Not at all, its all self-inflicted. He keeps insulting most of Europe, continuously, like a rich spoiled kid for literally no gain on his part, ego is too big to have any control over it and his mental instabilities don't help.
If you can respect such a man and even give him your money thats you, but many folks don't. Colleagues who own Tesla now regret buying it, literally putting those meme stickers 'I bought this car before elon went fascist'. Right leaning all of them.
Its not about left-leaning, no need to spin it that way, he managed to insult literally whole spectrum of people in Europe apart from neonazis. Not many of those buying teslas as one can imagine.
He's been attacking European regulators, but not Europeans per se.
He has business related objections to the Digital Services Act, and broader ideological objections about Europe's culture of regulation over innovation and blames that culture for Europe's stagnant economic growth.
Yeah, I think in general what he has said is true but also touches a nerve (because it is political so obviously it is polarizing, and because it is a foreign saying it, which tends to irk people anywhere irrespective of what is being said).
No, it's because it's not true, we actually like the things because they make life better for regular people, and not just the rich who exploit them. Universal healthcare, social welfare, consumer protection, environmental regulations. It's not a foreigner saying it, it's a clueless outsider who wants to get rid of protections for others he doesn't need to make more profit. That touches a nerve because hands off. We SEE the countries that have no regulations and we don't give a fuck about their total size of the economy. Thanks, but no thanks. We saw the sheer brain worms that lead to Brexit, too.
If the EU is so terrible why not leave us alone instead of trying to subvert us? Let us live in squalor and do your super shiny mega success stuff that works so well for you.
What he said about regulation in the EU is so outrageous that this is the EU Commission's plan for the next 5 years:
"we will radically lighten the regulatory load for people, businesses and administrations in the EU. To boost prosperity and resilience, the Commission will propose unprecedented simplification to unleash opportunities, innovation and growth." [1] (Published this very morning!)
I doubt that includes no longer wanting to look into X and election interference, which Musk probably counts as one of those more pesky regulations, while with the other side of his mouth talking about transparency. No, DOGE would be more like, say, pointing at the title of a project from 20 years ago and go "woke! I don't know what this is! far leftist! wasteful!" while persecuting anyone who looked into fishy things about Tesla and SpaceX, kinda like Trump fired FBI agents who investigated Jan 6th.
We don't do that here. That's banana republic stuff. If private security barred politicians while some script kiddies rifle just copy private records, while some dude talked about getting rid of the Department of Education, there'd be a whole other state of emergency in most countries in Europe, certainly in Germany.
> Universal healthcare, social welfare, consumer protection, environmental regulations.
This is a strawman. Musk isn't attacking these things.
What he is attacking is excessive regulations imposed on new technology, often pre-emptively or without significant demonstrable harm. Regulations that aren't solving any real world problem but exist for political reasons. To allow politicians to message "we'll protect you from the Americans" and to allow regulators to continue having a reason to be employed.
No one asked for his assistance. No one accepted it. At that point it isn't assistance, it's pestering. Maybe even harassment depending on how long it occurs
He isn't a big picture thinker, he's not even a thinker. Show me a coherent "big picture" thought of his. Or I could show you many things he thinks are very deep any moderately bright teenager would be ashamed to claim.
And he acts the opposite as you describe. His factory is causing problems because he didn't even think about where to get the water from.
And every time I have heard him talk it was just a gish gallop, not to mention the utterly idiotic (and false) stuff he boosts on Twitter. I haven't even seen anything that would lead me to believe he could seriously think about these things, not to mention showing any evidence he ever did.
Zero regulations is an asinine position. The vast bulk of regulations that were added over the past hundred years were in response to demonstrable harms. If someone wants to get rid of an existing regulation, it is up to them to show why it is no longer needed.
> “Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”
> we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation
I don't know about europe but I follow the UK as I live there and he says some weird stuff like civil war is inevitable (I'm not sure who's going to fight who) and slagging Starmer. A lot of the info is inaccurate and he seems to get it off far right cranks on xitter.
Amusingly @Inevitablewest who he followed claiming to be a British patriot was recently exposed as "Saurabh Chandrakar, an Indian former fruit juice seller accused of masterminding one of the most high-profile betting frauds in Asia" who isn't a brit and doesn't live here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14381309/Far-Right-...
