He's a billionaire who isn't keen on unions so I'm not too surprised that leftists do not like him. He's also a bit of a nob which will put off people regardless of their politics - I don't think I've heard anyone say a nice thing about him irl.
On a related note, I think most leftists (particularly younger ones) aren't too enamoured with electric cars. Public transit is quite en vogue which cuts away at Musk's prestige.
Good comment. I've noticed this too. The modern left/Green position takes it as axiomatic that public transport is "what we know we need". Quotation marks here are because this is the kind of presumptive, patronising phrase that modern left/Green rhetoric increasingly uses, their attitude and arguments on this and other topics more or less consisting of the assertion that "the evidence is in and you can choose to either be on the right side of history or be evil and hated". Brahmin Left stuff.
The micro-mobility revolution and the increasing popularity of cycling removes much of the case for big, clunky, heavy PT infrastructure to address traffic congestion, in most places. And electric cars remove much of the case for mode shift to PT on climate grounds.
I can't work out whether left/Green thinking is just 10 years behind the technological frontier, or if there's a deeper ideological attachment to solutions provided by the state, which increase our sense of dependence on big, powerful government while also enforcing uniformity of behaviour.
There's a lot of confusion going on in left/Green politics in relation to transport right now.
"Micro-mobility" is a funnel into trunk routes for public transport.
If you're used to driving, you're not going to ride an electric scooter or bike 30km to the office. But you might ride it down to the nearest train station and get on a train, then get back on it at the other end.
An generally speaking, if you're not young and/or fairly able-bodied, you're not getting onto either. So you need something like a bus.
The real spanner in the works of public-transport centric thinking is the work-from-home shift caused by COVID. When people aren't traipsing into the city (or other hub) en masse to get to the office every day, the need for star-type public transport systems starts to evaporate.
I feel like there’s a bit of narrativising here, it’s possible to hold all these opinions at once.
1: Australia has an over reliance on ICE cars, reducing it is better for the climate, better for our health, and better for walkable cities.
2: PT is better than ICE vehicles for the environment and for walkable cities but will not be available to everyone.
3: EVs are better than ICE vehicles for the environment, but not for walkable cities and have their own issues with mineral mining/recycling and price.
4: micro-mobility vehicles are better than ICE vehicles for the environment and for walkable cities but will not be desirable for everyone.
5: Elon musk has been involved in some successful businesses and manages to successfully promote and fund some futuristic ideas.
6: Elon Musk is a right wing reactionary who has distracted from promising infrastructure projects In the USA. While being anti union and the epitome of the “great man” cult of personality that distorts decision making.
I don’t believe that any of these opinions are contradictory,
the left focus on some of these points more than others.
Idk, I think all sides of politics are prone to presumptious, patronizing thinking. On the topic, conservatives take cars and car-centric infrastructure for granted and would laugh in your face if you asked them to catch the bus, regardless of the evidence presented to them - it's an identity issue as much as it is for lefties who want PT.
At least where I'm from, I don't see micro-mobility taking up much of the slice. I couldn't imagine cycling in Australian summers and, if there was less PT and even more cars (electric or not), it would be incredibly dangerous. Also, part of the climate argument for PT over EVs is efficiency - you transport a lot more people with a lot less space/materials. You also force people to walk a lot more which imo is a good thing.
I don't think the left is behind on this or that there's an objective 'technological frontier'; it's just complicated and we have a lot of choices depending on the kind of world we want to live in. To put it back to you, would it be wrong to describe ever-growing MV infrastrcture as big, clunky, and heavy? Do you not see 'uniformity of behaviour' in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic? Modern, developed cities that have (or are making strides towards) less car dependency look like great places to live in - I'm thinking East-Asia and throughout the EU. None of this necessarily requires it to be owned by the state either - Japan is famed for its transit infrastructure and there's a lot of private ownership.
