The rise of anti-Elonism

You can tell a lot about a country by who it admires. I was pleasantly surprised some years ago to see a poll showing that the most admired man in the UK was Richard Branson. You may not love all his publicity stunts, or have liked the sandwich selection on Virgin trains, but that poll suggested the British public still liked entrepreneurialism and achievement.

I slightly dread a rerun of such a poll today, because I suspect that among the youth vote in particular the winner would be the person with the most perceived disadvantages in life. Having succumbed to the American woke mind virus, much of the generation coming up in Britain seems to be under the impression that we should only really admire people based on their position in the oppression hierarchy. Meaning that what we ought to think most highly of is an ethnically diverse woman with as many physical and mental disabilities as possible. The fact that entrepreneurialism is not the most appreciated quality can be seen from what one might call ‘anti-Elonism’.

Ever since Elon Musk became more vocal about his views, and then went all-in with his support of Donald Trump, the Tesla boss has faced an unrelenting campaign against him by the left-wing media and others. Rather than merely disagreeing with him, these people wish to cast Musk as not just an eccentric but as some kind of loser. A magazine of the American left called the New Republic went so far recently as to say that he is a ‘small man who is simply not very good at anything’. Lest anyone failed to notice, last week Musk and his SpaceX force successfully parallel-parked a 250-ton space rocket booster on their first try.