Like Rupert Murdock, Elon Musk Intends To Cash In On American Racism

No one should be delu­sion­al about what is hap­pen­ing with Elon Musk’s push to acquire the social media plat­form Twitter.
“I have the mon­ey; now I want the clout.”
It is a con­cept as nor­mal as apple pie; Donald Trump could­n’t make it, but he sure as hell faked it until he did. Only, he did not win fame; he acquired infamy. He will always be remem­bered as the only pres­i­dent installed by a for­eign pow­er, twice impeached in a sin­gle term, and then attempt­ed to over­throw the con­sti­tu­tion­al order to stay in pow­er illegally.

Like Donald Trump, Australian-born Rupert Murdoch inher­it­ed mon­ey from his father. Trump inher­it­ed his father’s real estate busi­ness, and Rupert Murdoch inher­it­ed his father’s news­pa­per busi­ness in Adelaide, Australia.
Trump is report­ed to have squan­dered his father’s for­tune, although arguably cre­at­ing wealth for him­self. However, there are spec­u­la­tors who argue that Trump’s debt to real asset ratio makes him a fail­ure as a busi­ness tycoon.
On the oth­er hand, Murdoch took his father’s Adelaide Newspaper and turned it into a mas­sive con­glom­er­ate across Australia, Great Britain, and the United States.
In the process, Rupert Murdoch cre­at­ed incred­i­ble wealth for him­self and is now report­ed­ly worth a whop­ping B$21.7 at the age of 91.

Rupert Murdoch’s ‘FOX news’ empire in the United States has been noth­ing short of giv­ing alco­hol to a vio­lent mob. FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion and out­right lies have been indif­fer­ent to FCC rules of con­duct, essen­tial­ly act­ing as a super spread­er of mis­in­for­ma­tion, hate, misog­y­ny, and xeno­pho­bia to a coun­try steeped in racism and hatred.
In July 2011, Murdoch faced alle­ga­tions that his com­pa­nies, includ­ing the News of the World, had been reg­u­lar­ly hack­ing the phones of celebri­ties, roy­al­ty, and pub­lic cit­i­zens. Murdoch faced police and gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions into bribery and cor­rup­tion by the British gov­ern­ment and FBI inves­ti­ga­tions in the US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a direc­tor of News International.
Many of Murdoch’s papers and tele­vi­sion chan­nels have been accused of biased and mis­lead­ing cov­er­age to sup­port his busi­ness inter­ests and polit­i­cal allies. Some have cred­it­ed his influ­ence with major polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in the UK, US, and Australia.

In 2020 the New York Times said Fox News has long exert­ed a grav­i­ta­tion­al pull on the Republican Party in the United States, where it most recent­ly ampli­fied the nativist revolt that has fueled the rise of the far-right and the elec­tion of President Trump. Mr. Murdoch’s news­pa­per The Sun spent years demo­niz­ing the European Union to its read­ers in Britain, where it helped lead the Brexit cam­paign that per­suad­ed a slim major­i­ty of vot­ers in a 2016 ref­er­en­dum to endorse pulling out of the bloc. Political hav­oc has reigned in Britain ever since. And in Australia, where his hold over the media is most exten­sive, Mr. Murdoch’s out­lets pushed for the repeal of the country’s car­bon tax and helped top­ple a series of prime min­is­ters whose agen­da he dis­liked, includ­ing Malcolm Turnbull.

There ought to be no sur­prise that the polit­i­cal right in America would grav­i­tate and fall in love with Rupert Murdoch’s instru­ments of lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion that have sup­port­ed white racism cul­mi­nat­ing in the January 6^th attack on the Congress.
There should be no sur­prise that the far right is in a tizzy that anoth­er for­eign-born bil­lion­aire Elon Musk has pur­chased the social media plat­form Twitter.
One of the terms used to describe Musk is ‘LIBERTARIAN” .
The term Libertarian is char­ac­ter­ized as a view in pol­i­tics and phi­los­o­phy that focus­es on lib­er­ty. Libertarianism says that it is usu­al­ly bet­ter to give peo­ple more free choice, and it also says that the gov­ern­ment should have less con­trol over people.
Then again, the same term was used to describe Charles and David Koch, bil­lion­aire broth­ers who grew their father’s empire at Koch indus­tries and used much of their polit­i­cal dona­tions to advance racist right-wing poli­cies in the United States.

Elon Musk was born in Apartheid Pretoria South Africa in 1971. Musk arguably cre­at­ed his own wealth begin­ning with the cre­ation of his web soft­ware com­pa­nies Zip2 and Kimbal.
He is worth an esti­mat­ed 264.6 bil­lion USD today, and now he wants to deter­mine what free speech is in his ‘lib­er­tar­i­an’ way, not accord­ing to the fifth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion or, bet­ter, hav­ing our God-giv­en right to free speech respect­ed, but speech accord­ing to apartheid Elon.
Libertarian free speech, accord­ing to Elon Musk, seems to be to have Donald Trump back on Twitter after he was ban­ished for life from the plat­form for spread­ing lies and misinformation.
This prospect has Twitter employ­ees up in arms as they have no idea what the plat­form is to become under its new own­er, who already has a pen­chant for lies and spread­ing false information.
There are uncon­firmed reports Musk wants Trump back on Twitter, but this may not square with Trump, who has grand designs on his own start­up plat­form called “TRUTH social.” If ever there was irony.
Let us be rea­son­able here; if the reports are true that this newest nar­cis­sist on the block wants Trump back on Twitter, it is all about mon­ey; it has noth­ing to do with free speech.
Just as Rupert Murdoch’s FOX net­work was able to mon­e­tize American racism, Musk believes he too should cash in on the igno­rant can­cer called racism.
Neither Rupert Murdoch nor Elon Musk cares about free speech, nor do they care about the poi­son they are putting into the body politic; they are greedy cor­po­ratists who have seen the poten­tial to become filthy rich from America’s igno­rant and stub­born affin­i­ty for racial animus.
Let us call it what it is…

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, a free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.