I don't put much stock in trying to understand people's 'deeper ideological attachment' because, in the case of PT, I think there's a clear material motivation in a lot of circumstances. To give an example, I would effectively double my daily work commute if I chose to drive. My friends who are forced to drive due to a lack of PT options are quite envious of me, even when their total transport time is equivalent to mine. Leftists could (and often) engage in a similar kind of psychoanalyzing for why people choose MVs, but there are plain and simple reasons why people prefer them.
Mostly I think it’s a question of tribal identity. There’s the obvious take that he’s an anti union billionaire, but there’s a lot of “left-wing” people who like “green” rich people (in Australia, Simon Holmes a Court for example). It’s that he doesn’t signal his tribal identity properly, he doesn’t beat his chest and say “diversity” or whatever. I think he is bad because he’s a billionaire and I think no one should be a billionaire from a Rawlsian perspective but I don’t think that’s the main impetus for the anti Elon stuff
I think the left was pretty neutral on him until he said he was buying Twitter and is for more free speech. That threatens one of their bastions. Before that he was a billionaire (bad) with libertarian tendencies (bad) who made electric cars (good) and space ships (good). So there was some balance.
I think the elite left can see they are losing control because Musk is giving a voice to everyone via Twitter. The "Town Square" is now 397 million people that can voice an opinion without censorship. That is an "uncontrolled" opinion that may not line up with the objectives of the left or the right. Witness the vote on Twitter to reinstate Trump as a prime example of people power. Unlike our traditional newspapers, Twitter does not have a moderator rejecting a readers opinion if it may negatively influence public opinion against the political views of the newspaper. Secondly, political parties both left and right may face competition from new groups that can communicate their message outside of the MSM sufficient to elect independents with no vested interests. That may well be the bginning of the end of traditional left/right political parties. On that basis alone, there will be massive campaigns launched to get rid of Musk and return control of Twitter to large institutions to take back control of public opinion. Forcing Musk to sell Twitter will be no easy task, so expect attacks against Tesla and his other companies to weaken his financial position so he is forced into a public listing of Twitter down the track.
Very well said! I can only assume that since Musk is threatening multi trillion dollar fossil fuel industries that there are sophisticated campaigns to discredit him. Also he and Tesla are philosophically opposed to advertising. One of the mainstream media’s main revenue streams is ad revenue from legacy car companies so Musk and Tesla are also a threat to the MSM!!
In essence because the left (broad brush alert) wants to see social solutions to societal challenges and Musk wants technological solutions. That might not seem like an obvious answer so let me elaborate:
The left’s ideal society would be a world of harmonious consensus democracy where citizens come together and fix problems through collective action. They see large multinationals behemoths as antithesis to this idea, these deeply vertically integrated and hierarchically organized miniature dictatorships, typically seen lobbying for political influence, thereby corrupting the process of democratic governance in favor of moneyed interests. This is why they favor things like worker owned coops and unions, they counteract the dominance hierarchy dynamics.
Musk has seemingly zero interest in any of these ideas. As far as I can tell he is “progressive” insofar as he believes in individual rights and empowerment, pretty much center-right classical liberalism. What Musk believes in is technology. So whereas the left would argue, if everyone just consumed a bit less for a couple of decades we could lower our environmental footprint and that would give humanity the required runway to transition into a steady state economy — and barring stuff like asteroid mining we would need to anyway, see the Limits to Growth model and such. This would mean a regained sense of community, asabiyya, being in it together, not feeling like an isolated individual working a boring job just to keep up with the Joneses.
Musk says: screw all that and start accelerating deployment of transformative technologies and achieve economies of scale, because you cannot wait for the public and their political institutions to get their shit together.
But here’s the rub: in doing this Musk is very effectively using the machinery of capitalism to solve the issue and essentially diminishing the social solution in the process. Instead of less inequality we get more, instead of less corporate behemoths and their hierarchical power structures we get more of them. The spiritual diminution brought about by materialistic consumer culture becomes even more entrenched in the future. These are all the dynamics the left has been historically been in opposition to. They see the looming environmental catastrophe as an opportunity to create a more equal and socially just society by moving away from the exponential growth model presented by capitalist consumer society, and Musk is seen as one of the people preventing this.
