NYT Wonders How Apartheid Misinformation Has Impacted Musk

It New York Times has a theory where Elon Musk’s belief in free speech comes from: his sheltered childhood as a white boy in Apartheid South Africa.

A Thursday article by Johannesburg-based reporter Lynsey Chutel and bureau chief John Eligon ran under the headline “Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege” and the sub headline “It apartheid era created all-white enclaves littered with anti-Black government propaganda and sheltered from the atrocities of apartheid.”

That Musk grew up in such an environment led the authors to declare “Elon Musk’s impending takeover of Twitter has many people probing his public statements and his past for clues about how he will shape one of the world’s most influential public platforms.”

Chutel and Eligon reported that “Interviews with relatives and former classmates reveal an upbringing in elite, segregated white communities that were littered with anti-Black government propaganda, and detached from the atrocities that white political leaders inflicted on the Black majority.”

The Times recounted that “His suburban communities were largely shrouded in misinformation. Newspapers sometimes arrived on doorsteps with whole sections blacked out, and nightly news bulletins ended with the national anthem and an image of the national flag flapping as the names of white young men who were killed fighting for the government scrolled on the screen.”

Nevertheless, Times It was recognized that there is a contradiction in free speech and censorship.

Musk has hailed the purchase of Twitter as an achievement for freedom speech. He had previously criticized Twitter for banning users and removing comments. It is unclear what role his childhood — coming up in a time and place in which there was hardly a free exchange of ideas and where government misinformation was used to demonize Black South Africans — may have played in that decision.

While there are many ways to help the Times While the authors wanted the article to address misinformation spreading, most of it did not. It would state that Musk had black friends and interview Musk’s father who said he belonged to the anti-apartheid Progressive Party and the authors themselves cite a biography of Musk declaring he left South Africa in order to avoid mandatory military service and “Mr. Musk’s current views on free speech seem to reflect the philosophies students were exposed to at Pretoria Boys [High School]It was said [classmate] Mr. [Terence] Beney, the classmate — like that of the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, a champion of unchecked expression.”

The despite appearing to undermine their headlines, Times Promoted the article by tweeting and focusing on the ill effects of allowing misinformation to spread unchecked, “[Musk] sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation.”

The rest of this article will focus on how South African whites are shielded from atrocities in their country. But Chutel and Eligon have never discussed what it has to do Twitter. Free speech is actually a force that forces people out of their comfort zones to face misinformation.