Elon is platforming a specific kind of racism

The MoJo Daily newsletter, Monday through Friday. [View in browser]( [Mother Jones Daily Newsletter](     March 13, 2024 Elon Musk being accused of racism isn't anything new. In 2022, a California state agency [filed]( a racial discrimination lawsuit against Tesla in which one Black employee claimed to hear racial slurs at least 50 to 100 times a day. And last year, Musk [posted]( a series of racist dog whistles on X. (Some speculated it was part of a bid to woo then-recently-fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson.) Today, Mother Jones' Video Correspondent Garrison Hayes [dropped]( a new video breaking down the significance—and harm—of Musk's recent posts peddling racist pseudo-science and what he's helping to platform as a result. As my colleague Arianna Coghill [wrote]( of Garrison's latest interview: Garrison zeroes in on a specific phenomenon: Musk is amplifying users who will incorporate cherry-picked data and misleading graphs into their argument as to why people of European descent are biologically superior, showing how fringe accounts, like user [@eyeslasho](, experience a drastic jump in followers after Musk shares their tweets. The @eyeslasho account has even [thanked]( Musk for raising “awareness” in a thread last year. (Neither @eyeslasho nor Musk, via X, responded to Garrison’s request for an interview.) “People are almost more susceptible to simpler charts with race and IQ than they are to the really complicated stuff,” Will Stancil, a lawyer and research fellow at the [Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity](, told Garrison in a video interview. He added: “This is the most basic statistical error in the book: Correlation does not equal causation.” Check out Garrison's [full video]( for more of his conversations with experts who call out, as one put it, this "old-school gutter racism" shrouded in "new-school Silicon Valley, data-driven analysis." —Julianne McShane Advertisement [The Price is Wrong]( [Top Story] [Top Story]( [Elon Musk Keeps Spreading a Very Specific Kind of Racism]( He is the "patient zero for this sort of stuff right now." BY ARIANNA COGHILL AND GARRISON HAYES [Fiercely Independent] Support from readers allows Mother Jones to do journalism that doesn't just follow the pack. [Donate]( [Trending] [No one wants to go to GOP spring break]( BY INAE OH   [House hearing spotlights special counsel Robert Hur's sleazy assault on Biden.]( BY DAVID CORN   [Some academics get funding for propping up the livestock industry]( BY GEORGINA GUSTIN   Advertisement [The Price is Wrong]( [Special Feature] [Special Feature]( [How “woke capitalism” became a right-wing obsession]( Vivek Ramaswamy may no longer be running for president. But his anti-ESG legacy has already won. BY HANNAH LEVINTOVA Did you enjoy this newsletter? Help us out by [forwarding]( it to a friend or sharing it on [Facebook]( and [Twitter](. [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Donate Monthly]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755