Summary
Elon Musk called for the firing of Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long after she exposed racist tweets from Marko Elez, a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee who later resigned.
Long’s report revealed Elez had posted remarks promoting racism and eugenics.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” Elez posted in July, according to the Journal’s review of archived posts.
Musk, who claims to support free speech, labeled Long “disgusting and cruel” and demanded that she should be fired.
Critics noted the hypocrisy of Musk advocating for a journalist’s removal over accurate reporting on a public official’s misconduct.
I am a free speech absolutist myself: I like my enemies to out themselves as facist, and to be able to tell my like-minded comrades what should be done to those facists.
Elon is using free speech as a sword and shield, while not offering that freedom to others. He is first and foremost a coward, and secondly a hypocrite.
He’s probably the worst example. I don’t know if he was actually free speech in the beginning, but now he certainly seems deceptive, controlling speech, and using his platform to quiet any dissenters. Free speech is one thing but there should be consequences for harmful speech
But how do you rationalize the clear harm to society from misleading, divisive, violent speech? Where were the consequences for those instigating treason a few januaries ago? Where are the consequences for the illness and death caused vaccine and other health misinformation? Where are the consequences for being the fool that is manipulate into spreading these?
While I see your point and would have agreed for most of my life, speech without consequences has caused some serious harm to millions of people and the stability of our society. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of that speech, but so far free speech online seems to have mostly escaped consequences
If I had a family member die of COVID, I should be able to successfully sue for wrongful death whatever idiot persuaded her not to get vaccinated
And yes whatever idiot of a national leader deliberately and maliciously countermanded their medical advisors and and overwhelming scientific advice on a pandemic, and caused hundreds of thousands of additional death, should be tried and potentially guilty of every one of those deaths