Cory Doctorow reviews “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed," by Quinn Slobodian Ben Tarnoff, about “the ideology that gave rise to Elon Musk, the social forces that gave rise to that ideology, and the terrible future that ideology seeks to bring about.”
“It’s a chilling vision, a Torment Nexus dystopia run by someone who thinks cyberpunk was a suggestion, not a warning.”
Musk hails from apartheid South Africa, where a dictatorship resulted in luxury for the white minority, brutal dictatorship for the Black minority, fascist control over speech for all, and a “meat-grinder draft that saw young men of Musk’s age being called up to suppress liberation uprisings.” Musk’s grandfather was “a grandiose and vicious white supremacist who moved to South Africa from Canada because of his love for apartheid and racial hierarchy” and his father was “a violent and abusive fool.”