When Time magazine named Elon Musk “Person of the Year”, two predictable opposing choirs arrived from the United States and elsewhere. Those who criticized the choice recalled Musk’s opposition to anti-Covid ordinances, the disinformation on vaccines spread on Twitter, the anti-union behavior of his companies. Or, the very few taxes paid on his assets and his constant insults against anyone who proposes to tax mega billionaires more fairly (the last to receive the “Musk treatment” on Twitter were Democratic senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren).
Musk fanatics have instead taken refuge in the celebration of his myth. The more controversial aspects of Musk would count for little compared to his genius and the epochal mission undertaken by this man. Political history teacher Jill Lepore, author of a series of podcasts on Musk (The evening rocket, produced by the BBC), he recalled recently that there is something like a cult around him. “A messianic figure: this is how Tesla presents him. And he embraces this role “.
All over the world, the figure of Musk is wrapped in a layer of mythic narrative (including the one he makes of himself) based on some recurring motifs: the genius capable of taking us into the future, the destiny of an exceptional man, the hero trying to save the planet. Yet they are myths that, on closer inspection, appear less univocal than they seem at first glance.
Between past and future
Elon Musk, creator of the future, visionary entrepreneur, someone with an eye on the future. If this is his most widespread fame, then the motivation for Time’s recognition may surprise somehow: “He is different. He’s a manufacturing tycoon – he moves metals, not bytes. His rockets, built from the ground up with a self-taught groundbreaking vision, have reinvigorated America’s space dreams. And if Tesla lives up to his promises, he can deal a big blow against global warming. The man who seems to come from a future where technology makes everything possible is also a return to our glorious industrial past, before America stagnated and stopped producing nothing but rules, restrictions, limits, obstacles and Facebook ”.
The nostalgic tone of these words seems to refer to the ghost of a lost heroic world rather than to the complex scenarios of future challenges. Before America “stagnated” there were things, the production of machines, the space program. It is in this meeting of nostalgia and futurism that Elon Musk’s true appeal lies. What Musk actually sells is a promise of progress as we imagined it as children: technological marvels and new horizons of human expansion. Artificial neural connections (those studied by his company Neuralink) and satellite connections (those of his Starlink program), interplanetary travel and Martian colonization (SpaceX, the ultimate heart of his empire).
Above all, it gives us back the comfort of a future without apparent sacrifices; in which we can, for example, continue to base our lives on the individual ownership of cars (as long as it is an electric Tesla); and in the meantime, put ourselves on the list, or rather dream of doing so, for an expensive journey into space. The power of this promise is such that it has made Musk the richest individual in human history. (Technically, this lead isn’t so much due, as Time suggested, to building things, but to the stock movements that inflated Tesla stock during the pandemic.)
Save the Earth?
When Musk mentions classical science fiction and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, confirms that he is a visionary, although linked to visions perhaps already vintage. In an age of global existential urgencies, many are wondering if we can afford these kinds of visions.
Would a humbler, more realistic version of Musk do more to save the planet, before imagining Martian colonies as a backup plan for when Earth is uninhabitable? And do we really find it normal to discuss plans for future human salvation imagined by a single individual? In its nostalgia, Time seems to forget something: fifty years ago, the space race was driven by competition between the US and the USSR. Even with obvious propaganda reasons, they were collective enterprises. Today it is driven by the competition between the two wealthiest individuals in the world (Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos). The first step of a man on the moon was “a great step for humanity”; the first step on Mars will be an event corporate, with methods and purposes decided by a astroimprenditore private.
Alpha male
According to Jill Lepore, the extreme capitalism embodied by Musk is new only in appearance, and in reality very old: plutocratic, regressive, almost feudal; “It is as if there were these masters and the rest of us are serfs and our destinies are in their hands. I believe that the idea that there is something highly innovative and disruptive about Musk is in fact part of his own self-mystification. “
There is another classic element of extreme capitalism that seems embedded in the Musk myth: the cult of the exceptional individual-entrepreneur. It is thanks to this exceptionality that followers do not seem too upset by his refusal to pay fairer taxes, his temperamental excesses, his story of a bullied boy who may have become an adult bully (judging by the stories of how he terrifies employees, or by how he uses social popularity to publicly mock and insult opponents).
It is on Twitter, above all, that Musk shows the character flaws of his character. At the same time, he knows how to make that character a source of entertainment. His popularity increased after Trump was ousted from the platform, taking the role of unstable, irreverent, unfair communicator, adding his own particular style of demented humor. His profile photo is a clearly phallic missile.
Time wrote of him that he is a “clown, genius, provocateur, visionary, industrialist, showman”. We feel a fascination, for better or worse, for multifaceted and complex characters, and for the figures of trickster unpredictable. We are involved with characters who take risks, and Musk has taken some notable ones in his history as an entrepreneur; by the characters who have suffered enough personal misfortunes to arouse some empathy in us; and by those who, like all of us, continually struggle to gain or maintain some form of social status. Despite the provocations, the brazen wealth and the attitudes from alpha male, Musk still appears, at times, as a man uncomfortable in his own skin, eager to please others and prove himself to be the life of the party. This is the effect obtained when he was a special guest in an episode of Saturday Night Live.
All this, however, without forgetting that Musk’s continued exposure is not accidental. The cult of his character is strategically cultivated. It is known that Tesla does not allocate a budget to advertising: Musk is advertising. His unpredictable and multifaceted personality is an attention-generating machine. His sometimes mysterious tweets are meant to create panic or expectation around his business moves. Nearly sixty-seven million followers have made him one of the influence most powerful in the world.
Mirror of society
Ultimately, what does Musk’s popularity say about our collective psychology? Writer Douglas Coupland, best remembered for Generation X, now a Musk aficionado, called it the “Übermensch of Silicon Valley”. Time compares Musk to Doctor Manhattan, the god-man character of Watchmen. He is more often compared to another comic book character, Tony Stark, the tycoon who uses his wealth to become the superhero Iron Man (Musk appeared in an Iron Man movie, and appears to have consulted actor Robert Downey Jr on help him get into the main character).
A man of galactic ambition and boundless economic power is seen as a beacon by a nostalgic or simply bewildered middle class. Someone who has concentrated such enormous wealth that it has something transcendent – and has done so also thanks to the dysfunctions of contemporary capitalism – offers us solutions to the crises created by capitalism. It is certainly not the strangest thing that is happening these days, but we cannot be surprised if someone remains skeptical.
* Marco Mancassola is a novelist and writing teacher. He lives in London.
.