> he says some weird stuff like civil war is inevitable
That's not an insult... And while provocative this is not weird. Everyone sees where things are going in the UK and Europe in general and a violent backlash is at least a plausible risk at some point. In fact, he made that comment during riots in the UK...
> and slagging Starmer.
In fairness, everyone does. Starmer is one of the most unpopular PMs in history after only about 6 months in power.
are not very positive. I'm guessing you're not from the UK? If someone started posting "the US is a fascist hell hole" or whatever might you not find it annoying? And it's mostly based on ignorance and not visiting the country.
And just for the record it's not a police state and the justice system is not like the second tweet. I mean you can say what you like but it may put people off buying the cars.
by the way re
>In fact, he made that comment during riots in the UK...
The riots were to a large extent set off by bullshit from Twitter/Musk - they put out that three girls had been murdered by an asylum seeker so a bunch of people went to riot at the asylum centers but it turned out to be basically false as the murder was UK born.
I started with a genuine question, which has strangely been downvoted, and the many replies went in all directions except providing an actual reply...
Regarding "the UK has become a police state" so if I understand when privacy groups say it HN agrees but when Musk says it it is unhinged and fascist... right. Now, I don't agree with the claim but how it is received is telling...
> they put out that three girls had been murdered by an asylum seeke
Which should show you that Musk had a point! That is exactly symptomatic of how things are going in a worrying direction in Europe regarding immigration. The issue is that people don't want to see and certainly not when Musk is telling them because that would be "far right " or "fascist"...
I never got to know my maternal grandfather because he died in that awful WWII that only fascists and Nazi supported, so as an EU citizen, anyone even remotely endorsing those rotten ideals and neo nazi groups, which I consider a lot more than a simple insult, gets neither money nor respect from me.
The cover-up of grooming gangs is a national scandal and the government finally announced an inquiry into the matter after he did that. So that created pressure on the government for the better.
For example he kept criticizing EU's illegal immigration and online speech censorship practices.
And he's right about these two very valid issues though, but self righteous EU liberals will treat this as insults and instead point to some other crazy stuff Elon does and says as a way to control the narrative and invalidate the correct issues he's pointing out through this use of emotional manipulation.
He wasn't criticizing illegal immigration, but immigration full stop. And his solution is supporting Nazis that want to do away with democracy.
Also, the way he just makes shit up constantly, he doesn't get to talk about censorship as if that's something he has in him to care about. Lying and censoring are two sides of the same coin.
He just wants to undermine "legacy media" because the cess pool that is X is "the town square" in his mind, and anyone who isn't in it doesn't get a say anyway.
>He wasn't criticizing illegal immigration, but immigration full stop.
Source? All I saw were comments on illegal migration.
>Lying and censoring are two sides of the same coin.
False. Lying is exercising your right to free speech, politicians do it constantly with little to no consequences yet Musk is the problem when he does it? Censoring speech is oppression on free speech and a one way street to a dictatorship.
>He just wants to undermine "legacy media"
Ah yes, the famous legacy media that "never" lies to you and is owned by the "other" billionaires like Rupert Murdoch that are somehow better than the Musk billionaire because reasons? Do you realize how biased and shallow your arguments are?
> Source? All I saw were comments on illegal migration.
No, you are correct, how I worded it "him criticizing it", is flat out wrong. The thought was that he supports the AfD who are lying through their teeth about it, and while I can elaborate on that, it would be with mostly German source material because I don't know or care what of that is described how by English speakers.
> > Lying and censoring are two sides of the same coin.
> False. Lying is exercising your right to free speech, politicians do it constantly with little to no consequences yet Musk is the problem when he does it?
It's also the other side of the same coin when politicians do it. You just said "false" followed by a question that makes no sense. The objective is to distort the truth and deceive in both cases. You can do that by taking something away, or a part of it, or adding to it, or changing something. And they usually come hand in hand. To tell a lie, you have to hide the truth, to hide the truth, you have to tell a (white) lie.
> ah yes, the famous legacy media that "never" lies to you [..] Do you realize how biased and shallow your arguments are?
You wrote an entire word salad that doesn't disprove my points and criticism of your arguments. No counter arguments, no counter examples, just accusations. I'll end my conversation with you here.
