The goal of repressive regimes, like the one Trump aspires to, is to exercise authority without ideals or moral constraint. They consider any and all lies as necessary to acquire and remain in power. Their goal is for a privileged few to dominate the nation and guide its policies. Elections are held to manufacture consent but become rituals, stripped of their ability to engage in self-government.
The American right has dreamed of the freedom to make policies that make them rich. If they could they would free themselves from popular rule and democratic institutions. That dream is as American as South African pie. White South Africans were able to stay in power for generations without the support of popular majorities. How exactly did fascism last so long in South Africa and what does that tell us about our current struggle against it?
Both the elites of the US and of South Africa arrogated to themselves the levers and controls of capitalism for as long as possible. They were and are motivated out of both greed and fear of an uprising by the black and brown and red people, among other colors.
Elon Musk personifies the capitalist enterprise, founded upon violent suppression of the poor and indigent, and taking for himself the most privileged social position.
One of the few things that is noteworthy about Elon Musk is that we know his name. We expect the rich to govern anonymously, quietly or by proxy. Not Musk, who stupidly has lost billions of dollars from demonstrable consumer aversion to his politics. He has paid for in the loss of his reputation in social ostracism and in huge reductions in the value of X and Tesla. He has enough to spend almost $300M to try use his unfair advantage Trump’s favor because he can lose so much before he feels the loss.
This is way different than it used to be. Mellon and Carnegie tried to keep out of the news. In our generation Scaife, Adelson, Thiel and the fraternity of the super rich aspire to work quietly behind the scenes.
Musk, on the other hand, is driven by both money and ego. He craves recognition and flattery, being surrounded by sycophants. His identity, his self-referential reality, is of the South Africa of his childhood, in which whites used law and violence to control a massively larger population. He is cool with governments that are not legitimate and that use any means at their disposal to remain ensconced in power.
Musk embraces minority rule, whether by wealthy American elites or by White South African enslavers. This is justified, by racists worldwide, by allegedly superior qualifies of White people, rich people and both White and rich people. Musk’s origin story is one of unrelenting racist suppression. He and the White elite of South Africa engaged in the total cultural annihilation of terrified Africans, families scattered to the wind into a cruel, repressive and ungodly power superimposed upon them. And they did this over the course of four centuries, spanning many generations.
For all Musk’s remonstrations that he is a self-made billionaire, this stems from the success of his father as a self-made millionaire. The elder Musk profited handsomely from his privileged access and authority over emerald mines
Let we forget it is past generations of South Africans who dispatched those deplorable slave ships from African docks. These are the crimes from which South African generational wealth came from. The ships that carried Black Africans to American are the Mayflowers of the Negroes. Of course, they did not come here to escape persecution but to be themselves persecuted. Generations of wealthy White South Africas captured and sent Blacks to the New World without hope to be free, assigned against their will to take up the lowest rungs of the new society.
One can imagine the Elon Musk’s great, great grandfather as the Chief Slavery Officer, greeting his passengers: “Welcome to capitalism. Your journey will take three months so take a seat and start to row or we’ll whip you.”
