Elon Musk is all over the place.
He’s firing federal workers, getting access to essential government data, popping into the Oval Office, showing on Fox News alongside President Trump and even attending a White Home cabinet meeting. For some, his rampage via the establishments of the American state augurs a alternative by private interests; for others, it quantities to a Big Tech takeover. For a lot of wanting on, it’s above all a baffling bromance on the coronary heart of energy. Nevertheless one understands Mr. Musk’s function within the Trump administration, it has cemented his fame as probably the most highly effective folks on the planet.
However dialogue of Mr. Musk, particularly in america, usually misses one thing: He’s a white South African, a part of a demographic that for hundreds of years sat atop a racial hierarchy maintained by violent colonial rule. That historical past issues. For all of the attempts to explain Mr. Musk as a self-made genius or a dispassionate technocrat, he’s actually a distinctly ideological figure, one whose worldview is inseparable from rearing in apartheid South Africa. Extra than simply an eccentric billionaire, Mr. Musk represents an unresolved query: What occurs when settler rule fails however settlers stay? That’s what’s enjoying out in America at present.
Born in Pretoria in 1971, Mr. Musk had an upbringing typical of the white South African elite. The household was rich, regardless of his dad and mom divorcing when he was younger, its financial standing formed by a system designed to help whites. Mr. Musk doesn’t seem to have loved his personal training — there are tales of bullying and loneliness — however he nonetheless benefited from the benefits it conferred. Although his father, an engineer, was for a time a member of the anti-apartheid Progressive Get together, there’s little proof Mr. Musk inherited his political convictions. Like many white South Africans, Mr. Musk left the nation earlier than the collapse of racial rule, settling in Canada, the place his mom was born, in 1989.
He by no means returned, however South Africa clearly stayed with him. Take his current intervention into the talk over the nation’s land reform for example. In response to a invoice handed in January that enables in particular circumstances the expropriation of land with out compensation, Mr. Musk used his platform to counsel that white South Africans are uniquely persecuted. By no means thoughts that land restitution is a broadly accepted norm in post-colonial societies or that eminent area or obligatory buy legal guidelines do one thing comparable in america and elsewhere. The Trump administration — amplifying fringe voices, selling distorted narratives of racial victimhood and utilizing Mr. Musk’s declare as a symbolic cudgel — was solely too blissful to play alongside.
Mr. Musk’s function within the controversy suggests he has not a lot moved past the logic of apartheid as absorbed it. His ideological commitments — deregulated markets, hostility to labor organizing and Trumpist nationalism — bear its hint. In impact, his politics reprise apartheid’s financial ideas on a worldwide scale: sustaining zones of privilege beneath the guise of “free enterprise” whereas resisting any strikes towards redistribution as threats. You’ll be able to hear it in his exhortations for others to work more durable and his pleas for him and his companies to obtain particular remedy.
Mr. Musk is considered one of numerous reactionary figures with roots in Southern Africa who discovered an unlikely house in Silicon Valley and now wield disproportionate affect in shaping American and international right-wing politics. These males, equivalent to Peter Thiel and David Sacks, emerged from a historic custom that revered hierarchy and sought to maintain racial and financial dominance, solely to search out themselves in a world the place that order was unraveling. Their politics replicate an intuition to protect elite rule, cloaked within the language of meritocracy and market freedom, whereas channeling resentment towards new energy buildings they view as threats to their place.
For them, Southern Africa isn’t very far-off. They’re a part of a worldwide proper that has long been fascinated with Rhodesia and its successor, Zimbabwe. For them, the lack of white-minority rule in Zimbabwe represents the mannequin of civilizational decay — a previously “profitable” colonial state plunged into chaos via decolonization. The specter of “Zimbabwefication” is wielded as a warning in opposition to any redistribution of energy. Now South Africa — “overtly pushing for genocide of white folks,” in accordance with Mr. Musk — is being made to tackle the mantle of scare story. The implicit argument is that settler energy, as soon as displaced, leads solely to spoil.
It doesn’t assist that South Africa has stood in opposition to Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza, main the cost in makes an attempt to carry it to account beneath worldwide legislation. This outspoken opposition has additional alienated the nation from the Western powers that assist Israel, reinforcing the notion of South Africa as a rogue state within the eyes of the worldwide proper. One of many front-runners to be Mr. Trump’s choose for ambassador to the nation, the South-African born Breitbart commentator Joel Pollak, certainly believes it is. For figures like Mr. Musk, South Africa’s stance in opposition to Israel little doubt confirms their view of the nation as a misplaced trigger — a as soon as “civilized” outpost of white rule now succumbing to the chaos of majority rule and decolonization.
This response is each ideological and deeply private. For all his vehement opposition to “woke” id politics, Mr. Musk is definitely an ardent identitarian. He has boosted claims from far-right South African teams that the federal government is “race mad,” with 142 “race laws” on its books. However their methodology for outlining a “race legislation” is laughably broad: Any legislation that makes race legally related supposedly qualifies. By this metric, even legal guidelines that prohibit arbitrary racial discrimination or repeal apartheid-era discrimination would rely. Given Mr. Musk’s aggressive dismantling of variety, fairness and inclusion packages, this obsession with one id group is greater than a bit ironic.
It’s harmful, too. The fixation has led to Mr. Trump ending, by executive order, America’s monetary help to South Africa, with doubtlessly devastating effect on remedy for H.I.V. and AIDS. South Africa is now anathema: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is refusing to journey there for the Group of 20 summit later within the 12 months, saying that it’s a hotbed of “anti-Americanism” that’s “doing very dangerous issues.” Given the administration’s fascination with old-style colonialism — epitomized most starkly by its putative plan to resettle Gaza with “the world’s folks,” together with the need to purchase Greenland and annex the Panama Canal — it’s no shock that it sees South Africa as a dystopian prophecy to be resisted.
Mr. Musk, ever the entrepreneur, is blissful to produce the propaganda. However South Africa’s historical past tells a distinct story — one the place white dominance was not inevitable, the place settler rule didn’t final and the place a distinct future, nevertheless unsure, stays doable. From his exalted place of energy, Mr. Musk might do all he can to reverse or subvert this story. However he gained’t be capable of. Historical past, in contrast to Mars, just isn’t his to colonize.
