Elon Musk is back in the public eye - this time, to reassure us he’s “not a racist”.
Last month, in an interview with the Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, Musk shared his thoughts on several of his pet projects: artificial super-intelligence, making billions, and anti-Muslim racism.
When asked whether he was anti-Muslim, Musk did not deny it. Instead, he carefully parroted a tired set of tropes – about “rape and murder”, “antithetical views”, and the “imposition of rules and laws” – tropes that have long been in frantic circulation in far-right and mainstream discourse about Islam and Muslims.
What he meant to tell us, of course, was that he could not possibly be anti-Muslim, because what he reasonably opposes are violence, a lack of integration, and the erosion of democracy.
But lest we fall into the trap, we should recognise that whether Musk privately harbours anti-Muslim views is actually beside the point. The focus should be on what kind of political actor he has become.
