Elon Musk is used to winning most of the battles he fights, even those that seem to be lost causes.
The serial entrepreneur has, for example, won many rounds against short-sellers, investors who bet stock prices will drop. These investors figure that the stocks they target are overvalued or that the companies behind the stocks won't be able to sustain the growth they promised to investors.
Tesla, (TSLA) like other tech groups like Apple (AAPL) and Nvidia, (NVDA) is one of the companies in which a lot of short positions have been built.
Musk managed to show short-sellers that the electric-vehicle manufacturer could mass-produce cars, become profitable over the long term and expand internationally with two factories, one in Shanghai and another near Berlin in Germany.
Defeat the 'Woke Mind Virus'
He thus managed to make people forget that Tesla twice came close to filing for bankruptcy.
The company currently produces five models: the Model 3 entry-level sedan, the Model S luxury sedan, the Model Y midsize SUV, the Model X luxury SUV and the Tesla Semi. In a few months, Tesla (TSLA) will complete this range with its very first pickup truck, the Cybertruck.
There are also his legal battles he's won, even though those matters started out badly.
In summer 2018, as the world sought to rescue children trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk called Vernon Unsworth a "pedo guy" on Twitter. That's because the British diver accused him of "a publicity stunt" by sending a miniature submarine to help extract the Thai schoolboys.
The billionaire successfully defended himself against a defamation lawsuit Unsworth brought against him in Los Angeles.
Recently, a San Francisco jury cleared him of stock-market-manipulation charges after he claimed in the summer of 2018 to have secured financing to take Tesla private.
The plaintiffs claimed Musk did not have funding when he posted the tweet. But the jury decided otherwise and found in favor of the billionaire.
For several months now, Musk has been engaged in a battle to defeat what he calls the "woke mind virus," which comes down to progressive ideas. In the US this is represented by the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party.
According to Musk, the "woke mind virus" wants to impose on society values such as racial diversity, gender equality, gender identity, and ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) policies, with no thought about diversity of opinions and freedom of speech.
He says woke people are intolerant and that wokeism leads to cancel culture, in other words, to intolerance and dictatorship of thought.
After having regularly demonized the progressives on social media, the techno king, as he's known at Tesla, has just launched the second phase of his offensive against the "woke mind virus."
'Moral Cloak'
This phase of the strategy consists of stripping wokeism to show, according to him, that it is only an excuse some use to avoid looking at themselves in the mirror.
"Many go woke for the moral cloak," the billionaire posted on Twitter on Feb. 22.
"Turning judgment from metoo you," he added.
The entrepreneur suggests that wokeism is a way for some to add morality to their own lives, offsetting something immoral or bad about them.
People become woke or call themselves woke because they want to feel morally superior, Musk seems to say.
To support his point, the tech mogul takes the example of the #Metoo movement, which he considers a cornerstone in the rise of wokeism. Musk thus seems to state that some people use #Metoo to judge others and to avoid looking at, and to divert attention from, themselves.
For the billionaire, Phase 2 in the battle against wokeism seems to boil down to this: there is no ideology, no substance, behind the movement. Woke people are just people who feel bad about themselves and attack others in an effort to feel good.
Potential victory in this phase of the confrontation rests with the billionaire's fans: Will they now take up these arguments on their own? Or will they fight him off on this point?