> He wasn't criticizing illegal immigration, but immigration full stop
For someone criticising Musk for dishonesty, you may want to look in the mirror.
Musk is supportive of legal migration, and wants countries to increase the legal migration rates. He opposes illegal migration, as does the vast majority of the public.
Well, the German AfD, which Musk calls Germany's "only hope", may pay lip service about illegal immigration, but really means Deutschland für Deutsche. They're eating more chalk but you're not gonna tell Germans who pay attention they don't know what they know. Not gonna happen.
> Discussion now turns to the practical details, the steps that need to be taken. Mörig wants to select a committee of experts to fine tune the details of this plan for mass deportations. These experts will ensure the masterplan is executed “ethically, legally, and efficiently”, so that the racially motivated forced displacement of people has the guise of a legal migration policy.
As you say, most people agree that illegal immigration isn't okay, and furthermore, that integration in Germany is an issue. The AfD wants to use that to enact things that are way worse than what they use as an excuse, kinda like Trump is doing in the US now.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing immigration. In fact this is one of the biggest issues in Europe and, surely, in a democracy people should be able to discuss issues freely.
Well, there usually is. It's weird and backwards and the people who want no immigration at all are a much bigger drain on our society than immigrants.
> There is nothing wrong with criticizing immigration.
They had member droning on about putting journalists and homosexuals in mass graves, one dancing on the Holocaust memorial, condoning setting refugee homes on fire etc. hundreds such things, one worse than the other.
They're not even patriots, they do nothing but obstruct and destroy and blame immigrants for it. They barely speak German, they speak no second language, they have nothing but resentment, conspiracy theories, scapegoats and "identity". Their neoliberal economic policy goes squarely against the interests of the voters they rile up with blaming immigrants on the money that cut for tax cuts for the rich.
> surely, in a democracy people should be able to discuss issues freely.
The biggest issue in Europe remains denazification. We can discuss ANYTHING with non-Nazis, NOTHING with Nazis.
And no, we don't owe tolerance to Nazis. We owe them trials.
> We go into the Reichstag to stock up on our own weapons in the arsenal of democracy with its own weapons. We become Reichstag deputies to paralyze the Weimar mindset with their own support. If democracy is so stupid as to give us to give us free tickets and allowances for this disservice, that is their own business. Every legal means is at our disposal to revolutionize the state of today.
> If we succeed in getting 60 or 70 agitators and organizers of our party and organizers of our party in the various parliaments the state itself will be able to equip our fighting apparatus and pay for our fighting apparatus. A matter that is attractive and teasing enough to give it a try...
> We are not coming as friends, nor as neutrals. We come as enemies! Like the wolf breaking into the flock of sheep, so we come!
It's not a good idea to spread fake news like this correctiv disinformation:
"At the center of the proceedings is a Tagesschau report that was based on misleading assessments of the Correctiv report. It was falsely claimed that the expulsion of German citizens and the revocation of citizenship based on racist criteria had been discussed at the meeting in Potsdam. This was refuted by affidavits from the participants."
So they didn't have proof, and some participants pinky swore? Cool. And whenever someone gets caught frothing at the mouth over putting people into mass graves and pissing on them or whatever, and other such things that are a constant with the AfD, they leave the party before they get kicked out.
You NEVER heard that shit from the AfD first though, isn't that weird? Like, that someone says such things internally and it causes a ruckus. It's only when non-Nazis catch wind of it and it causes a scandal. Time and time again.
Which is Nazi 101. Which is what they do, until they have enough power and laugh in your face for expecting them to stick to their lip service. We've been there before. All sorts of people have all sorts of experiences with the Nazis and all sorts of ideas, not all of them wrong, but this is ground zero. They live among us, they swim in their sewage of what started as RT-style one sided criticism and by now is just deranged FUD for over a decade now, morphing from what crawled out of the underbrush in the early 90s, they do nothing but block politics -- because they want to "abolish the system", not work together with others in a pluralistic democracy -- and get funded by all sorts of shady sources, a lot of which the subject of criminal investigations.
> For every person who won't buy a Tesla because they disagree with Elon's political views, there is a person who would buy a Tesla because they do agree.
