Matchstick Man in a World on Fire

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No Grand Mystery

Recently, and in the middle of a verbal sparring match between the Afrikaner fascist billionaire who owns Twitter and the UK Prime Minister, the BBC published an article that was widely shared online asking “What is Elon Musk’s game?” Naturally, this question revolved primarily around how (and why) Musk runs Twitter, but I think understanding the reasons why he operates Twitter the way he does goes a long way towards illuminating his overall goals in our broader society; and yes, because Musk is so rich, he does clearly have broader goals for shaping Pig Empire society. Unfortunately, and likely because Musk is at times the richest man on Earth, the BBC did little to accurately answer the question despite Musk having made it pretty clear what he’s working towards for quite some time. In fact, I’ve written about it on multiple occasions so you’ll have to forgive me for repeating myself here.

The simplest and most obvious answer to the BBC’s question is that Elon Musk wants fascism. He desires fascism not just in any one country, but rather a fascist order that spreads across the entire Pig Empire. This is why he (and his wealthy reactionary backers) spent forty-four billion dollars on buying Twitter, and why he seemingly doesn’t care at all whether or not doing so makes him money directly. It’s also why he’s trying to rig the 2024 U.S. Presidential election for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, why he’s founded a fascist political action committee called America PAC, and why he’s working to support and popularize tech-authoritarian philosophies like “longtermism” and the broader TESCREAL (transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism) movement. The reason Musk invited hordes of banned fascist propagandists back to his platform while actively banning left wing accounts is the same reason he pushes fascist conspiracy theories in the broader discourse, and the same reason he argues for replacing billions of people with “artificial minds” while devoting humanity’s resources towards an improbable plan to run to Mars and escape climate catastrophe. Elon Musk craves a fascist world, and he’s prepared to spend some of his wealth up front to get it because he knows that in the long run an authoritarian society that prioritizes the power of genocidal reactionary billionaires over the survival of billions of labor class people is far more valuable to him and folks like him than a few billion dollars of seed capital.

Look my friends, it may well be true that Elon Musk is also an emotionally insecure loser who desperately craves the approval of extremely online 4Chan nazis and hates trans people because of his utterly broken relationship with his own trans daughter, but absolutely nobody spends billions and billions of dollars on a project like that without an ulterior motive; not Elon Musk and certainly not his Saudi backers who helped him buy Twitter in the first place. These unhinged clowns are employing social media to summon, amplify, and control an army of violent, angry chuds all across the Pig Empire, and then use that rabid, gibbering menace to pressure state-level actors into maintaining reactionary capitalist structures to thereby further transform society into a nightmare dystopia where rich fascists like Elon Musk call all the shots no matter how many people that harms – which I’m sorry to say, isn’t really all that drastic of a transformation, given how much power rich nazis already have over Pig Empire states and society, right here and now.

All of which leaves us with one simple question; why the hell would anyone spend billions of dollars on a project like this? If the truth is to be told, the answer isn’t particularly obscure or complex, but identifying the reason doesn’t serve the interests of our ruling class or the larger capitalist order. This is why you’re not going to hear honest answers about why guys like Musk are promoting fascist ideology throughout all aspects of our society from corporate or pseudo-corporate media such as the BBC. Would it surprise you to learn that the simple answer really is just capitalism, and whether or not a capitalist order can survive a climate crisis that will kill billions of people who aren’t rich capitalists?

The plain and simple truth is that as a species, we are out of planet to exploit, and the bill for four centuries of ecological plunder is coming due. Either capitalism itself goes, or a planet habitable by over eight billion humans does, and the rich reactionaries boiling us all like soup for profit know that. This is an existential crisis for our ruling class because the changes required to prevent billions of people from dying as the planet burns to a crisp will end not only capitalism, but their entire way of life. Preserving their wealth, and the power that comes with it, matters more to our ultra-rich “Masters of the Universe” than anything else. How far do you think billionaire supervillains would go to protect their dominance over life in the capitalist world? I think it’s safe to say we’re watching the answer to that question unfold right before our eyes every day.

By that same measure, if your plan is to literally kill off billions of people to maintain capitalism and capitalist structures, even as climate catastrophe destroys the world, you’re going to need an ideology and political structures even more coercive and inhumane than the faux democracies the Pig Empire operates through now. The obvious solution to that problem is to install fascist ideas and political structures across the so-called “western world.” Elon and his fellow tech authoritarian shitlords aren’t just battling government regulations against their social media companies, they’re waging a war against the concept of democratic (such as it is) government entirely. That’s why Musk and guys just like him are working to popularize fascist ideology and create permission structures for a wholly fascist society. The wealthiest beneficiaries of capitalism need fascism to maintain their way of life on a boiling planet as billions are sacrificed to the money god. But I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for corporate media minions, who get paid to shower praise on the rich and powerful, to explain that to you.

 

 

– Nina Illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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