and Trump have found themselves in very hot water of late, accused of making blatantly offensive anti-semitic remarks. Various advocacy groups including the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League have taken offense at the duo.
Ye was kicked off Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic posts a week ago, and Trump caused a firestorm several days later for comments warning American Jews they needed to appreciate him as much as Evangelicals did for his support for Israel “before it is too late”.
“President Trump’s comments about American Jewry caused our diverse community pain & anguish,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote on Tuesday. “We need partners left, right and center to fight anti-semitism, not feed it.”
Perhaps fearing guilt by association, Musk deleted the Three Musketeers meme—the second time in as many days that he chose to do so. The polarizing centibillionaire rarely walks back any of his more divisive comments and his tweets have been entered as evidence against him in more than one court case.
Fortune reached out to Musk via Twitter for comment, but the Tesla CEO did not respond. Tesla itself has abolished it public relations department and does not engage with the mainstream media.
Morphed into mayhem
The move is unusual as the über-wealthy industrialist seldom feels the need to delete his posts: His 2018 “funding secured” tweet about taking Tesla private with the supposed help of the Saudis—for which he was fined by the SEC—is still online.
One of the most famous examples of Musk wiping past comments involves his deletion of posts suggesting a British critic was a child sex offender (and that Musk was willing to wager money on that). The most recent case where he succumbed to pressure came when he deleted a meme he had posted in February of Adolf Hitler angrily denying he was worse than Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Jewish and Muslim groups have voiced their concerns over the ever-increasing likelihood that a Twitter run by Musk would be less diligent in moderating the platform and would enable hate speech popular on Parler to flourish.
Last week, Canada’s largest daily newspaper accused the “bad boy billionaire” of going too far by completing his transformation “from mischief maker to miscreant”. It went on to suggest he hadn’t been hugged enough as a child, and openly called for the country (which also happens to be a major oil exporter) to boycott Tesla.
“We get it—Elon Musk gets his kicks from crossing the line,” wrote The Globe and Mail on Saturday. “His mirth has morphed into mayhem. Decent people shouldn’t stand for it.”
Musk’s company is due to report Q3 earnings later on Wednesday. Only hours earlier its investment relations department alerted investors that the consensus estimate for earnings per share were incorrect and adjusted them 8.3% lower.
Once the results are published, Musk is legally allowed to sell down his shares in the EV manufacturer in order to raise cash for the Twitter deal.
Musk nourished speculation last week of a potentially massive share buyback, with Tesla potentially purchasing billions of its own stock right off of Musk from tomorrow. Advocates argue next year would already be too late, in part due to a new excise tax imposed on such transactions.
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