The left of course liked the environmentally benign developments Musk stood for, but the misalignment of world views was always there in the background. They tolerated Musk but were skeptical of the authenticity of his motives, he’s one of those corporate raider tycoon types after all.
But then we got to the period when Musk’s Twitter clown persona came in full force, and he just pushed all those people who were on the fence over the edge.
It turns out you can be at the top of the capitalist elite and spew conspiracy theories, be into those transparent money grabs like cryptocurrency speculation, insult left politicians and financial watchdogs, or harass “pedo guy“ using expensive private detectives no average Joe would even concieve of doing. And then there’s the Twitter takeover, which made it seem like not only is the guy unhinged and unbecoming of a captain of industry, he’s actually a hypocrite *and* has no clue what he’s doing. See! We told you! What kind of messed up political system would allow this guy to be the highest net worth individual on the planet?
The right likes Musk because he’s highly effective. He’s much better at it than most people and he likes markets, so do we, so he gets more browny points. If he’s less “just” about it, ah well, that’s not what matters. Different moral foundations, different value scales, different judgements.
Elon Musk is aggressively anti-union - that is a substantive reason to dislike him if you are progressive or left-wing on economic policy. He has chosen to align himself with various right-wing culture war arguments and right-wing conspiracy theories - another significant reason to view him with disdain, or at the very least to be wary of him, if you tend to be culturally progressive or left-wing. His decision-making about Twitter comes across as impulsive, arrogant, delusional, and erratic, which makes it increasingly difficult to have any respect for him at all, even in view of his considerable achievements in the fields of electric vehicles and space technology. He is damaging his reputation, he is taking his focus away from his core businesses, and he doesn't appear to be learning from his mistakes.
A hero of the left would create a democratically-accountable committee, which would consult climate scientists in order to allocate resources toward the most effective ways to preserve civilization: such as helping the global south and africa leapfrog fossil fuels and go directly to green energy.
A private entity that swallows up public funds to create a tunnel in LA for a handful of the world's least reliable cars is certainly one way to tackle climate change, though it's not by any measure effective, nor is anyone involved a hero.
Electric cars are nice, but do not deserve to subsidized, Solar panels on house roofs probably make no sense (would not be chosen if the only encouragement were the incidence of a tax on net CO2 emissions on fossil fuel generated electricity). SpaceX is cool, though. :)
Musk acts in the real world and gets things done. The excellence and rapidity with which he does so points out massive structural flaws in many institutions and norms of behavior, and those institutions and norms of behavior have many supporters who see his ability to bypass same as an insult, a threat, at which point they go on to attack Musk.
The hypothetical at the top is very strange. For both the left and right, the fact of a thing being done by the public or private sector is key to how they react to it. Would leftists support a govt leader who pushed for publicly owned electrification, solar+storage, and banking services? Maybe.
But why would you think that means leftists would support someone who becomes a multi multi billionaire extracting profits selling banking, solar and electric vehicle products?
This is like saying libertarians should support Medicare because they think doctors are useful. The fact of public or private ownership is the thing.
**
The line you used elsewhere about lefties driving Teslas and having solar panels is wrong I think. Teslas are very expensive, luxury cars. I don't think many leftists are in the market for luxury cars. Maybe they were leftists before they got money - nobody does proper class consciousness like the wealthy.
The Left are envious of his wealth and power. The fact that he holds views and does things they would ordinarily like isn't particularly relevant, it's that they can't be like him, or even aspire to it. The poor don't hate the rich because they're rich, they hate them because they can't be like them. If a lot of these 'Leftists' had an opportunity to be like him they would jump at it.
He lies a lot to pump the price of his business e.g., robo taxis, FSD, he will be last to sell Tesla stock, Vegas tunnel capability, Tesla semi delivery date and economics. The hard left which is stupid term btw are in favor of mass transit, unions and social services. Elon is into himself.
