"My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci," tweeted Elon Musk earlier this month.
In his 31-character post, Twitter’s billionaire new owner both excoriated the widely distrusted federal health bureaucrat, Dr. Anthony Fauci and mocked the gender ideology crowd’s coercive predilection for reducing people to self-proclaimed identity markers that often belie biological fact.
Left Twitter predictably melted down at the sight of one of its greatest heroes and most sacrosanct shibboleths falling à la fois to the wit of the richest man in the world.
After all, until only a few weeks ago criticizing pandemic health policies and mocking radical gender ideology was what got people banned from Twitter, and now Twitter’s new owner was doing just that.
For some, it was simply too much to bear.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who professes to be a "big fan of Dr. Fauci and how he’s calmly guided our country through crisis" pathetically implored Musk "could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?"
Former CIA Director and left-leaning John Brennan called Fauci "a national hero who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health."
Musk, he insists, "will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions" by doing terrible things like expressing his personal opinions on a social media platform he owns and orienting its operations toward free speech.
Enraged David Rothkopf columnist, of The Daily Beast, denounced Musk for what he calls his "reckless, dangerous, anti-science sewage that will cause and compound suffering," all "at the expense of a very good man."
Really?
Clearly what happens to Twitter is a matter of serious concern for the afflicted, illiberal left, which can brook neither contradiction nor disagreement.
The Biden administration ominously threatened to "keep an eye" on what Musk does, with the addled president himself suggesting a national security investigation, presumably to be carried out by the likes of Brennan and other Washington spies who suspect the platform’s new owner of treason but could not authenticate a laptop potentially implicating Biden and his unstable son in possible crimes.
Self-appointed establishment lackey and puffy former intriguer Alexander Vindman used his Twitter account to call for Twitter "to be killed off soonest," bleating that Musk "cannot be allowed to promote dangerous radical views" and "hate speech" — as defined by Vindman and whoever he now takes orders from — on a platform that he claims evokes “Geobbles [sic] with a bigger platform and wider reach.”
Reductio ad Hitlerum lives on, even if spelling is subjective.
So what was Musk trying to achieve?
He actively uses his personal Twitter account to engage with his critics, often in entertaining ways that highlight their logical failings, inability to influence his thinking, general powerlessness, and, especially, their utter dependence on his platform for their livelihoods.
The debate among journalists over Musk’s recent decision to charge a fee for the platform’s "blue checks," which nominally "verify" the account holder as someone of importance, reveals that most of the fourth estate cares deeply about the symbolic credibility it gleans from a medium few of its members can do without.
Instructively, much of that debate was itself carried out on Twitter.
Many promised to leave the platform to protest Musk’s new management — just as people promised to move to Canada if Trump were elected in 2016 — and, like them, promptly didn’t.
Others suspect that he is blowing right-wing dog whistles to prop up Twitter’s relevance to new constituencies, or at least create a chimera of controversy to keep people and advertisers interested.
Hysterical Greg Sargent of The Washington Post, who called Musk’s tweet "profoundly irresponsible and at worst straight-up disinformation," cautioned his readers that shaming Musk too stridently could backfire by creating the impression that he is carrying the standard for free speech against a leftist conspiracy to suppress conservative voices.
It didn’t occur to Sargent that massive documentary evidence now proves that this is precisely what is happening, and that Musk may well be expressing views he genuinely believes.
In any case, the substance of his tweet does concur with the majority of Americans who both distrust Fauci and reject radical gender ideology, even if it upsets petulant Washington Post columnists.
Perhaps most frightening of all to the left is that Twitter’s new owner is a Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.-supporting independent and free speech absolutist who dissents from leading tenets of wokeism and has now proved himself capable of banning liberal journalists who, Musk claims, have doxxed him and his family by posting their real-time locations.
If there is any type of voter who will defeat them in 2024, it is Musk and those who think like him.
Expect the firestorm of criticism to continue.
(Editors note: a related story may be found here, and here.)
Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University. Read more — Here.
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