Elon Musk is being put into a “Hitler-of-the-month club” alongside figures like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, claimed journalist Matt Taibbi on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Taibbi, who formerly worked for Rolling Stone, is one of a handful of journalists collaborating with the Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX CEO on publishing a tranche of Twitter company documents known as the “Twitter Files”. Taibbi now publishes on Substack.
“We’ve always done this with foreigners, whether it’s Noriega or Saddam Hussein or Milošević or Assad or whatever it is – we have a playbook for cranking out negative information about foreigners who get in our way, for whatever reason,” Taibbi said on Mr Rogan’s Spotify show on Tuesday.
“But now we’ve kind of refined that technique for domestic people who are inconvinent,” Taibbi continued. “They did it with Trump, obviously. They tried to do it with Tucker Carlson, with you – you got a taste of that a few times – and with Elon, he went from being the guy who made electric cars sexy to something to the right of Viktor Orban in like 10 seconds. It’s amazing.”
Mr Rogan, who moved to Texas around the same time Mr Musk did, said people who believe that Mr Musk’s politics have taken a conservative turn are not basing their belief on any evidence.
“What examples do you have? They don’t have an example,” Mr Rogan said. “They just have this narrative that reached them, this signal: Elon bad now.”
“Right,” Taibbi replied.
In reality, Mr Musk has openly embraced reactionary politics in the last several years.
He endorsed Republican candidates for Congress in November and has reinstated the accounts of white supremacists and anti-trans activists on Twitter, amplified right-wing conspiracy theories, disparaged workers rights and repeatedly lashed out at “wokeness”.
Mr Musk’s recent political stances represent a clear departure from his public behaviour prior to the Covid pandemic, when he donated to candidates in both political parties and described himself as a moderate who did not adhere to any political orthodoxy.
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party,” Mr Musk tweeted in May last year. “But they have become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold...”
Mr Musk has emerged as a figure of significant public concern in recent months since he purchased Twitter and made a number changes to significantly alter the platform.
