• masquenox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    15
    ·
    1 year ago

    Incidentally, do you guys remember when this fuckhead was a darling of the left?

    And when was this? I cannot remember a time when a celebrity capitalist parasite was a “darling of the left.”

    • londos@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      66
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I will admit there was a time when he was pushing electric cars while traditional auto manufacturers seemed to be dragging their feet. It felt like he was on the right side of a big issue and shaking things up. I think it’s important to admit when we get it wrong. And boy did I get it wrong.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        30
        arrow-down
        23
        ·
        1 year ago

        It felt like he was on the right side of a big issue

        No. No, he never was. Any leftist will tell you that the only solution to the car problem is public transport… not silly attempts to make individual cars more “eco-friendly.” That’s not leftism - that’s what we call “green capitalism.” And leftists have understood that loooong before Phony Stark skipped South Africa to avoid being drafted into the SADF to uphold the white supremacist state he benefited so richly from.

        • londos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          32
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          100% agree with you now. I wasn’t at that level of analysis at the time yet.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            17
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I wasn’t at that level of analysis at the time yet.

            Me neither. They really did a number on us.

        • Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Do you think you could be a little more careful in your angry smearing of conscientious objectors please?

          My brother dodged the draft. He’s a theologian who spent years in exile due to his refusal to serve the corrupt apartheid government.

          Give a fuck about Edolf Twitler or don’t but leave the rest of us out of this. Cunt is your problem now anyway.

          Just, mind the facts while you rant if you don’t mind. Please.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Do you think you could be a little more careful in your angry smearing of conscientious objectors please?

            Perhaps you need to stop smearing conscientious objectors by pretending Phony Stark was one - you might just as well pretend Donald Trump was a conscientious objector if you apply that label to Musk.

            It’s out in the open now - Musk is as much a white supremacist as any National Party goon. And, like a lot of rich white kids whose families got rich off the opportunities and impoverished black labor the Apartheid-regime provided them with, Musk felt himself too entitled to actually do the dirty work himself. It was common knowledge here in South Africa at the time - the rich white kids from rich families got to opt out of the war, despite the fact thet they benefited the most from the Apartheid-regime.

            It is true that some of those rich white kids actually were against the Apartheid-regime… but Musk wasn’t one of them. His blatant support for white supremacism and his enabling of right-wing ideology proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Exactly. If the reason you are “conscientiously objecting” is because you’re a rich Nazi shitheel who is too much of a pussy to fight for anything yourself, no one cares because you obviously don’t have a real conscience to be conscientous with.

              He is clearly fine with sending others to fight his battles for him. Can he be any more the Gen X version of Trump?

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            Wait, is this a bad thing?

            No, it’s a Musk thing - he claims him skipping out on doing his bit for the Apartheid-regime (the true reason for his family’s riches) was based on his (alleged) “stance” against the Apartheid-regime - but his overt white supremacism and his enabling of far-right ideologies kind of disproves all of that, doesn’t it?

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          You’re pushing a very niche view as if it’s universal, I get why you’re doing it but you’re wrong to. There is no single solution to transport requirements and while the vast majority of leftists of course agree public transport is vital it’s not a magic solution for everything and outside the car hate bubble is very rare for anyone, even a leftwing person, to be staunchly anticar.

          You might not like it but it’s reality.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            You’re pushing a very niche view as if it’s universal,

            Oh, it used to be far, far more universal than it is now. They spent a lot of propaganda money to make it less universal.

            Considering how the rivets seem to be popping off the western propaganda model recently, I’m willing to bet that it might one day be a lot more universal once more.

            You might not like that, but that’s reality.

            • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              I don’t mean to be rude but you’re confused and delusional, there isn’t a transport authority in the world that thinks we can totally do without cars - I’m all for idealism but it should be at least grounded in some form of reality.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                4
                ·
                1 year ago

                Riiiight… I’m confused and delusional because you want to live in a world where Big Auto’s profit margins are prioritized over the needs of the public.

