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Elon Musk has long shared extremist views on X, the social media platform he purchased in late 2022. But every once in a while, his activity on the platform is so extreme that it can still manage to shock even the most jaded Musk observer. That’s what happened Wednesday when the billionaire Tesla CEO retweeted an account that insisted women are “built to be traded” and are “anti-white” because they’re physically weak.
The social media exchange started on Tuesday when Musk replied to a tweet from an account called Morgonn, who asked, “Why do liberal white women hate white people so much?” Musk replied, “They’ve been programmed to do so by their teachers and the media.”
An account named Dr. Insensitive Jerk quote-tweeted Musk with a long screed that pushes the idea women are intended to be “traded” between tribes and that white women in particular conform to “dominant culture,” to stay safe because they’re “physically weak.” The tweet insists women in the West are “raised in an anti-white culture,” and that’s why white women supposedly hate white people.
“In the long term, they will be forced to remember they are white. Better they are reminded of that by white men, because the alternative is not so gentle,” the tweet ends, suggesting that anyone who isn’t white is physically abusive to women. Musk retweeted the rant from Dr. Insensitive Jerk.
Extremists will often try to argue their worldview as being grounded in some field like evolutionary psychology, implying that it’s all part of the natural order. But in case that tweet’s use of “IMO” or “in my opinion” isn’t clear enough, there’s no evidence for anything this account claims beyond his own opinion. It feels right to the misogynists, so it must be accurate.
The account Dr. Insensitive Jerk appears to frequently share racist ideas, including a tweet from Sept. 2024 that reads, “Blacks stick with the Democrat party for the same reason your cat sticks with you. Free food.” Another tweet suggested that Black people should be segregated from white people in the U.S.
Musk frequently shares far-right ideas on X, the platform he purchased in October 2022 and reshaped into the hub of extremism we know today. The billionaire allowed extreme voices to be amplified on the site in such a way that literal Nazis often go viral on the site in a way that wasn’t permitted before Musk took over. Musk, who gave two Nazi-style salutes on the day of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, even invited Nick Fuentes back to the platform after he was banned for hate speech in July 2021. Fuentes is a Holocaust denier who openly admits his hatred for Jewish people.
Other extremist voices welcomed back to X have included conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, misogynist podcaster Andrew Tate, former Trump advisor Roger Stone, and anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer, just to name a few. There is no question for anyone who spends even 10 minutes on X that it’s become a safe haven for extremism—the kind of site that used to be confined to the darker corners of the internet. But Musk has helped his far-right ideas go mainstream. And even if he no longer officially works for the federal government as the head of DOGE, he can still influence how the world operates by controlling a major source of news for large chunks of the world’s population.
None of Musk’s rhetoric is new. In November 2023, the billionaire replied to an antisemitic tweet with, “You have said the actual truth,” finally kicking off a debate in mainstream circles about whether Musk really was an extremist. The tweet, unlike many others Musk has appeared to regret, was never deleted. But Musk visited Auschwitz with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a couple of months later, which the media sometimes portrayed as a kind of apology. Musk denies being antisemitic. As it happens, November 2023 is also when the first Cybertruck deliveries started.
Musk also defended Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams after he promoted the idea of racial segregation. Adams called Black Americans a “hate group,” and said that white people should “get the hell away” from them on his YouTube channel, leading to the cartoonist being dropped by his distributor. But Musk insisted it was members of the media who were racist against white people.
With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence tools like Grok, Musk also has the opportunity to shape the way that things are fact-checked on his platform. And it seems like every time he tries to tinker with his robot, he makes it even more extreme. There was the incident back in May when Grok started randomly talking about supposed “white genocide” of farmers in South Africa, something that seemed to follow a fact-check that Musk didn’t like about the topic. And then there was the day, earlier this month, when Grok went full Nazi, praising Hitler and advocating for a second Holocaust against Jews.
Gizmodo attempted to reach Elon Musk through the X press office. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