Disingenuous article is disingenuous, but anyway...
Musk is a libertarian tech-bro billionaire mate of Peter Thiel (the bloke who thinks women shouldn't vote), doesn't like unions, has of late been flirting with the neo-fascist right and in general presents as a sociopathic arsehole (the hilariously hypocritical approach to "absolute free speech" since acquiring twitter really driving this home).
And you are... surprised... "the left" doesn't care much for him ?
I think it's the SUDDEN swing to the Hate setting that poses the puzzle here.
He's been a loose cannon with libertarian instincts forever. He has been variously ignored, celebrated, or portrayed as a source of amusement by mainstream media until now.
So why is he suddenly such a bete noire of the Left?
It seems to me to have coincided more or less with deciding to reorient Twitter as a forum for uncensored speech.
Is it really “sudden” ? There is no indication how this “sudden” is being measured or even defined.
He’s not reorienting Twitter as a “forum for uncensored speech”, as evidenced by the people banned for making fun of him.
Musk has aligned himself with the alt-right and its “pwn the libs” intellectual puddle, and is flirting with the neofascists. If people don’t understand why that “suddenly” makes him someone the left doesn’t like, then I have to wonder WTF they think they’re talking about when they say “the left”.
He has come out swinging hard at the left of late. Mocked being “woke” and sacked a whole bunch of left leaning twitter employees and allowed right (and left) wing “free speachers” back on the platform.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, he has gone the way of many people with too much money, power and influence. They believe too much of their own rhetoric and surround themselves with people who constantly agree with them. This is what he is doing at Twitter.
It’s a neurological fact that power changes the mind & unfortunately although Elon Musk started out with good intentions, in my opinion, he had lost the plot.
He's a billionaire who isn't keen on unions so I'm not too surprised that leftists do not like him. He's also a bit of a nob which will put off people regardless of their politics - I don't think I've heard anyone say a nice thing about him irl.
On a related note, I think most leftists (particularly younger ones) aren't too enamoured with electric cars. Public transit is quite en vogue which cuts away at Musk's prestige.
"Public transit is quite en vogue"
Good comment. I've noticed this too. The modern left/Green position takes it as axiomatic that public transport is "what we know we need". Quotation marks here are because this is the kind of presumptive, patronising phrase that modern left/Green rhetoric increasingly uses, their attitude and arguments on this and other topics more or less consisting of the assertion that "the evidence is in and you can choose to either be on the right side of history or be evil and hated". Brahmin Left stuff.
The micro-mobility revolution and the increasing popularity of cycling removes much of the case for big, clunky, heavy PT infrastructure to address traffic congestion, in most places. And electric cars remove much of the case for mode shift to PT on climate grounds.
I can't work out whether left/Green thinking is just 10 years behind the technological frontier, or if there's a deeper ideological attachment to solutions provided by the state, which increase our sense of dependence on big, powerful government while also enforcing uniformity of behaviour.
There's a lot of confusion going on in left/Green politics in relation to transport right now.
"Micro-mobility" is a funnel into trunk routes for public transport.
If you're used to driving, you're not going to ride an electric scooter or bike 30km to the office. But you might ride it down to the nearest train station and get on a train, then get back on it at the other end.
An generally speaking, if you're not young and/or fairly able-bodied, you're not getting onto either. So you need something like a bus.
The real spanner in the works of public-transport centric thinking is the work-from-home shift caused by COVID. When people aren't traipsing into the city (or other hub) en masse to get to the office every day, the need for star-type public transport systems starts to evaporate.
I feel like there’s a bit of narrativising here, it’s possible to hold all these opinions at once.
1: Australia has an over reliance on ICE cars, reducing it is better for the climate, better for our health, and better for walkable cities.
2: PT is better than ICE vehicles for the environment and for walkable cities but will not be available to everyone.
