After growing up in Pretoria, Elon Musk doesn’t have many nice things to say about Mzansi – Image via Patrick Pleul / Getty Images
After growing up in Pretoria, Elon Musk doesn’t have many nice things to say about Mzansi – Image via Patrick Pleul / Getty Images
It sure is a wild thing to say on-air, and to an audience of millions – but MSNBC’s Joy Reid did not hold back earlier this week, after she delivered a scathing assessment of Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ policies.
What does Elon Musk want for Twitter?
The Pretoria-born billionaire has rocked the digital world this week, following his successful bid to buy Twitter. Whereas his supporters have hailed this move as a victory for freedoms of expression online, critics argue that his ownership could increase the amount of harassment and abuse already rife on the site.
According to the Tesla and SpaceX owner, he wants to bring more ‘political neutrality’ to the table:
For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
“He misses apartheid” – US commentator makes wild claim
However, not everyone is buying Elon Musk’s vision for the social media platform. Reid, a senior contributor to MSNBC, believes that the mega-rich mogul ‘just wants the freedom to be a jerk’.
That wouldn’t prove to be her most controversial statement on the matter, though. The political pundit went on to imply that Elon Musk ‘misses the old South Africa‘, and hinted this Twitter acquisition ‘shows he wants apartheid back’.
“It was distressing to a lot of people, not least … to the people that work at Twitter. A lot of them, probably not all of them, are just worried about what becomes of their company. There has been this lawsuit against Tesla, and Elon Musk himself is a Twitter troll. His idea of freedom means freedom to be a jerk.”
“He wants to be cruel and to have no one be able to stop him. The enjoyment they get from being in this ‘town square’ is being able to harass people, being able to attack people. the misogyny was crazy on Twitter for a while. With Elon Musk, I guess he misses the old South Africa in the 1980s, he wants that back.”
Joy Reid
- You can watch a clip of the incident, and subsequent reaction, here…
