Elon Musk is using X to fuel right-wing hate in the US

Chrissy Stroop

Elon Musk rarely states his own political views outright on X (formerly Twitter), other than to make vague nods in favour of “centrism” and “free speech” – one of his favourite topics – or to adopt a general “anti-woke” attitude. The owner of X has denounced the “woke mind virus” and even taken a dig at the free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, calling it “Wokipedia” (presumably because of its editors’ attempts to maintain fact-based objectivity).

This “anti-wokism” is bad enough, of course. It’s a position that clearly animates the American right at its core and all the way to its extremes (even if some who style themselves centrist or liberal have also adopted an “anti-woke” stance in recent years). A case in point: Florida’s notoriously authoritarian governor and Republican primary presidential candidate Ron DeSantis loves to boast that “Florida is where woke goes to die.”

But Musk sometimes goes further than broad-brushed “anti-woke” sentiments – for example, in highlighting supposed threats of genocide against white people. He is also a very open supporter of racist commentator and ex-Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, a key figure in the American mainstreaming of the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory’….

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/elon-musk-desantis-x-twitter-florida-political-violence-white-supremacists-neo-nazis/