Elon Musk, the controversial billionaire who famously acquired Twitter (and renamed it X) in 2022 and purportedly wished to protect free speech there, amplified a post over Labor Day weekend that called for democracy itself to be replaced — with a group of “high status males.”
Musk remarked of the post Sunday: “Interesting observation.”
The comical screed was originally written on 4chan — the anonymous message board whose users have been responsible for high-profile hacking scandals, celebrity nudes and election interference — and was shared as a screenshot on X by the right-wing account Autism Capital.
“People who can’t defend themselves physically (women and low T men) parse information through a consensus filter as a safety mechanism,” it read, referring to low-testosterone men. “They literally do not ask ‘is this true’, they ask ‘will others be OK with me thinking this is true.’”
“Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective ‘is this true?’ filter,” it added. “This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making.”
The post concluded: “Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.”
Musk, whose past ambitions of interplanetary travel and futuristic infrastructure once led him to be hailed as a hero, has since lost much of his mainstream support. The tech mogul has been criticized for openly promoting racism and bigotry, including allowing a stark rise in racist posts on X and recently saying his transgender daughter is “dead” to him.
Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press
“Elon apparently now believes that ‘only high T alpha males’ and people with autism have the capacity to grasp the truth, rather than take comfort in conformity,” wrote one confounded X user Monday in response. “That’s some weird, self-congratulatory stuff.”
The account that shared the original post described its baseless theory as “the Reich effect,” apparently referring to staunch Musk critic and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich — who was born with a genetic disorder that affects bone growth and is thus only 4 feet, 11 inches tall.
While numerous Musk acolytes gleefully reshared his post, countless others on the platform slammed the X CEO — and argued that the supposed scion of free speech is nothing but an egocentric hypocrite.