Maybe you’ve heard about how richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, is buying Twitter because something-something “free speech.” Whether this sale will be finalized remains to be seen. Musk, in part because he’s a billionaire and by nature of that position is a narcissist, and in part because he’s always sort of been a two-dimensionally crap dude, cannot stop himself from openly attacking the employees of the company he has yet to officially buy. In late March, Elon tweeted out a poll, writing “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
On Thursday, Musk’s spaceship-building company, SpaceX, made news as some employees wrote an open letter and circulated it throughout the workplace. That letter criticized SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for his “behavior in the public sphere,” calling it a “frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” for the company. SpaceX is a private company with no union representation. But then again, so is Twitter.
On Friday, the The New York Times reports that free-speech warrior Musk promptly fired those very same employees for speaking against him.
According to the Times, SpaceX management said that the letter included the option for people to sign their names to it, and some employees, according to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, felt “uncomfortable, intimidated, and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views.” More importantly, Shotwell wrote, “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.” How many employees were fired is not known as of the writing of this article.
In an unrelated story, the day before SpaceX was being a terrible employer, Elon Musk was out in the public sphere writing this about how he was now a Republican:
Campaign Action
You might also remember how, back in March, Elon was professing himself to be a “free speech absolutist.” Absolutely full of shit? [Rim shot]. As Judd Legum reported in April, Musk’s “free speech” act is one of two things: the lies of a man who is simply trying to consciously manipulate himself into more and more power; the lies of a man who has smelled his own farts so much that his ability to distinguish between words, ideas, and what any of them mean has been irrevocably compromised.
For someone who pretends that by buying the social media site he will be able to usher in a new and illustrious age of “freedom,” Musk seems either too unintelligent to understand, or (more likely) is not particularly interested in how the power of his wealth means that mostly only Elon Musk has unfettered freedom of everything.