                Phony Stark might have a little blue check mark to sell you - he likes the way you think.

                • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  If I had my way then manufacturing would be publicly owned and based on open source principles, that wouldn’t change the fact that transport networks are still going to require cars.

                  Do we over use cars? Yes. Can we totally do without cars, vans and specialist vehicles? No.

                  They’re incredibly versatile and hugely efficient in certain usecase situations, the infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to maintain than any other alternative.

                  Ecologically they can make a lot of sense too, especially fleet managed electric self-drive which is without a doubt where we’re heading.

                  Investing in long distance passenger train networks isn’t a great strategy at the moment, by the time it’s half built it’s very likely efuels already on the market now will have significant adoption in aviation thus making flying a far less polluting means of travel than trains – but it’ll be too late to change because you’ve already released all that carbon from the huge steel works needed to make the tracks.

                  What we should be doing is creating car friendly transport hubs allowing people to do first and return mile by car and linking all those transport hubs with efficient, affordable, safe, and reliable short and medium train lines. Cities should have tube and tram networks that are accomodating to all and which include the protections required for safety of the passengers, especially from other passengers.

                  ‘women getting harassed doesn’t matter’ isn’t an acceptable answer, ‘disabled people can just stay home’ isn’t an acceptable answer, ‘People who need to transport stuff can’t’ isn’t an acceptable answer… Until rail based public transport can actually fill all the needs of the people it’s not a viable solution in it’s own.

                  Mixed mode integrated transport network is what every single person who has any interest in transportation agrees is the best solution, everyone except the kneejerk flatearth anticar nuts of course.

                  • masquenox@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    If I had my way then manufacturing would be publicly owned and based on open source principles

                    You start off very well… but after that sentence you just take a running nosedive into bog-standard green capitalist apologia.

                    They’re incredibly versatile and hugely somewhat efficient in certain usecase extremely limited situations,

                    FTFY.

                    Ecologically they can make a lot of sense too

                    No. They absolutely fucking do not in any way, shape or form.

                    aviation thus making flying a far less polluting means of travel than trains

                    Never going to happen, genius. Just the massive infrastructure air travel requires makes this attempt of yours a joke. When it comes to efficiency, nothing beats trains - except ships. That’s not going to change any time soon - or possibly ever.

      • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Tesla “developed” those solar tiles as a fucking scam to sell investors on the Solarcity merger to bail his family out. It only ever came to fruition to keep him out of prison for outright fraud rather than just “fibbing”. He bet the wellbeing of every employee and shareholder on that absolute dumpster fire of a company, literally scamming investors, just to save his ass, and it was nothing short of dumb fucking luck that kept it all burning to the ground, as he himself stated in a deposition.

        Like everything else Musk does, those solar tiles are a way for wealthy people to greenwash their decadent lifestyle, while also allowing them to stay NIMBYs who don’t want to ruin the look of their gaudy McMansions. Normal arrays cost fractions of what those tiles do, work better, and don’t require replacing your entire roof for them.

        Powerwalls were just a way to get rid of out of spec cells to people at 10x what their value is in an automotive pack. A home ESS is much gentler on them comparatively, so even out of spec cells work fine.

        You want to talk about clean transportation? He came up with the literal pipe dream of the Hyperloop to keep cities from funding actual high-speed and light rail projects, so people would have to buy his shitboxes.

        Literally everything he does is to keep his game as a greasy car salesman/government welfare queen going (see, SpaceX), and nothing more. Any positive benefits conferred from this are basically just a coincidence.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        When he was spending money on electric cars, solar, renewable energy storage and (relatively) low-cost space travel.

        You mean… all those things that came from public institutions (ie, universities) and not parasites like Phony Stark?

        It honestly baffles me how many people have forgotten that Musk was heralded as basically being irl Batman

        Yes… by a media completely given over to licking the boots of the wealthy. Soooo… no leftists involved at all.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            And how many of those people actually spent time implementing these improvements?