3: EVs are better than ICE vehicles for the environment, but not for walkable cities and have their own issues with mineral mining/recycling and price.
4: micro-mobility vehicles are better than ICE vehicles for the environment and for walkable cities but will not be desirable for everyone.
5: Elon musk has been involved in some successful businesses and manages to successfully promote and fund some futuristic ideas.
6: Elon Musk is a right wing reactionary who has distracted from promising infrastructure projects In the USA. While being anti union and the epitome of the “great man” cult of personality that distorts decision making.
I don’t believe that any of these opinions are contradictory,
the left focus on some of these points more than others.
Idk, I think all sides of politics are prone to presumptious, patronizing thinking. On the topic, conservatives take cars and car-centric infrastructure for granted and would laugh in your face if you asked them to catch the bus, regardless of the evidence presented to them - it's an identity issue as much as it is for lefties who want PT.
At least where I'm from, I don't see micro-mobility taking up much of the slice. I couldn't imagine cycling in Australian summers and, if there was less PT and even more cars (electric or not), it would be incredibly dangerous. Also, part of the climate argument for PT over EVs is efficiency - you transport a lot more people with a lot less space/materials. You also force people to walk a lot more which imo is a good thing.
I don't think the left is behind on this or that there's an objective 'technological frontier'; it's just complicated and we have a lot of choices depending on the kind of world we want to live in. To put it back to you, would it be wrong to describe ever-growing MV infrastrcture as big, clunky, and heavy? Do you not see 'uniformity of behaviour' in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic? Modern, developed cities that have (or are making strides towards) less car dependency look like great places to live in - I'm thinking East-Asia and throughout the EU. None of this necessarily requires it to be owned by the state either - Japan is famed for its transit infrastructure and there's a lot of private ownership.
I don't put much stock in trying to understand people's 'deeper ideological attachment' because, in the case of PT, I think there's a clear material motivation in a lot of circumstances. To give an example, I would effectively double my daily work commute if I chose to drive. My friends who are forced to drive due to a lack of PT options are quite envious of me, even when their total transport time is equivalent to mine. Leftists could (and often) engage in a similar kind of psychoanalyzing for why people choose MVs, but there are plain and simple reasons why people prefer them.
Mostly I think it’s a question of tribal identity. There’s the obvious take that he’s an anti union billionaire, but there’s a lot of “left-wing” people who like “green” rich people (in Australia, Simon Holmes a Court for example). It’s that he doesn’t signal his tribal identity properly, he doesn’t beat his chest and say “diversity” or whatever. I think he is bad because he’s a billionaire and I think no one should be a billionaire from a Rawlsian perspective but I don’t think that’s the main impetus for the anti Elon stuff
More fundamentally there just is no political left
I think the left was pretty neutral on him until he said he was buying Twitter and is for more free speech. That threatens one of their bastions. Before that he was a billionaire (bad) with libertarian tendencies (bad) who made electric cars (good) and space ships (good). So there was some balance.
I think the elite left can see they are losing control because Musk is giving a voice to everyone via Twitter. The "Town Square" is now 397 million people that can voice an opinion without censorship. That is an "uncontrolled" opinion that may not line up with the objectives of the left or the right. Witness the vote on Twitter to reinstate Trump as a prime example of people power. Unlike our traditional newspapers, Twitter does not have a moderator rejecting a readers opinion if it may negatively influence public opinion against the political views of the newspaper. Secondly, political parties both left and right may face competition from new groups that can communicate their message outside of the MSM sufficient to elect independents with no vested interests. That may well be the bginning of the end of traditional left/right political parties. On that basis alone, there will be massive campaigns launched to get rid of Musk and return control of Twitter to large institutions to take back control of public opinion. Forcing Musk to sell Twitter will be no easy task, so expect attacks against Tesla and his other companies to weaken his financial position so he is forced into a public listing of Twitter down the track.
