The most fascinating book I read last year was a biography of Elon Musk. It wasn’t written by one of his many fierce critics – of which it should not require a spoiler alert to say that I am one. It was written by Walter Isaacson, a former editor of Time Magazine, who was granted extensive access to Musk and those around him. He had previously written a book called The Innovators which gives you some idea of where he was coming from and the book was completed and published before Musk joined Donald Trump’s team and became too extreme even for many on the far right.
The fact that the author admires many aspects of Musk’s personality and tries hard to explain some of his more bizarre personality traits makes it all the more compelling, as the full extent of the behavioural problems emerge. To understand is never to excuse but it does help to explain and to visualise what might be coming next.
The spiral from climate advocate to ally of the far right
Musk’s transformation seems to many to have been totally astonishing. He began as a champion of science and technology who articulated a strong awareness of the risks of climate change. Indeed, he built the Tesla brand entirely around a customer base that was prepared to pay a great deal of money to drive an environmentally responsible vehicle. For some that may have simply been because it represented a status symbol which could illustrate their right-on attitudes to friends and family. For others it was part of a deep determination to try and adopt a more sustainable lifestyle in as many areas of their life as possible.
Few of those customers will be able to countenance a businessman claiming to foster the transition away from fossil fuels paying millions to join the campaign of a presidential candidate who announced he wanted to “drill baby drill” every last drop of US oil and gas. It is hard to see how Musk carries on selling Teslas to his customer base as much better and cheaper cars come onto the market.
Controversial decisions: money, power, and ego
Having already lost billions on destroying the user base of Twitter/X it isn’t immediately obvious what Musk has to gain from going full on MAGA and alienating so many potential customers for Tesla. Until, of course, you start to look at the amount of money he possesses and his desire to make sure little of it goes out in taxation.
Even after destroying much of the value of Twitter/X and witnessing Tesla begin to lose out to the competition, Musk is still worth well over $400bn. The amount of tax that should be due on any earnings within that figure, provides a powerful incentive to encourage the multi-billionaire class to spend relatively small change like £100mn on interfering with elections in the UK.
That is, however, only part of the story. Musk has done ‘very nicely thank you’ out of government contracts. One reason for that is genuine technological achievement. His approach to space exploration was more effective and a lot more affordable than anything that NASA had funded previously. Which is one of the major reasons why he has ended up controlling two thirds of the world’s satellite communication network and SpaceX has won so many contracts.
Yet no matter how innovative or cost effective a company is that depends on government contracts, it needs political connections to win those contracts. If Musk wanted to secure his future as a supplier and to expand into the lucrative defence industries, he had a powerful incentive to get into bed with a future president with a reputation for providing payback to those who support and finance him.
Musk: a darker turn rooted in the past
That clear economic self-interest doesn’t however explain why he felt he needed to go over the top in his support for even the nastiest of far-right extremists like Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon or the AfD in Germany. Nor does it explain why he felt the need to alienate the new Labour government and put the life of government minister Jess Phillips on the line with dangerous accusations that contain no truth.
For that you have to look to emotion and upbringing. That is where the biography comes in very handy for understanding what is going on. Musk, like so many extremely driven people, appears to be a badly damaged human being who seems to only be able to control his pain by launching sudden and extreme bouts of activity that become all consuming for himself and those who work for him.
Isaacson documents how Musk’s father was routinely verbally abusive and the biography reports regular physical violence at school. He was brought up in South Africa under the heavy influence of apartheid. The attitudes he inherited towards women were not exactly role models for enlightenment and resulted in multiple break ups and divorces.
His drive stems from a deep desire to prove himself to his father and that gave him an exceptional need to succeed and an astonishing appetite for hard work. The effort he put in and the intelligence he applied to his own survival helped him to become a hugely successful student of advanced technology who then proved exceptionally good at spotting opportunities to apply what he had learned.
Once he becomes obsessed with an idea his personality drives him to push it to the limit and he doesn’t care who he crushes as he pursues that latest obsession. His career is littered with talented people whom he has fired because they weren’t prepared to work every hour of the day and night and of the burned-out wrecks of people who were. At no point in his career has he demonstrated the remotest awareness of the impact of his production drives on the people who worked for him or cared for him.
Musk’s dangerous and delusionary belief in his own genius
Most alarmingly of all, like many very successful business people, he has convinced himself that his achievements are the product of his own personal genius. That has given him some very strange and dangerous ideas about the importance of the elite breeding which he has put into practice when it comes to the size of his own family. He also has an extraordinarily strong conviction that you are either with him and part of his golden circle or against him and needing to be crushed.
He seems to genuinely love little children and to enjoy the simplicity of engaging with them, until they start to develop their own ideas and personalities and begin to question his. Central to his switch into the camp of the extreme right is his belief that he has lost a loving son to gender politics. At the same time, central to the convictions of his transitioned daughter is that her father turned on her as soon as she started to express herself. The arrogance of a parent who convinces themselves that they know everything about what is best for their child can reach extreme proportions when that parent believes that those around them should be grateful and admiring.
The challenge of the Musk era: to overwhelm oligarchy with democracy
That is what is so revealing about Musk’s biography. The problem with the oligarchs that are now seeking to dominate society completely is not just their will to secure more economic power. It is their sheer personal arrogance. These people don’t just disrespect democracy because of economic self interest – they are convinced they know better than the rest of us. They think they can buy any election they wish to and that the rest of us need to be placed under the guidance of their great wisdom.
The truth is very different. People like Musk are completely incapable of understanding the way that most people wish to live. They don’t just have different economic interests to the rest of us, they have dangerously damaged personalities and warped ideas. Those ideas will inevitably grow in strength and increasingly dominate society unless we decide to limit their extreme wealth.
By heavily taxing physical property that can’t be hidden in offshore bank accounts and shadowy crypto accounts we can stand firm against the oligarchic conviction that they should rule and render the rest of us disempowered and disenfranchised.
Musk isn’t the Messiah. He is a very naughty boy.
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