The unelected, unvetted Elon Musk, who directs the new Department of Government Efficiency and appears to be acting like a co-president with Donald Trump, seems to be leading the United States into a constitutional crisis. Given Musk’s authority, it’s useful to look beyond his unfettered political influence and examine his views on religion and related social issues.
Political economists have a name for what Musk is doing: state capture. “State capture occurs when wealthy private interests influence a government to such a degree that they can freely direct policy decisions and public funds for their own benefit or for the benefit of their ideological fellow travelers (or both),” explains Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare. This gives Musk unprecedented influence over the Trump administration, including its social stances.
Bloomberg offers a helpful overview of Musk’s opinions. “The guy’s almost got a checklist: border security, vaccine skepticism, pronoun jokes, red pilling, stop-the-stealing. Last fall, he endorsed an antisemitic ‘replacement theory’ trope, setting off a minor advertiser boycott. Name a mind virus, and he’s probably posting about it,” it states.
Musk’s Christian beliefs
Born and raised in South Africa, Musk was baptized and raised in the Anglican church. From a techie who for years sounded at least skeptical, Musk began in 2022 making a series of pro-Christianity statements, such as at a Trump rally where he announced, “I believe in the teachings of Christ. I believe in the Christian principles.” He told an Irish interviewer last year that he is “a cultural Christian.”
Also last year, during an interview streamed on X, he told author Jordan Peterson, “While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise.” He has complained on his X social media platform, however, that “Christianity has become toothless.” Sounding Trumpian, he warned, “Unless there is more bravery to stand up for what is fair and right, Christianity will perish.”
Last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk has increasingly invoked religion in discussing far-ranging topics. Musk piously proclaimed in a Wall Street Journal interview, “I believe in the principles of Christianity like love thy neighbor as thyself (have empathy for all) and turn the other cheek (end the cycle of retribution).” He then volunteered that regarding bullies at school, “I think you shouldn’t turn the other cheek — punch them in the nose … And then thereafter, you know, make peace.” All this led his interviewer to conclude: “The Musk Theology: An eye for an eye, then peace.”
How’s that for turning the other cheek?
Musk’s actions speak louder than his words. He is accused of putting the United States Agency for International Development in “the wood chipper” for personal reasons. According to a USAID worker who has been associated with the agency for 37 years and worked on health programs, “Musk has a personal vendetta against USAID.” Says Charles Llewellyn, “He rightly claims that USAID helped overthrow the apartheid government of his native South Africa. Now, he is extracting his revenge.”
Anti-LGBTQ
Likewise, the desire for vengeance seems to be in play with his attack against “the woke mind virus,” which he blames for one of his children transitioning as a teenager. In an online interview, Musk said his child was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” He claimed that he’d been tricked into authorizing gender-affirming treatment for her and that as a result of this trick, “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus … we’re making some progress.” Vivian Jenna Wilson, Musk’s estranged transgender daughter, gave an interview in response last year refuting that claim, adding that he was a “cold” father. “In the little time that he was [around] I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness,” Wilson said.
Musk’s resentment about LGBTQ rights is so great that he promised to move SpaceX and the social media platform X from California to Texas over a gender identity law. (He previously moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas, notably a state with no income tax.)
Pro-natalist extremism
It seems likely that Musk, as Trump did, will move from a moderate pro-choice position to an anti-abortion stance. Musk told a German periodical last month, “When a culture loses its religion, it starts to become anti-natalist and decline in numbers.” Like JD Vance, Musk, who has at least 12 children (six in the last five years), is a pronatalist. Musk calls declining global fertility rates “not just a crisis, but the crisis.” He told Tucker Carlson in 2023: “Once you have birth control and abortions and whatnot, now you can still satisfy the limbic instinct but not procreate.” He tweeted in 2022 that “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
Bloomberg observes that when Musk was born in 1971, there were about 3.8 billion people. It states, “To be clear: The world’s population is not declining. About 2 billion people were living a century ago, and last year, the number topped 8 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The overwhelming majority of experts trust the data from the United Nations, which projects that the global figure will keep rising to a peak of more than 10 billion people by the year 2100.”
The pronatalists Musk hangs with, according to Bloomberg, are “a loose confederation of religious conservatives, libertarian techies and blogger bros.” Musk has endowed the University of Texas with $10 million to create the Population Wellbeing Initiative, which is expected to “distort the impact of research in the perennially underfunded field of demography.”
The slowing of the birth rate is being used to justify new restrictions on abortion rights. Pronatalism historically has strong ties both to patriarchal and race supremacy movements.
White supremacy
As Musk evolves into a Christian nationalist, he already has the white supremacy part down pat. Musk has accused the South African government of anti-white racism. Late last week, assuredly at Musk’s insistence, Trump issued a startling executive order halting foreign assistance — hundreds of millions in aid, mostly to combat HIV/AIDS — to South Africa. Trump also outrageously offered to prioritize the resettling of white “Afrikaner refugees,” calling them “victims of unjust racial discrimination.” White Afrikaners comprise 7 percent of the population but still own the majority of farmland in South Africa. It was entertaining to witness two of the most prominent groups representing Afrikaners decline the offer almost immediately.
And last November, the Biden administration criticized Musk for posting a response on X that promoted the idea of replacement theory, that Jewish people encourage “nonwhite” people to immigrate to Western countries to ensure “white genocide.” (There isn’t time or space to get the role of Musk’s use of X to spread conspiracy theories, but they are constant.)
Musk has announced recently that he is bringing back a 25-year-old DOGE staffer who tweets as “Big Balls,” who wrote on X: “I was racist before it was cool,” “You could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity,” and “Normalize Indian hate.” Appearing to claim godly powers, Musk, commenting on the controversy, said over X: “To err is human, to forgive divine.”
Whether or not Musk is a true believer, or Trump is, for that matter, is irrelevant in the face of the actions they are taking either in the name of religion or to propitiate Christian nationalists.
Photo by Debbie Rowe
One Response
I used to admire this guy. He studied physics, business and engineering. He became rich almost by accident when he co-authored PayPal with Peter Thiel. Was prepared to blow all his money from selling his share of it on a couple of disposable Russian Space Rockets with the sole purpose of putting a greenhouse on mars. He wanted to inspire humanity and get the manned space program happening. The Russians laughed him out of the office. So instead he spent all his money on the two best ways to flush money down a toilet. He bought a failing electric car company and started his own space launch company. All his friends told him it was a bad idea and he’d go bankrupt. Yet he pulled it off. Both companies became so successful he is now the richest guy in the world. His longterm goal has always been the colonisation of mars in case a catastrophic event makes earth uninhabitable. I guess the power has gone to his head. He will forever be known as the guy who made electric cars cool and rockets re-usable but now the later chapters of history books on Elon Musk will be a lot more negative than they might have been. Shame. Einstein started out well too. Physicists mostly burn out in their late 20’s. Then he tried to warn America about a possible german atomic bomb and initiated the Manhattan Project. Great minds often mean well but go off the rails a bit.