San Francisco is under the blows of Elon Musk.
For several months, the billionaire entrepreneur has launched an offensive against the city, symbol of the liberals. He made it the target of the war he launched against the "woke mind virus."
This expression encompasses the ideological values of the progressives or the left, including gender equality, diversity, the fight against discrimination and hate speech.
For the CEO of Tesla (TSLA), these values are one of the causes of the problems that currently undermine major American cities and mainly cities controlled by elected Democrats. San Francisco is the perfect example, he believes. He and his tech friends thus depict the capital of tech as a lawless city, where lack of safety prevails.
It is in this context of attacks that the techno king has just shared a story that sends shivers down your spine. It is important to note that, while Musk left California in 2021 to settle in Texas, Twitter, one of his companies, is still headquartered in downtown San Francisco.
'A Friend of Mine Experienced a Shooting Last Night'
According to the billionaire, one of his friends who lives in San Francisco was confronted on June 9 with a shooting, when one of the bullets pierced the wall of his home. Musk gives no further details. For example, he does not say in which neighborhood the friend lives; whether there were any injuries or at at what time the shooting took place. He also does not provide the circumstances of this serious incident. The billionaire simply says that this is the second time his friend has faced a shooting outside his home.
"A friend of mine experienced a shooting last night outside his apartment in SF and a bullet went through his wall," Musk said on Twitter on June 10. "Second time it’s happened."
The San Francisco Police department confirmed that nine people were injured in a shooting on June 9 in San Francisco's Mission District during a block party. They said it was a "targeted" shooting.
"All [victims] are expected to survive their injuries. At this time, the incident appears to be targeted and isolated. There is no known threat to the public at this time," the Police department said.
Musk has not said whether the shooting he is referring to is the one alleged by the police.
"Varying degree of injuries from non-life-threatening to life-threatening. The ages of victims are as follows: #1 23 y/o male, #2 22y/o male, #3 25 y/o male, #4 unk info at this time, #5 27 y/o male, #6 29 y/o male, #7 34 y/o male, #8 19 y/o female, #9 35 y/o male," Deputy Chief Raj Vaswani said in a tweet.
Musk seems to suggest that shootings have become a daily occurrence for San Francisco residents. As a result, the tech mogul's story reinforces the narrative he's building about San Francisco. Two days ago, he called on city law enforcement to remember to fight crime as they showed their support for the LGBTQ+ community in June dedicated to LGBTQ+ pride.
Official crime figures in the city paint a different story. Recent data from the San Francisco Police Department show that homicides are up 5% from Jan. 1 to June 4, while robberies are up by 16.1%. Motor-vehicle thefts have increased by about 6% and arson is up by 5%.
Assaults are down by 1.5% and burglaries are down by about 11%. Based on the numbers, crime is overall down by 6.9% year-on-year.
The Battle of San Francisco
Musk's crusade toward San Francisco is aimed at riding the people's frustration in order to vote the Democrats out in the next election cycle. The billionaire has never hidden his intentions because the perception that crime is on the rise is huge in the city, according to local authorities.
"SF is what happens when one party has control for several decades – no feedback loop for correction, because they never lose, no matter how bad it gets," he said last month.
The billionaire, who has almost 143 million Twitter followers, called on voters to vote Republican in the national midterm elections last November. In these elections, the Democrats increased their control of the Senate and narrowly lost control of the House of Representatives.
Musk has also previously indicated that his candidate for the 2024 presidential election is Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida. He politicized Twitter on May 24 by introducing DeSantis to users in a Twitter Spaces live audio. The interview was marked by the declarations of the two men to defeat the woke mind virus, whom they have identified as the enemy of civilization.
If Musk wins the battle of San Francisco, it would be one of the biggest victories for the right in the new culture war.