"Yes, making Nazi salutes is good actually" is a _rather niche position_ in most of Europe (particularly in wealthy countries); even _actual neo-Nazis_ sometimes shy away from the imagery a bit.
For example not every Trump supporter walks around with a MAGA hat. It's one thing to anonymously vote for Trump, it's another to make it public and deal with all the social backlash.
The richest person in the world, who makes enough for 10 lifetimes every day off of interest bought his way into government and immediately cut funding to people starving around the world. He is trying to get rid of the department of education, OSHA, the EPA, the FDIC, banking regulations and the people investigating his aiding of russia with starlink.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
The entire world knows it is a nazi salute, and people defending it do too.
This isn't "his political views", this are evil actions, it is indefensible. The person who has everything wants to take more from the people who have nothing.
Many of them have sued for defamation over being called a nazi and lost because the court ruled that the alleged defamatory statements are true and as such not defamation.
Fair. Though I'd rather say "confirmed" than "certified". Also it depends which court ruled that: I'm sure a Russian court would rule that there's a significant number of nazis in Ukraine.
And I'm surprised a nazi would sue for defamation: I'd guess most nazis wouldn't.
I'd trust that more than a Russian court for sure.
Though having seen the enormous German self-flagellation about Nazism and WWII, I wouldn't be surprised if their courts overcompensated somewhat in the other direction...
They don’t love Jews, they hate Muslims (and Gypsies and Blacks and Albanians and and and…).
Antisemitism is not a prerequisite for fascism - wanting to have a different religious group put in camps is not the slam dunk differentiator you think it is.
The same politican sued protesters calling him fascist for libel, and lost. The court ruled that there were sufficient factual grounds to justify using the label.
>Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Nazis were not the only type of fascism in history. Simply the most infamous one.
Nazis were interested in that, and fascism is a bigger category. AfD supports fascist regimes like Russia. A small good thing doesn't cancel out huge negative thing.
I’m sure the powers that be at HN will be along shortly to lock/remove/censor any article/discussion that doesn’t show enough deference to Musk, as seems to be the new custom.
It takes them awhile sometimes, but they’ll get here.
That's due to Elon's weird sycophants flagging such articles, not admin action.
(If this website were actually important, this would be a pretty significant vulnerability; it's fairly trivial to suppress the visibility of any given article with really quite a small number of people.)
Certified by agencies of the left extremist government which treats the justification as classified information.
Moreover, one of these agencies is run by a left-wing comrade who is a qualified social education worker. However, the agency should actually be headed by a lawyer, as in the Thuringian law, which was simply reinterpreted in the case of Stephan J. Kramer.
Their policies are mainstream right wing policies, like favouring legal migration over illegal migration.
If you care about intellectual honesty, understand that the "fascism" label applied to AFD (or Trump, Musk et al) is inaccurate and inappropriate. It's the left throwing whatever mud they can hoping some will stick.
No one favors illegal migration over legal, that's just a smear and misrepresentation of the situation.
Meanwhile AfD act like actual neo-Nazis:
"In January 2024, it was revealed that senior members of the party, including Roland Hartwig, then advisor to party co-leader Alice Weidel, attended a meeting alongside neo-Nazi influencers, where plans for the deportation of millions of "asylum seekers", "non-assimilated people", and those with "non-German backgrounds" were discussed, including those with German citizenship and residency rights.[348] The event triggered the 2024 German anti-extremism protests. "
You're right about Reddit. It has become hysterical since the election. If you want an example of what left-wing conspiracy theories look like, just spend some time in the default subreddits.
That said, I doubt Musk's politics have had much of a positive or negative effect on Tesla's sales. There's been a significant increase in competition at the same time as many European countries are entering recessions. That's going to be a much bigger factor.
if there really is organized mass corruption then it could be an “ adversarial deep state campaign”. The claims of wrongdoing are so severe that they need to start providing the evidence publicly asap and file some charges.
I honestly don’t know what to think yet but I agree with you the level of vitriol and unhinged comments is at extreme levels and even here on HN. That said he is intentionally trying to mass trigger as many people as possible likely strategically for a reason we can’t see yet.
Suggesting that the deep state are behind online outrage at Elon while also claiming Elon is intentionally enraging people for unknown strategic reasons is a great summary of the current political moment.
