Pearl River      Recently, I listened to one of the public library’s audiobooks by bell hooks called Belonging:  A Culture of Place.  It might have been called “my old Kentucky home,” because part of what she was extolling was the Black rural southern culture of her raising in Hopkinsville in the southwestern part of the state.  Her return after thirty years led her to disquisitions about tobacco, family, quilting, farming, porch life and manners, and so much more, including the constant thread that ran through many essays about racism in the dominant society and the need to practice anti-racism.

I thought of that as I read a column in the Sunday New York Times by Jamelle Bouie that was briefly on the online scroll of columns of the day.  The piece was entitled “Elon Musk Is Beyond the Pale.”  I had passed it by as I assembled my “Peoples’ News” for the radio.  I’m sick of Musk and his antics, and avoid as much as possible reading the ubiquitous press he receives and promulgates.  Finally, I opened it and was surprised at how powerfully Bouie was stating the obvious, which is why public figures, especially politicians, are not having to answer for their fawning support of Musk and his money for his outlandish and abhorrent views, not just as someone on the far right, but as a stonecold racist white supremacist?

As Bouie notes,

Musk…traffics in lurid, eliminationist fantasies aimed at immigrants and racial minorities. As the most-followed man on his social media website, X, Musk amplifies far-right accounts, spreads racist propaganda and endorses calls for violence against those deemed “invaders.” He supports “remigration” — the forcible removal of nonwhite citizens to their supposed countries of origin — and fears the demographic collapse of “Western,” meaning white, civilization.

All of this is well-publicized, but the heart of Bouie’s critique is the fact that progressive candidates are asked to account for the views of minor and marginal figures of the left, as he notes from recent discourse in Michigan, but established Republican elected officials and prominent Republican campaigns who are receiving literally millions from Musk for his campaign are never asked the hard questions, as Bouie writes,

…despite Musk’s power and actual, material impact on American elections, hardly anyone seems interested enough to ask Republicans to comment on the views and preoccupations of their largest, most important donor. House Speaker Mike Johnson can do the rounds on the nation’s news programs without fielding a single question on Musk and his influence. Trump can host endless news conferences without being asked about the violent, extremist views of one of his closest political allies. Senator John Thune, the majority leader, can go days — if not weeks — without hearing Musk’s name from a journalist.

It’s worth adding to that list the role that Musk has and is playing in tilting the Ukrainian war against Russian aggression toward the invader by cutting off or curtailing internet access tools that are critical to the Ukrainian effort.  How can we let the world’s richest man put his finger on the scale of our foreign policy?

Musk is not unique among the American rich for extremist views.  Henry Ford was a doozy of an antisemite and worse, as were many of his ilk, but they didn’t escape scrutiny no matter how much Americans liked something like Ford’s cars.  How are his views not legitimized by their acquiescence?  In their support of Musk, how can we not believe that they share his views? The silence of Republican leaders and candidates in the face of Musk’s record expenditures also begs everyone to ask, how are these folks not bought and paid for by Musk?  The answer seems obvious.  Until we hear differently, any of us can fill in that blank.