Elon Musk Accidentally Reveals That He Completely Missed the Point of These Famous Movies
This just in: the "resistance" is... tech billionaires?
Over the weekend, billionaire Elon Musk, one of the richest human beings alive, took to X-formerly-Twitter to share a meme that lists several science fiction movies that made us "side with the resistance."
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1822352993422901402
"When it's fiction you understand," the self-righteous and downright condescending post reads. "Yet you refuse to see it when it's the reality you're living in. Wild."
From a bow-wielding Katniss Everdeen, who rises from the impoverished District 13 to lead a revolution against the wealthy Capitol in "The Hunger Games" to a young Jedi Luke Skywalker, who defeats an authoritarian, and highly-militarized authority that feeds off of the conflict-loving Dark Side of the Force, many of the films in question feature oppressed protagonists battling against wealth- and resource-hoarding, authoritarian regimes.
And that's a pretty easy line to thread. Yet, the fact that Musk, who is an increasingly right-wing and deeply online figure who recently declared that his new mission is to "destroy the woke mind virus," chose to share this meme at all raises an interesting question.
Is he suggesting that he's part of the resistance? And to that end, does the world's richest man understand what any of these movies are even about?
After all, Musk wields incredible money and power. According to the Forbes billionaires list, he's currently the richest person in the world, giving him a tremendous amount of influence.
"If there's a resistance," political scientist Ian Bremmer commented on X, "it's not the people making the rules and the money."
Given Musk's track record as the CEO of several large companies, there's plenty of evidence suggesting he's not the good guy in this equation. At Tesla factories, for example, workers have been forced to sleep on factory floors. At SpaceX, Musk engaged in inappropriate relationships with women who worked under him, in some cases impacting their jobs and careers. Both SpaceX and Tesla have also come under fire for environmental abuses. Musk has also gained a reputation for conducting mass firings, union-busting tactics, serious animal rights abuses at his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, free speech suppression, enabling authoritarian government censorship, and spreading disinformation.
In short, when it comes to the resistance groups that the films referenced in Musk's post feature, the mercurial CEO looks less like the resistance fighters that these stories depict — and a whole lot more like the high-powered regimes that those dissenters are fighting against.
"In nearly every story listed here, it's about the small/weak resisting the megacorporations/arrogant narcissist dictators/religious/cults of personality that through megalomania want to rule the world," one incredulous X user wrote in response to Musk's post. "Which side, exactly, do you honestly consider yourself belonging to?"
Of course, the real world and the human-drawn factions within it are far more complicated than the ones depicted in Hollywood movies. But Musk's portrayal of being part of a resistance fighting against the powers that be is hypocrisy at best.
No interaction might outline Musk's delusion better than an exchange that took place on Twitter four years ago, during the last election cycle.
"Take the red pill," Musk tweeted in May 2020, referencing the famous scene from "The Matrix." In response, Ivanka Trump responded: "Taken!"
"Fuck both of you," retorted Lilly Wachowski, one of the creators of "The Matrix" series.
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