Elon musk

Twitter gives Jordan Peterson the boot, Dave Rubin follows

From our US edition

Jordan Peterson went from being a psychologist advising troubled kids to an unlikely political figure as he fought against the Canadian government’s compelled speech law for pronouns. Cockburn watched with fascination as Peterson clashed repeatedly with the left-wing narrative, even going as far as to resign from his tenured position at the University of Toronto due to their rampant leftist ideology. On June 28, Twitter suspended him for this tweet (as recalled by his daughter): https://twitter.com/MikhailaFuller/status/1541946666567323649 Clearly referring to someone by their birth name is a sin for Twitter. Little did Cockburn know that Dave Rubin, the host of The Rubin Report, was to be next on the chopping block. Rubin sent this tweet before being suspended: https://twitter.

‘Villain’ Elon Musk votes Republican for first time ever

From our US edition

They say you never forget your first. Your first Republican, that is. For Elon Musk, that is Mayra Flores, the Trump-endorsed candidate who flipped the Congressional seat in Texas’ 34th District from blue to red with a vote from the world's richest man (as well as from thousands of other Texans). Cockburn discovered the news while perusing Twitter this morning (at 3:28 a.m.) to see how the political discourse was doing (not well, as expected). His mood, however, lightened when he stumbled upon this  tweet from Elon Musk: I voted for Mayra Flores – first time I ever voted Republican. Massive red wave in 2022. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2022 Musk has been increasingly on Cockburn’s radar, especially since he vowed to make Twitter "fun.

Elon Musk has a question about Jeffrey Epstein

From our US edition

Elon Musk recently posted a meme about Jeffrey Epstein and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Twitter, the brand he's soon (maybe?) hoping to buy. The meme says, “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?” While Cockburn has nothing but reverence for his governmental overlords, Musk's reference to the Jeffery Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell client list does stand out as a particularly juicy piece of news. The mainstream media has avoided the list like the Spanish Flu. Doesn’t the average person deserve to know which of their esteemed leaders has taken a trip to the infamous Little Saint James Island?

Elon Musk

Why are progressives scared of Elon Musk?

Billionaire edgelord Elon Musk has just given progressives another reason to dread his ongoing attempt to buy Twitter. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX has confirmed that, should he succeed in acquiring the social media site, he would rescind the ban on Donald Trump’s account. Musk told the FT’s Future of the Car conference he would ‘reverse the permaban’ because it was ‘a morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme’. Twitter had managed to ‘amplify (Trump’s voice) among the right’, which was ‘morally wrong and flat-out stupid’. The culprit, Musk said, was the company’s ‘strong left bias’, adding: ‘Twitter needs to be much more even-handed.

Elon Musk let me back on Twitter

From our US edition

After an almost four-year lifetime suspension, Elon Musk let me back on Twitter, with a new account, @PeterMVanBuren. I could again read the "takes" of people smart enough to have a Blue Check (I do not) including those whose points of view I usually don't share. Here is what I've learned. Progressives are insane. They have lost their minds. They are certain every event which they do not personally support is the End of Times. I started back on Twitter the week after Justice Alito's draft opinion overthrowing Roe was leaked, and right away was blasted by Blue Anon stuff like "The Supreme Court is a Tool of Tyrants" and "Time for Canada to Offer Gender Asylum to American Women.

Trump might be the left’s only hope

From our US edition

Conversations about 2024 usually center on whether former President Donald J. Trump is going to run again. But regardless of whether 45 throws his hat into the ring, there is another important question the left should be pondering: can they recreate the Orange Man magic? It isn’t just the “ultra-MAGA” crowd that needs to worry about whether Trump can cast his spell on the country in 2024. Since the 2020 election, Democrats have been trying to rekindle the hatred their base felt for the braggadocious billionaire and direct it at new targets. Unfortunately it is not as easy as it seems. For example, just last week, the legacy media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) were painting Elon Musk as the Stalin du jour.

