Without reading the article, I have a strong sense that I already know the answer.
I mean who wouldnt want to be a fan of this guy?
I wish I could go back to when I first saw the photo and thought it was just an unfortunate angle. I thought he couldn’t possibly have done an actual nazi salute
Nazis were the most climate-driven political party before the Greens. /s
Putting the fascist back in eco fascist? Honestly with Musk I’m not convinced about the eco part, EVs notwithstanding. Dude seems to just go for stuff he thinks it’s cool, and while I agree on the coolness factor on some (space, electric stuff, videogames) I’m less on board with some of the other stuff (putting too much in space, trying to boringly reinvent the train, trans rights, governmental positions, fascism).
Left-leaning folks are all for EVs. Turning into a Nazi wasn’t going to go over well with Tesla’s most likely customers.
A reminder that he’s not quite as smart as he believes himself to be.
It’s not just that people on the left tend to be more interested in EVs, it’s that people on the far right have made hating them a fundamental tenet of their insane belief system. We’re talking about people who go out of their way to sabotage charging stations, who modify their trucks to intentionally produce more pollution. Even if you were a MAGA type and thought “Hey, that new Model S sounds pretty sweet” there is no way you’d put up with the abject hatred it would draw from your community.
And what’s more, because of this outright hostility to their vehicles in conservative areas, Tesla has almost no infrastructure in those places. No dealerships, no charging stations. And Tesla operate their own dealerships, so they can’t just sell through existing dealers. They literally don’t have the ability to sell cars to MAGA, even if MAGA suddenly develops the inclination to buy them after all of Trump’s shilling.
You can see this in the numbers. The most MAGA friendly Tesla vehicle, the Cybertruck, is piling up on lots. No one is buying it. Despite Tesla originally struggling to hit their production targets, they’ve actually ended up shutting down lines and retasking workers because the trickle of vehicles they produced is well in excess of demand.
It’s a deeper belief than just EVs. At the beginning of the Obama administration, when there was the “cash for clunkers” program to buy back inefficient old vehicles, these people made a show of going out and buying massive Hummers and other horribly inefficient cars they’d drive around town in. When new efficiency rules went into place for halogen lightbulbs, they flocked to the stores to stock up on as many inefficient bulbs as possible.
They can be pushed to be good little consumers when needed, but it’s almost always to promote inefficiency and oppose environmentalism.
Remember Musk’s cameo in Iron Man 2? People were even calling him the “real Tony Stark.” Or when Musk guest starred on The Simpsons, and Lisa called him “possibly the greatest living inventor,” even though Musk has never invented anything in his life?
With the benefit of hindsight, this was clearly ludicrous, but even at the time it should’ve been obvious to everyone that it was nonsense. Unfortunately, it wasn’t obvious to everyone, many people bought it. That’s scary. It’s scary that a megalomaniacal narcissist with enough money can convince large numbers of people that they are something that they are not.
He was also mentioned in Rick and Morty in a similar capacity.
He was also mentioned in star trek discovery alongside Edison and Einstein. It’s amazing what a lot of money and a good PR firm can do.
Edison is a pretty good comparison, though. Both just business men that larped as inventors.
I’m sure it wasn’t intentional and I’m sure it was just the Scriptwriters being terrible at their job but Edison was a dick, possibly not Elon level but maybe that was just a lack of internet access.
Constantly stole credit for other people’s inventions and even when they were his inventions he had a whole team behind him, but always tried to imply that he was the only one involved.
I watched it more recently and a thought it was really good foreshadowing.
Spoilered for those that don’t know discovery.
Tap for spoiler
The person who said this stuff is secretly evil.
He’s exactly the type of person Edison and Elon are and so him just naming his favorite scientists and 2 of them happen to be actually evil just made me go “maybe this guy sucks” and Boom! Plot twist! He sucks!
Him aspiring to those terrible people was a good writing choice imo… Even if it might not have been intentionally a good writing choice
I would love it if Disney edited him out of both of those.
Or just redid Tony’s lines to something like, “no, for the last time, your polygon car idea sounds fucking stupid. When we block your number, it means we aren’t interested, not that you need to get new numbers.”
Was it the fascism?
Haven’t read the article but I’m guessing being a Nazi was the how.
A nice example of the distinction between reality and the media controlled world that is being shown to us. Give up the right and left and join in the search for truth. That is the less travelled path but it will make your life more interesting and honourable. Sometimes though, the truth is a hard bugger to pin down.
The Truth (and reality):
I assume you’ve done your own research and have concluded the Earth is flat and surrounded by an ice wall. They don’t want us to know about the abundance of resources on the other side so they can keep us poor.
