Summary

Republicans’ efforts to portray Elon Musk as a MAGA martyr are failing, as his victim narrative struggles to resonate with conservative audiences.

Musk’s controversial statements and perceived elitism, including his complaints of being targeted by Democrats, have alienated even right-wing supporters.

Protests and vandalism against Tesla have damaged the brand, and Musk’s ties to Trump have hurt the Trump’s approval ratings, especially on economic issues.

Attempts to rally sympathy for Musk, including his emotional Fox News appearance, have largely backfired.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    110·
    28 days ago

    I don’t want you dead, Elon. I want you to be penniless and without anyone willing to loan you money anymore.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
          42·
          28 days ago

          While he certainly deserves to suffer proportional to the suffering he’s causing, top priority is stop him from causing more - if that means he ends up taking a bullet in a manner that renders him incapable of processing what’s happening, I’ll still count that as a good start.

          • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
            5·
            27 days ago

            Can’t we have both?

            I want Squirrel Girl to mob him with 1000s of squirrels, dragging him from wherever he is to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, then dangle him by whatever nuts he’s got on him.

            Then I’ll be happy.

            • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
              10·
              27 days ago

              I mean, no amount of torture will ever be proportional to the amount of suffering he’s caused, so, if the opportunity presents to make his death excruciating, then by all means: my point is simply that all that takes the back burner to stopping him from damaging our country/planet.

              Stop him at any cost; use him as an opportunity to send a warning to other oligarchs if able.

          • comfy@lemmy.ml
            2·
            26 days ago

            While he certainly deserves to suffer proportional to the suffering he’s causing

            Even Abu Gharib would struggle to do that. The scale of influence billionaires have is insane.

      • glitches_brew@lemmy.world
        12·
        28 days ago

        I don’t care if he’s dead or not. I just never want to have to hear that stupid Twitter guy say another word. I’m at the point where a single sentence from him makes me cringe enough to throw my phone across the room. Dead or irrelevant makes no difference to me. Just wish he was gone. Go to Mars already idiot.

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
        1·
        27 days ago

        You’ll be heading about him for a long time. I mean Hitler is still taught about today as far as I know.

        • helvetpuli@sopuli.xyz
          4·
          27 days ago

          I remember about twenty years or so ago there was a tiny plaque in there parking lot the Soviets built over the fürerbunker. It gave me great calmness to pee there, against the sign

          Now it’s a bus stop. So current and future generations are deprived of this simple connection with their anti-fascist ancestors.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        28 days ago

        I want him to blast off on a self funded one way trip to Mars with his closest friends. Then televise him and friends trying to create a Mars society. It would be better than any reality show produced yet.

        • fake_meows@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          27 days ago

          What odds are they giving for “shitty rocket accidentally blows up on launch”?

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    69·
    28 days ago

    “Wahhhh! People I’ve demonized and repeatedly talk down to don’t like me! Just because I’m destroying any positive programs the government has and taking your future safety nets away doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends!”

  • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    28 days ago

    I don’t want to kill Musk, but I’m not going to shed any tears about anything bad that happens to him or any other racist, fascist piece of shit.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
      14·
      27 days ago

      Don’t kill him. Just tax him like they would with a normal working person. That would throw him into a world of sufferung.

    • sfbing@lemmy.world
      11·
      27 days ago

      Clarence Darrow wrote: “All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

      • loutr@sh.itjust.works
        12·
        27 days ago

        Empathy, like tolerance, should really be considered a social contract. If he doesn’t have empathy for the less fortunate than him, I have a really hard time having empathy for him.

      • CherryBullets@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        27 days ago

        I wish for him to be reborn as bee, so that when in anger he stings a person, he must remove his stinger himself in a desperate plea to survive or tear his innards out in the ultimate karma that would humble his soul.

        • NoSpotOfGround@lemmy.world
          2·
          27 days ago

          Bees are pretty much the angels of the insect world… Harming no-one and nothing, and almost single-handedly holding up the ecosystem of a quarter of the planet’s life forms.

          He’s got a long way to go to reach level bee.

    • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
      4·
      27 days ago

      Just every day some little misfortune to balance out karma like wet sleeves after washing hands, occasionally stepping into dog crap, marmalade toast falling on the floor upside down, a few paper cuts, stepping onto lego barefoot, mobile phone falling into toilet bowl and so on.

  • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee
    51·
    27 days ago

    What a whining fucking maggot. Elon and that whole cohort of cowardly cunts are destroying education, Social Security, international relations, food safety, financial security, and any kind of safety net for the tens of millions of people who will fall through the cracks and die because of their greed. Yeah, no fucking shit people want you dead. It’s not out of spite, or jealousy, or political differences. It’s self preservation.

  • Nunar@lemmy.world
    50·
    27 days ago

    People cheer at the news that Tesla dealerships are burning. That isn’t because they hate Tesla, it’s because Musk is an insufferable piece of shit. He solidified his legacy of trash when he went alt-right. He’s now the villain and always will be

    • Prior_Industry@lemmy.worldEnglish
      30·
      27 days ago

      And the fucker revels being a villain. CPAC appearance on stage with a chainsaw, telling Bob Iger to go fuck himself, Nazi salutes, the list goes on… His brain is obviously mush, but I kinda wonder how he thought this was going to play out for his companies any other way than it has.

