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.
“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.
The page has not only mocked Reich repeatedly in recent weeks for his condition, but slammed Vice President Kamala Harris while supporting former President Donald Trump and his “cool” persona in the run-up to this year’s presidential election.
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.