Some people have speculated that Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk’s campaign of terror against “old Twitter” and progressive elites was triggered by his daughter.
SO WHAT
Musk wouldn’t be the first American to draw a line in the sand between the culture and his kid.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
A number of political commentators have recently suggested that Musk’s hostility to woke ideology is motivated by his estrangement from his 18-year-old transgender daughter, Vivian, who was born male and petitioned a judge earlier this year to omit her father’s last name from her birth certificate.
In a recent interview with Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf, Musk partly blamed radical leftists for Vivian’s decision to distance herself from him.
- “Musk has a dystopian view of the left’s influence on America, which helps explain his wild pursuit of Twitter to liberate free speech. He blames the fact that his teenage daughter no longer wants to be associated with him on the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists,” Khalaf wrote in October.
- Liberal journalist Jonathan Katz echoed Khalaf’s interpretation over the weekend, tweeting, “part of the reason Elon has gone full edgelord is that his daughter hates his guts.”
- Auron McIntyre, a columnist and podcast host for The Blaze, shared a similar sentiment from the right, adding: “If you’re going to declare jihad, hard to think of a better reason.”
ZOOM OUT
Musk’s critics have alleged that his ruthless overhaul of Twitter in the name of free speech is really a Trumpian one-man mission to “own the libs.”
- Over the weekend, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly chastised Musk for tweeting, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” — the tech billionaire’s latest rhetorical attack on the use of specialized pronouns to express gender identity.
- “Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community,” Kelly responded.
- “I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone,” Musk fired back.
- “Many battles remain, but, yes, the tide is starting to turn on the mortal threat to civilization that is the woke mind virus.”