    • SoleInvictus
      13·
      27 days ago

      I own a Tesla and I cheer at the news. While I don’t particularly want someone to burn mine before it sells, I wouldn’t begrudge whoever did it.

  • Zink@programming.dev
    46·
    27 days ago

    He is such a ridiculous asswipe that it seems like he’s doing it on purpose to help distract from other billionaires falling in line or random horrible shit the administration is doing.

    I doubt it’s an act, and I suspect he’s really just that much of an asswipe, but damn.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
      12·
      27 days ago

      He’s one of the most prominent disconnected individuals out there. It’s almost certainly not an act, he’s just an idiot. One of the most powerful and influential idiots that has ever existed, unfortunately…

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
        1·
        27 days ago

        He and Trump are very similar. Both managed to make a bunch of other people’s money tied to their personal brand and both had a whole lot of interests trying to help build them up while simultaneously running interference to keep them from making actual decisions about businesses because those folks realized what a moron that he was, until it gets out of hand and they can’t control him anymore. It’s a perfect storm to just make the most insufferable people, idiots who have been told their whole lives by everyone how great and smart they were by an ‘in crowd’.

    • BlackSheep@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      27 days ago

      Honestly, I don’t think there’s any distraction tactics. Anyone who can’t see what’s happening is blind. It’s full on dictatorship in progress, people.

  • rational_lib@lemmy.world
    45·
    26 days ago

    I don’t want Elon dead, I want him to go bankrupt, fail at creating some NRx corporate dictatorship so hard that he brings about a socialist utopia, and then end up getting the drug and mental health treatment he so badly needs for free, eventually issuing an apology for becoming such an asshole and proceeding to live out the rest of his days giving Ted talks around the theme of how being the richest person on earth was the most miserable time of his life.

  • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
    44·
    28 days ago

    A core principal of a martyr is being widely liked. No one gives a shit about this dude. Even the people who he surrounds himself with don’t give a flying fuck about the dude. Musk himself makes every interaction with him transactional. Add in his default behavior of being an 11 year old edgelord wrapped in a 50 something whale body with hair plugs that’s awkward as fuck to be around, and yeah it’s not hard to see why nobody likes this fucking billionaire with attachment issues.

    Dude needs to ditch the ketamine and perhaps get actual therapy. And actually having a better diet and exercise regimen wouldn’t hurt either.

  • TheDeadlySquid@lemm.eeEnglish
    43·
    27 days ago

    She’d a tear for the billionaire as he dismantles our social safety net to give his cronies a tax break.

    • 60d@lemmy.caEnglish
      15·
      27 days ago

      There isn’t much of a safety net to dismantle, but he’ll find a way.

  • The_Caretaker@lemm.eeEnglish
    40·
    27 days ago

    Musk and the other tech-Nazis who invested in Trump want to tear down the government and replace nations with individually owned territories, which each of these corporate criminals will run like a personal fiefdom. Think 13th century feudalism but with internet and cars. A bunch of lords owning everything including the people. “Freedom Cities” that will be wholly owned and operated by your corporate overlords.

    • Sculptor9157@sh.itjust.works
      17·
      27 days ago

      You are pretty much describing the premise behind Max Berry’s book - Jennifer Government.

      In the alternate present the novel portrays, the United States has taken over all of North and South America (except for Cuba) and dominates much of the rest of the world. The United States adopts “capitalizm”, a form of minarchy that abolishes taxation and privatizes government.

      People take the names of the corporations that employ them as their surnames, and persons with two jobs hyphenate their name, e.g. “Julia Nike-McDonald’s”. Employees of the government, including the novel’s title character, take the surname Government.

      • The_Caretaker@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        26 days ago

        Unfortunately, the takeover of the US government by billionaires isn’t fictional anymore. If Musk and the others get their way, the Supreme Court will be disbanded or powerless. The Senate and House will have no control over the government’s spending which is their constitutional role. All government power will be vested in the presidency and he will be their CEO. The billionaires will be a board of directors that gives the CEO / President his orders.

    • NotSerious@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      27 days ago

      Something tells me the ones who think they’d be in charge would be quickly disappeared in theses “self regulating” “cities”.

      Also, who do they think is going to move there? Do they believe liberals will gladly join their psycho future vision? The maga people are already against cities in general. They’ll never move to one…… so who do these people think will live/work/support their cities???

      • OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
        8·
        27 days ago

        Their plan only works if the masses are desperate enough to move to their territory. That’s why their plan starts with dismantling the current economy and institutions. Then they can say “come live and work in TeslandTM where there are jobs and opportunities” but where you have to use TeslabucksTM to buy everything.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        3·
        27 days ago

        I could be bought with a walkable downtown, commitment to the highest public education standards, affordable and accessible medical care, affordable housing, net zero buildings, xeriscaping, high speed rail, internet fiber everywhere, extensive parks and nature areas, diverse people and cultural events, shops and restaurants, and an effective technology supported town hall government …… and a good brewpub.

        The tech bros are supporting all that, right? Right?