Henry Ford was the great manufacturing genius of the early 20th century.
In 1921, he was at the height of his fame, fortune, and power. He was hanging out with Thomas Edison. His every utterance was chronicled by an adoring media.
But things were about to take a turn. By the time he died in 1947, Ford had wrecked his historic reputation. General Motors under Alfred Sloan had bypassed the company. If schoolkids knew him at all, it was thanks to his coddling of Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War II. He was a fierce anti-semite.
Elon Musk is now at roughly the same age Ford was then. He, too, is at the height of his wealth, fame, and power. But there is a lot to be disquieted about.
Racism is his anti-semitism. Musk grew up in apartheid South Africa, on the white side of it. Tesla lists just one black on its executive page, a former Walgreens executive who sits on the board. I’m certain he’d say there isn’t a racist bone in his body. Racists say that.
As he has risen to become the world’s richest man in 2021, Musk’s inner Henry Ford has come out. He moved to Texas specifically to avoid taxes. Those are for little people. His version of eugenics is his sexist attitude that women should produce more children “for the sake of civilization.”
While the self-interest of tech moves left, Musk moves further to the right, entirely in his own self-interest. Now that he has control over the electric car market, he wants to end its subsidies. With government paying billions for SpaceX launch services, he now attacks Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan. He has called efforts to control the coronavirus “fascist,”
comparing vaccines to the “red pill” in The Matrix. It’s a fascist dog whistle.
Meanwhile the media, which formerly gave Musk a pass on such questions, no longer does. Jill Lepore describes Muskism as “antiquarianism disguised as science fiction” and inherently plutocratic. “There’s a lot of feudalism in Muskism,” she says.
Musk has climbed the mountain and now wants to start an avalanche. In a creative economy that desperately needs more talent, he opposes efforts to create more if it will cost him any money. Ford ignored the excesses that created the Great Depression, then let his biases lead him to Hitler. Elon Musk is going down the same dark road.
I view Musk as a spectacular scammer who makes huge sums from selling carbon credits to ICE vehicle manufacturers, a genius at extracting government subsidies, pre selling products that don't exist and financial gymnastics. However his innovation thoughts are brilliant imo despite the western world inevitably ceding the mass BEV market to China (Tesla is predominantly a niche limousine liberal market). Here he is attacking big government and the insane US national debt:
https://youtu.be/lSD_vpfikbE
Ford was instrumental in helping the US survive the 1930's economic depression having previously paid its workforce enough to buy the ultra cheap and well designed mass market cars they were making, helped the okies escape the dustbowl and powered small business. It remains a hugely important and innovative company today. Henry Ford was very anti Zionist, not 'anti semite' and every car sold was accompanied by a pamphlet 'The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem'. translated into 12 languages and available throughout North America and Europe along with a political magazine the 'Dearborn Independent'. What was fashionable in that era was national socialism, which was vehemently against oligarchs globalizing manufacturing (soviet communism was seen as the huge threat, controlled by a small group of political intellectuals).
It's worth remembering the leader of the German national socialists Adolph Hitler was Time magazines' man of the year in 1938, although it is almost impossible to find the actual article online these days. (A grinning Joseph Stalin was man of the year in 1939 despite the holdomor communist terror famine in the mid 30's that killed millions). Today Time magazine is owned by DAVOS digital globalist king pin Marc Benioff.
Obviously history, due to massive world war, has not been kind to Henry Ford or the endlessly mutating socialist political world. I'm bothering to write this because the people in positions of power currently occupying the husk of the US Democratic party, of which I'm a registered voter, are rapidly going down the same authoritarian path that ended in disaster for everyone except the global elites in the 1930's.