Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in a wealthy family under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Musk’s family history reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi politics. We speak with Chris McGreal, reporter for The Guardian, to understand how Musk’s upbringing shaped his worldview, as well as that of his South African-raised colleague Peter Thiel, a right-wing billionaire who co-founded PayPal alongside Musk. “Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life,” said McGreal. “If you were a white South African in that period and you had any money at all, you lived with servants at your beck and call.”
Elon Musk’s grandfather is arrested. They find documents sympathetic to the Nazis and other subversive documents inside his house. And he is sent to prison for a few months, then remains on essentially a subversion watch list for the rest of the war here. So, he’s basically regarded as a Nazi sympathizer, a fellow traveler.
Feels a bit like wagging the dog to say “reveals” as if it were something hidden that no one knew about.