Very well said! I can only assume that since Musk is threatening multi trillion dollar fossil fuel industries that there are sophisticated campaigns to discredit him. Also he and Tesla are philosophically opposed to advertising. One of the mainstream media’s main revenue streams is ad revenue from legacy car companies so Musk and Tesla are also a threat to the MSM!!
In essence because the left (broad brush alert) wants to see social solutions to societal challenges and Musk wants technological solutions. That might not seem like an obvious answer so let me elaborate:
The left’s ideal society would be a world of harmonious consensus democracy where citizens come together and fix problems through collective action. They see large multinationals behemoths as antithesis to this idea, these deeply vertically integrated and hierarchically organized miniature dictatorships, typically seen lobbying for political influence, thereby corrupting the process of democratic governance in favor of moneyed interests. This is why they favor things like worker owned coops and unions, they counteract the dominance hierarchy dynamics.
Musk has seemingly zero interest in any of these ideas. As far as I can tell he is “progressive” insofar as he believes in individual rights and empowerment, pretty much center-right classical liberalism. What Musk believes in is technology. So whereas the left would argue, if everyone just consumed a bit less for a couple of decades we could lower our environmental footprint and that would give humanity the required runway to transition into a steady state economy — and barring stuff like asteroid mining we would need to anyway, see the Limits to Growth model and such. This would mean a regained sense of community, asabiyya, being in it together, not feeling like an isolated individual working a boring job just to keep up with the Joneses.
Musk says: screw all that and start accelerating deployment of transformative technologies and achieve economies of scale, because you cannot wait for the public and their political institutions to get their shit together.
But here’s the rub: in doing this Musk is very effectively using the machinery of capitalism to solve the issue and essentially diminishing the social solution in the process. Instead of less inequality we get more, instead of less corporate behemoths and their hierarchical power structures we get more of them. The spiritual diminution brought about by materialistic consumer culture becomes even more entrenched in the future. These are all the dynamics the left has been historically been in opposition to. They see the looming environmental catastrophe as an opportunity to create a more equal and socially just society by moving away from the exponential growth model presented by capitalist consumer society, and Musk is seen as one of the people preventing this.
The left of course liked the environmentally benign developments Musk stood for, but the misalignment of world views was always there in the background. They tolerated Musk but were skeptical of the authenticity of his motives, he’s one of those corporate raider tycoon types after all.
But then we got to the period when Musk’s Twitter clown persona came in full force, and he just pushed all those people who were on the fence over the edge.
It turns out you can be at the top of the capitalist elite and spew conspiracy theories, be into those transparent money grabs like cryptocurrency speculation, insult left politicians and financial watchdogs, or harass “pedo guy“ using expensive private detectives no average Joe would even concieve of doing. And then there’s the Twitter takeover, which made it seem like not only is the guy unhinged and unbecoming of a captain of industry, he’s actually a hypocrite *and* has no clue what he’s doing. See! We told you! What kind of messed up political system would allow this guy to be the highest net worth individual on the planet?
The right likes Musk because he’s highly effective. He’s much better at it than most people and he likes markets, so do we, so he gets more browny points. If he’s less “just” about it, ah well, that’s not what matters. Different moral foundations, different value scales, different judgements.
Elon Musk is aggressively anti-union - that is a substantive reason to dislike him if you are progressive or left-wing on economic policy. He has chosen to align himself with various right-wing culture war arguments and right-wing conspiracy theories - another significant reason to view him with disdain, or at the very least to be wary of him, if you tend to be culturally progressive or left-wing. His decision-making about Twitter comes across as impulsive, arrogant, delusional, and erratic, which makes it increasingly difficult to have any respect for him at all, even in view of his considerable achievements in the fields of electric vehicles and space technology. He is damaging his reputation, he is taking his focus away from his core businesses, and he doesn't appear to be learning from his mistakes.
A hero of the left would create a democratically-accountable committee, which would consult climate scientists in order to allocate resources toward the most effective ways to preserve civilization: such as helping the global south and africa leapfrog fossil fuels and go directly to green energy.