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The fight is on to censor Elon Musk’s Twitter

If Elon Musk truly intends to make Twitter a free-speech platform, he’s clearly got a fight on his hands. That was made abundantly clear by the collective meltdown among media and political elites that greeted the billionaire’s shock takeover of the platform last month. The vested interests in keeping Twitter a sanitised, censorious place are apparently considerable. And not only will Musk have the great and good, his own employees, our own Nadine Dorries and Joe Biden’s new ‘disinformation tsar’ to contend with, but potentially Twitter’s advertisers, too.

When ‘words are violence’ turns to actual violence

From our US edition

In the wake of comedian Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special The Closer, activists both online and off warned that Chappelle’s jokes about the trans community would lead to real-world harm, even murder. Instead the trans community has struck first by attacking Chappelle onstage. In his special, Chappelle tells the story of a trans person and friend who defended his stand-up material. Chappelle offered his friend career help by having her open for him on stage. Yet after being bullied by the trans mob for supporting Chappelle, his friend committed suicide. Earlier this week, Chappelle himself was physically attacked at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, during a comedy set that saw many famous faces, including Elon Musk and Chris Rock, in the audience.

More silent films, less Twitter

From our US edition

News that billionaire Elon Musk is buying Twitter has shaken the world to the point that left-wingers are threatening to deprive us of their every thought by quitting the platform. My guess is this blustering will take those celebrities about as far away as they went when they pledged to leave the country if Trump was elected president. And though Twitter is likely far from rid of the Jameela Jamils and Chelsea Handlers of the world, even a brief reprieve from the balderdash could do us wonders. Last weekend, I had the privilege of experiencing a one-of-a-kind event at my local theater. “Rick Benjamin’s Paragon Ragtime Orchestra” came to town and performed the original musical score to Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., a 1928 silent film.

Disney vs DeSantis

Bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO, was paid $32.5 million last year. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone on that sort of money. Poor Bob, though. He’s caught in the middle of a vicious fight between Florida’s conservative governor Ron DeSantis and Disney’s LGBTQ+ activists and he’s being pummelled from both sides. It’s nasty. Children probably shouldn’t watch. The story begins with DeSantis’s Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, which passed in March and banned Floridian schoolteachers from discussing sexuality and mutable gender-identities with very young children. America’s progressives despise DeSantis and, it seems, the notion that parents should have more control over what their sprogs are told about sex.

Can Elon Musk take on the tech censors?

After three centuries of failing to assert power over the printed press, the House of Commons is finding the digital world easier to conquer. The Online Safety Bill now going through parliament will give ministers the power to decide what can and can’t be said online by banning what they regard as ‘harmful’. The word is not very well defined – which, of course, gives sweeping powers to the government regulators who will define it. It will be one of the most ambitious censorship laws that the world has ever seen. Enter Elon Musk. His $44 billion takeover of Twitter is intended, he says, not to make money but to defend free speech.

The left’s great Twitter evacuation

From our US edition

The smell of Musk is in the air, and it’s causing Twitter’s left-wing users to clear the room — or so they say. Their threats to vacate cyberspace started a few weeks ago as free speech absolutist Elon Musk, in short order, became the largest shareholder of the social media firm, was offered a seat on its board, declined that seat, and made an offer to buy the firm outright. They rose to a fever pitch yesterday, as Musk’s $44 billion offer to take the company private was accepted. Twitter’s liberal users buckled under the fear of unmoderated political discussion and even, perhaps, the return of the famously suspended Donald Trump.

Why Brussels fears Elon Musk

Thierry Breton, the European Commission for the internal market, lost no time in rattling his sabre at Twitter as soon as it was announced that the company had accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy it. Even though Musk had made no announcement on how he intends to run the company, beyond stating his belief in free speech, Breton felt it necessary to warn Twitter that if it ‘does not comply with our law, there are sanctions – 6 per cent of the revenue and, if they continue, banned from operating in Europe.

