Elon Musk was raised in a South Africa quite different from the one that exists today. When he left in 1988, apartheid, which instituted racial segregation, was still in effect. The country’s white minority still ran the government. And opposition leader Nelson Mandela was still in prison.
Musk said in an interview — no longer available — that he left his native country to avoid conscription into the military.
“Spending two years suppressing black people didn’t seem to be a great use [of the] force,” the tech billionaire said in the interview.
With that in mind, what to make of Musk’s subscription to a pro-apartheid account on X, the social media platform he owns?
Musk pays $5 a month for “bonus content and extra perks” on the account, “Boer” (@twatterbaas), which regularly disparages South Africa’s Black population while calling for power to be returned to whites.
This recent tweet provides a good barometer of the account’s politics:
“Atrica (sic) has 54 countries, 1.487 billion people. On the Southern tip lays South Africa, with the largest Economy and best infrastructure. Guess what makes South Africa different from the rest of Africa? 4.6 million white people.”
In one post, Boer told “racist Blacks” of South Africa to “stop being selfish and transfer the strategical jobs and planning to us whites of this country.”
“Why do blacks like to destroy and break what white man made?” he asked in another.
The revelation about Musk’s membership comes days after he touted German’s AfD party, which has been accused of resurrecting Nazi-era ideology and slogans.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote Friday after re-posting a video from a far-right political activist.
So is the Tesla founder a racist?
Musk’s upbringing and past statements paint one picture. He was raised by a father who belonged to an anti-apartheid political party and served on the city council in Pretoria. Errol Musk told The New York Times his son questioned apartheid from a young age; former classmates of recalled his defending a Black student from a slur in his multicultural school.
But his grandfather, J.N. Haldeman was “a pro-apartheid, antisemitic conspiracy theorist who blamed much of what bothered him about the world on Jewish financiers,” according to the New Yorker.
Haldeman moved to Pretoria two years after the racist regime took over and defended it through his life.
“Every day the brain-washers repeat and emphasize the things they want us to believe,” Haldeman wrote in May 1960. “As examples ‘The Natives are ill-treated,’ ‘underpaid,’ ‘underprivileged,’ ‘separate development is wrong,’ ‘apartheid is un-Christian.’ Every day newspapers, magazines, commercial radio newscasters, bioscopes (motion pictures), din this into the conscious and subconscious minds of the public.”
“People who know it is 99% untrue repeat these lies emphatically and emotionally,” he asserted.
Of course, it’s unfair to impugn Musk based on his grandfather’s warnings. But in light of who he follows and endorses, many are wondering whether the Skylink CEO harbors racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. He’s certainly allowed more accounts to push hate onto X, claiming he’s merely a defender of free speech.
“Who could have predicted that an apartheid-era billionaire born and raised in South Africa would be a white supremacist fascist?” wrote one reader on Mediaite.
“He’s a paid subscriber. He can’t claim to have clicked subscribe by accident,” wrote another.
But if true, would Musk pay any consequences. It’s not like his “X” account will be silenced.
“Elon cannot be cancelled🤣🤣” celebrated one fan on Mediaite.
“You really think this dude likes black people? 🤣,” bemused another