A private entity that swallows up public funds to create a tunnel in LA for a handful of the world's least reliable cars is certainly one way to tackle climate change, though it's not by any measure effective, nor is anyone involved a hero.
Electric cars are nice, but do not deserve to subsidized, Solar panels on house roofs probably make no sense (would not be chosen if the only encouragement were the incidence of a tax on net CO2 emissions on fossil fuel generated electricity). SpaceX is cool, though. :)
Musk acts in the real world and gets things done. The excellence and rapidity with which he does so points out massive structural flaws in many institutions and norms of behavior, and those institutions and norms of behavior have many supporters who see his ability to bypass same as an insult, a threat, at which point they go on to attack Musk.
A few comments on this:
The hypothetical at the top is very strange. For both the left and right, the fact of a thing being done by the public or private sector is key to how they react to it. Would leftists support a govt leader who pushed for publicly owned electrification, solar+storage, and banking services? Maybe.
But why would you think that means leftists would support someone who becomes a multi multi billionaire extracting profits selling banking, solar and electric vehicle products?
This is like saying libertarians should support Medicare because they think doctors are useful. The fact of public or private ownership is the thing.
**
The line you used elsewhere about lefties driving Teslas and having solar panels is wrong I think. Teslas are very expensive, luxury cars. I don't think many leftists are in the market for luxury cars. Maybe they were leftists before they got money - nobody does proper class consciousness like the wealthy.
The Left are envious of his wealth and power. The fact that he holds views and does things they would ordinarily like isn't particularly relevant, it's that they can't be like him, or even aspire to it. The poor don't hate the rich because they're rich, they hate them because they can't be like them. If a lot of these 'Leftists' had an opportunity to be like him they would jump at it.
To be like him, as in super rich? Sure I'll take the money.
He lies a lot to pump the price of his business e.g., robo taxis, FSD, he will be last to sell Tesla stock, Vegas tunnel capability, Tesla semi delivery date and economics. The hard left which is stupid term btw are in favor of mass transit, unions and social services. Elon is into himself.
Disingenuous article is disingenuous, but anyway...
Musk is a libertarian tech-bro billionaire mate of Peter Thiel (the bloke who thinks women shouldn't vote), doesn't like unions, has of late been flirting with the neo-fascist right and in general presents as a sociopathic arsehole (the hilariously hypocritical approach to "absolute free speech" since acquiring twitter really driving this home).
And you are... surprised... "the left" doesn't care much for him ?
I think it's the SUDDEN swing to the Hate setting that poses the puzzle here.
He's been a loose cannon with libertarian instincts forever. He has been variously ignored, celebrated, or portrayed as a source of amusement by mainstream media until now.
So why is he suddenly such a bete noire of the Left?
It seems to me to have coincided more or less with deciding to reorient Twitter as a forum for uncensored speech.
He has been an object of hate on the Left for many years at this point. Maybe you just hadn't seen it before now and therefore it seems sudden?
He's been a massive celebrity for at least 5 or 6 years now. I don't think he's been loved by the left for any of that time.
Is it really “sudden” ? There is no indication how this “sudden” is being measured or even defined.
He’s not reorienting Twitter as a “forum for uncensored speech”, as evidenced by the people banned for making fun of him.
Musk has aligned himself with the alt-right and its “pwn the libs” intellectual puddle, and is flirting with the neofascists. If people don’t understand why that “suddenly” makes him someone the left doesn’t like, then I have to wonder WTF they think they’re talking about when they say “the left”.
He has come out swinging hard at the left of late. Mocked being “woke” and sacked a whole bunch of left leaning twitter employees and allowed right (and left) wing “free speachers” back on the platform.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, he has gone the way of many people with too much money, power and influence. They believe too much of their own rhetoric and surround themselves with people who constantly agree with them. This is what he is doing at Twitter.
It’s a neurological fact that power changes the mind & unfortunately although Elon Musk started out with good intentions, in my opinion, he had lost the plot.