Mikey

Please do not call Elon Musk a fascist. He is not a fascist. He has simply endorsed a post arguing that universal suffrage causes "universal suffering", that the population must be divided into "makers" and "takers", and that "takers" should lose the right to vote. He replied "I have wised up". This is not fascism. It is simply the position that democratic participation should be contingent on economic productivity as defined by the ownership class. The richest man on the planet arguing that people who do not generate sufficient private wealth should be stripped of democratic representation is not an authoritarian position. It is simply a return to pre-1832 franchise politics, when only men of property could vote. The Chartists who fought and died for universal suffrage were clearly wrong about that one. The "makers and takers" framework is not fascist language. It is merely language that recasts the entire working population of every developed economy; every nurse, carer, teacher, cleaner, shelf-stacker, warehouse worker, bus driver, and pensioner; as parasites whose democratic voice threatens civilisation. This is a completely normal thing for the richest man in human history to believe. The argument that the franchise must be restricted to protect the productive class from the unproductive is not a fascist position. It is merely a position that every fascist and authoritarian movement in European history has held, from Mussolini's abolition of free elections to Salazar's Estado Novo, which tied voting rights to literacy and property, to Franco's Spain, where elections were abolished entirely for nearly four decades. But Musk is not a fascist. He is a "maker". A maker who built his empire on billions in government contracts, public subsidies, state-funded infrastructure, and tax incentives; funded, that is, by the very "takers" he now believes should not be allowed to vote. Do not call him a fascist. That would be rude.