            Probably not much… and probably because people at universities are smart enough to understand that electric cars doesn’t fix any problems at all.

            in a country where everything has been designed around cars

            When you’re in a hole it’s best to stop digging. Continuing to rely on cars because fixing the mess that was caused for the benefit of capitalist parasites is “too expensive” is pure madness.

            There were a lot of people on the left who weren’t associated with the MSM

            Lol! Such as whom? I think you have a very weird idea of what “left” actually is.

            The reason why the hardcore lefties liked him was because they saw him as a necessary evil.

            Really? Leftists just up and forgot how capitalism worked because… why, again?

            then we’ll back him until he stops being useful.

            Leftists understand that capitalism will never fix the problems capitalism has caused. Period. None of this is new - this has been general knowledge amongst leftists for more than a hundred years now.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                Seriously, what is the point of developing an electric car if you believe cars shouldn’t exist?

                Well hallelujah, friends… the right-wingers have finally found a pretext that none of us can beat - they messed things up so badly that none of it can be fixed, and nobody should even try. I don’t know why they just don’t go public with that - they already have one believer right here.

                Seriously, what is the point of developing an electric car if you believe cars shouldn’t exist?

                You do understand that there are more uses for batteries than cars, right?

                How many people still use plastic containers? How many people still drive cars?

                Plastic containers did’t fall out of the sky - neither did cars. The people who benefit from their production doesn’t live on Mount Olympus - we can strip them (and the political structures that enables them) of their power and fix these things. It’s not some pipe dream or an ideal - it’s literally the only way to guarantee humanity’s continued survival on this planet.

                but they aren’t grounded in reality

                The only thing you seem to have “grounded in reality” is that the destruction of literally everything should be “compromised” with. It seems the only thing you are willing to do is compromise - but I guess that’s where the money is, huh?

    • weew@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      it was before he was an actual celebrity and was only known for creating Tesla/SpaceX. He was also “only” a millionaire and well before Tesla stock went nuts, and he also wasn’t posting like crazy on Twitter so people only knew him via Tesla and SpaceX’s achievements, both of them legendary underdogs looking to overthrow the well-established big industry corporations.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        18
        ·
        1 year ago

        Soooo… just the kind of person the left has despised for more than a hundred years now?

        • weew@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          what? The “left” has always been the side of revolutionary upstarts and underdogs. The right is the conservative, old guard, established players.

          you’re literally trying to rewrite history just to try to hate Musk a little more

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            18
            ·
            1 year ago

            The “left” has always been the side of revolutionary upstarts and underdogs.

            It’s okay… you can just admit you don’t have the foggiest clue what it is you are talking about.

            You can’t fix something if you don’t even admit to it, yes?

            • jarfil@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Of course they can; someone on the right has always been right and could never admit to not being right.

    • blueson@feddit.nu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I think it’s important to distinct what part of the left.

      Most of the left on Lemmy? Probably not.

      A lot of liberals who align themselves with the US democrats? There was a lot of support until the famous pedo incident.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          The Overtoon Window is so far to the right in the US that their “Left” are nationalist pro-business neoliberals and their “Right” are ultra-nationalist anti-immigrant anti-abortion neoliberals, so basically in what is the Right to Far-Right range in continental Europe.

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Along with pre-pandemic (roughly) Musk, Sam Bankman Freed was also buddies with the left and even had a second co-ceo to court the right wing politicians while he hung out with the left wing (those that were dumb enough to believe in crypto anyway).

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        No offence intended… but this post has shown me just what a completely warped idea people have in regards to what “left” and “right” even means - very few people here seem to even know that anti-capitalism is where the left starts…

    • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Tbh I liked him when the whole GME thing happened, because when Robinhood screwed over all the GME holders Elon blew the lid off of Dogecoin and I basically made all my profits back. I also thought him poking fun at the SEC while all that happened was pretty ballsy and I respected that.

      But now he’s made it known that he’s a conservative bootlicker, transphobe, antivaxx, corporate shill… 🤷‍♀️