"What took your family to South Africa?" "My grandfather moved with all his kids and my mom and everyone to South Africa because he wanted to use it as a base of exploration" "Just for exploration? Just a quest for curiosity?" "Yeah" "Seems to run in the family" 🤢🤢🤢 youtu.be/cl1oQnzcwFg?... - ThreadSky

niedermeyer.online • 30 days ago

"What took your family to South Africa?"

"My grandfather moved with all his kids and my mom and everyone to South Africa because he wanted to use it as a base of exploration"

"Just for exploration? Just a quest for curiosity?"

"Yeah"

"Seems to run in the family"

🤢🤢🤢

https://youtu.be/cl1oQnzcwFg?si=HRq3UbzXnfGjoKiL&t=36

Comments

wearelegion2025.bsky.social•30 days ago

lol. lmao, even.

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

In case you weren't aware, Musk's maternal grandfather moved to South Africa in 1948, the year Apartheid was established, specifically to enjoy and support that racist system. Elon and his mother both left South Africa in 1989, when the last pro-Apartheid government (led by a family friend) fell.

craigmsmith.bsky.social•30 days ago

Without detracting from the broad truth of your point, apartheid formally ended in 1994. 1989 was, I believe, the year DeKlerk came to power, not the year the regime fell. Elon and his mother got out before the end of apartheid, like rats fleeing a sinking but still technically floating ship

craigmsmith.bsky.social•30 days ago

Mandela wasn't released until February 1990

cindivan.bsky.social•30 days ago

Yes. DeKlerk paved the way for the dismantling.

roland00.bsky.social•30 days ago

Elon was about to turn 18 in 1989 since he was a 1971 birth

and South Africa had a mandatory draft law

spencerwindes.bsky.social•30 days ago

Musk’s father claimed that he left after getting upset that his bike was stolen his freshman year at the University of Johannesburg. Leaving aside the absolute whiteness of that excuse, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the university’s eminent desegregation.

herserenehighness.bsky.social•30 days ago

There are lots of rich white people doing just fine in today's South Africa. His dad is still there. They didn't have to leave. He went to college in the US.

craigisonline.bsky.social•30 days ago

Musk has interviews out where he also explains he moved back to Canada at the age of 17 in order to draft dodge.

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

Absolutely insane how CBS 60 Minutes just completely takes the entire story at face value. An American/Canadian chiropractor moves his entire family to South Africa in 1948 in order to have airplane adventures and do amateur archeology is such a weird story to not fact check even a tiny bit.

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

I want to especially draw attention to the use of "exploration" as the preferred euphemism here for "choosing to participate in explicitly racist late-stage colonialism." Musk's rhetoric about "exploring" space is widely seen as his most inspiring, but it is rarely located in the colonial tradition.

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

One of the most dangerous things Musk does is whip up new generations around the abstract idea of "exploration" and even "colonization," without connecting them to the horrifying history those concepts are rooted in. Whitewashing his racist grandfather as an "explorer" brings this into sharp focus.

anita72.bsky.social•30 days ago

Yes. The myth was that he was looking for the Lost Treasure of the Kalahari. In reality, Canada wasn't Nazi enough. He had lost all of his political battles, and South Africa was looking very attractive. I think he might have run up against Tommy Douglas, who was voted the Greatest Canadian.

johnmone.bsky.social•30 days ago

Yes, Maye Musk’s dad loved himself some apartheid

jasonfcclarke.bsky.social•30 days ago

You’re not wrong, but I’m not real worried about Mars and the sooner he leaves for it the better.

wilhelmusjanus.bsky.social•30 days ago

'Lebensraum'

barrie-cabbie.bsky.social•29 days ago

soybot.bsky.social•30 days ago

Maybe he meant “exploitation”

annefiliaci.bsky.social•30 days ago

He meant exploitation.

leenakassak.bsky.social•30 days ago

Exploration, Exploitation...

jctmik.bsky.social•30 days ago

Chiropractor. Figures.

spencerwindes.bsky.social•30 days ago

It had nothing to do with joining the Glorious Work of Apartheid. It’s not like his grandfather had repeatedly failed to get elected to office in Canada as the candidate of various fascist and anti-Semitic fringe political parties.

jennerzi.bsky.social•30 days ago

I remember watching that sycophantic interview back in the day. Pelley kept trying to get Elon to say how much his success was due to America. Elon didn't share Pelley's patriotism.

bumblebike.bsky.social•30 days ago

Good grief. His trash interviews from the time are *right there*

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-leader-post-a-new-life-for-haldeman/101817586/

Or p101 for his political awfulness just prior to leaving Canada (but after being arrested as a member of Technocracy Incorporated)

https://books.google.ca/books?id=KBvReeYEArMC&pg=PA171&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Haldeman&f=false

bumblebike.bsky.social•30 days ago

Still lionized by the chiropractors; he was just a “political activist” in South Africa.

https://dynamicchiropractic.com/article/46050-flying-chiros-part-ii-of-ii

(Don’t know why Haldeman went into it himself when the reason his mother became a chiropractor was to “cure” his father’s diabetes. Of course he died 4 years later)

truebleu.bsky.social•30 days ago

Long history of the myth of genius, Elon.

vee-she.bsky.social•30 days ago

of course he's a chiropractor

evilmagnus.bsky.social•30 days ago

if these coincidences keep happening we might start to think there's some kind of pattern behind them

zamafir.bsky.social•30 days ago

Is this the same side of the family that were literally Nazis?

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

the very same, Elon's mother's father

jeof.bsky.social•30 days ago

https://youtu.be/DJpY7eT6oNk?t=302

boleteful.bsky.social•29 days ago

That maternal grandfather used to be in a movement proposing to make the following happen. Just something interesting to consider given the general line of thinking in Washington.

adamhansen.net•30 days ago

Seems like this isn't entirely accurate. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-this-true-musk-s-maternal-g-b842o9aMQu2HTl4K1dAyWg

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

P.W. Botha's government fell in 1989. According to Errol Musk he was a family friend, who stayed at their home. He was the last head of state to refuse any concession on Apartheid, and he refused to testify at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was replaced by F.W. DeKlerk who ended it.

niedermeyer.online•30 days ago

Sources on Botha himself here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._W._Botha

Elon's father talks about being a friend of Botha here, saying he and his daughter would stay at the Musk home: https://youtu.be/KH1U5x8LXgs?si=nLAm3rtnqTdjQvx9&t=1711

I hope this teaches you a little something about the reliability of these LLMs.

malvarezrivera.bsky.social•30 days ago

When Botha died in 2006, it was widely acknowledged his government enacted some major reforms, such as the repeal of the hated pass laws. But he was too beholden to the status quo to ditch apartheid altogether. And he was an irascible bully, as noted by longtime anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman.

malvarezrivera.bsky.social•30 days ago

About Errol Musk - Elon's father - I commented a few weeks ago about his involvement with the staunchly anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party (PFP, whose best known legislator was Mrs. Suzman herself):

https://bsky.app/profile/malvarezrivera.bsky.social/post/3lhnbx64rik2w