Summary
Parallels between Henry Ford and Elon Musk illustrate their transformative roles in automaking alongside troubling political affiliations.
Ford’s antisemitism and support for Nazi Germany mirror Musk’s current opposition to unions and endorsement of Germany’s far-right AfD party, which is linked to neo-Nazism.
Musk’s intervention in Germany’s election and promotion of far-right figures on X echoes Ford’s use of media to propagate hate.
Both industrialists are criticized for their social and political impact beyond their industries, with Musk’s actions raising alarm about democracy and labor rights.
Yet, Ford had some ammount of engineering sense and worker spirit. The Model T, which helped revolutionize cars, was actually engineered by Ford. Everything Musk is famous for making, was engineered by other people.
He also made cars affordable for the middle class, paid his workers double the standard of the time, and the 1st to implement the 5 day 40 hour work week. And he was so independently hateful of Jews that he published a regular newsletter filled with anti-Jewish hate and conspiracy theories that was so prolific that he is the only American for whom Hitler mentioned positively in Mein Kampf. And by positively, I mean Hitler really admired the guy.
Let’s all remember people can do great things and still be various levels of scum. Geniuses, inventors, innovators, revolutionaries, religious leaders, etc. can all be both influencial paradigm shifting people that ultimately changed the world for the better on the whole and still be a fucking asshole who should not be given the power to further their individual shitty worldviews.
Edit: and obviously none of those positive attributes even apply to the whiny entitled manchild that is Elon Musk.
Yes, i’m not saying ford was good but, he could be argued to be labeled genius or inventor, he did do _something _ himself. Musk is all bark, no invention, no genius, just money in tech.
The difference, however, is that Ford actually sold a lot of cars. Musk is essentially being paid for the assumption that he will sell a lot of cars. At some point, maybe…
“Let’s piss off liberals who are more likely to buy electric vehicles and see if we make more sales that way. That’s a neat trick.” – President Musk, probably.
That’s what I’m getting at: on the stock market today, it hardly matters whether a business model is actually successful or not - or even whether there is a realistic possibility of success. Tesla is certainly a company with sustainable technology. But does that justify Tesla being worth more than the 5 largest car manufacturers combined, each of which sells way more cars per year than Tesla? Especially in view of the considerable competition in the EV market.
Another difference is that, along with his racism and fascism, Ford actually had some innovative ideas about manufacturing, rather than just owning shit and mouthing off.
They’ve sold 7 million cars. That’s a lot of cars.
Like I know ya’ll hate the dude but don’t go making shit up.
My first instinct was to say “Yeah, but Henry Ford wasn’t an idiot.” But then it occurred to me: We didn’t have Twitter back then. He might have just successfully kept his idiocy under wraps. On the other hand, Ford actually did come from humble origins, so I guess it is unlikely that he was as dumb as Musk.
Ford did have his own newspaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dearborn_Independent where he expressed horrible antisemitic views.
Hitler had a portrait of Henry Ford in his office and regarded him as his inspiration (yikes!).
He was such a rabid anti-semite the Nazis gave him awards.
Does Musk make cars, though? He bought into Tesla.
All Musk does is own things and act like an asshole.
No, he doesn’t make cars. That’s what robots and wage slaves are for. But that doesn’t have anything to do with him being a founder or not. (not)
I wish the myth of Musk would be something the “liberal media” would work to puncture…I watched a video where I saw Piers Morgan saying nonsense about Musk and I think Neil deGrasse Tyson only pushed back on some of it.
The common framing is that Musk is super genius who founded all these companies, is an engineer with multiple degrees, and it’s just all lies.
The difference being that ford actually made a buttload of cars and musk bought an existing company that (in comparison) made a tiny amount of cars with so-so quality.
Telsa is beyond enormously overvalued (still) and only because idiots believe he is a genius.
He is not
He is a great comman, but a genius he is not.
Ford was at least good at what he did.