The perverse joys of Elon Musk buying Twitter

The predictable yet somehow still hilarious news that Elon Musk is to acquire Twitter for $44 billion has been greeted with the usual chorus of anguished hand-wringing. The left seems appalled that such an unconventional and apparently ungovernable figure now has control of the most volatile social media platform in the world. (It’s hard to imagine that Musk purchasing, say, Instagram would have led to anything like this level of excitement and upset.) Yet even as one acknowledges that Twitter in its current state is hardly run by a commune of basket-weaving, soya-milking Brooklyn hippies, the flamboyant Mr Musk remains one of the oddest men to have emerged in public life for decades.

Why Elon Musk should forget Twitter and stick to Tesla

I spent Easter agonising over whether to throw the considerable weight of this column behind Elon Musk’s maverick $43 billion bid for Twitter. One thing I didn’t do, however, was consult the multitude of opinions on the matter available via Twitter itself, because I’m afraid I regard it as a satanic cacophony of misinformation and vanity. If that puts me in the position of the late-15th-century scholar who said ‘Printing presses? Pah! The only news I trust is handwritten by monks’, so be it. But when I read Musk’s claim that ‘civilisational risk’ would be decreased by his sole ownership of the ubiquitous microblogging site, I laughed out loud. Not that I think Musk a fool.

Elon Musk and tweeting on a volcano

From our US edition

Of all the hilarious freakouts over Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter, my personal favorite comes from journalism professor and self-styled "NYC insider" Jeff Jarvis (as noticed by The Spectator's Bill Zeiser last week). Jarvis tweeted — and I quote — "Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany." One imagines Mehdi Hasan and Molly Jong-Fast manically jazz-dancing as the Bruenigs belt out a song from a cabaret stage. And surely nothing calls down the specter of fascist totalitarianism quite like Musk's pledge to end Big Tech censorship. Because that's what the Nazis did, right? They kicked down the door to the nightclub, stormed through the horrified crowd, and barked, "ATTENTION PLEASE!

elon musk

Elon Musk is the wrong kind of billionaire

From our US edition

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the C-suite at Twitter on Thursday afternoon. The social media company’s San Francisco headquarters reportedly played host to an all-hands meeting in which concerned employees were given the chance to ask questions about billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to buy their company. Their panic is not entirely without merit — Musk has floated the idea of turning Twitter’s building into a homeless shelter. Yet it's worth noting that Twitter’s employees have been told they can work from home indefinitely, and their questions were delivered to a largely empty building via the messaging app Slack.

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Free speech shouldn’t depend on billionaires

If you take any interest in social media, Silicon Valley, or the culture wars — which all seem to be the same thing these days — you will be aware that the world is currently ending. At least, that is the impression given by those reacting to an attempt by Elon Musk to buy Twitter. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former labour secretary, inveighs against Musk’s ‘libertarian vision’ for the internet as ‘dangerous rubbish’ and intones that it would be ‘the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth’. (He also seems pretty peeved that Musk blocked him.

elon musk

Time for leftists to build their own Twitter

From our US edition

Here is some sage advice for those who are apoplectic over the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter: if you don’t like it, then start your own social media company. On Thursday, news broke that Elon Musk had offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion. In his letter to the company, the Tesla CEO explained that this offer was his “best and final” and also added that if it were declined he would need to reconsider his position as a shareholder. To make matters worse for triggered journalists everywhere, Musk said he believes “free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.” The horror. The world’s richest man is willing to pay billions to save free speech. Whether Twitter takes him up on this offer remains to be seen.

The age-old story of strongmen

The only good news, after the massacres in Ukraine, is that so many ugly behemoth super-yachts have been seized and will not be polluting the seas this summer. There is no more horrible sight than an oligarch’s super-yacht on the horizon, and that is before it disgorges its passengers, which is a horror show in itself. Arab boats, with their hookers on board, are even worse. The other good news is that Elon Musk has become the largest shareholder in Twitter, and in a Trojan War replication has challenged Putin to a duel. Oh, what a wonderful world this would be if those who started wars would duke it out with their opponents, rather than sending youngsters to do the fighting for them. But don’t hold your breath.