During a recent interview on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Twitter owner and billionaire Elon Musk warned about the elimination of free speech amid today’s woke cancel culture.
“I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that results in the suppression of free speech,” Musk said. “So, you know, those are two other aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous is that it’s anti-meritocratic. You can’t question things. Even the questioning is bad.”
Musk told Maher he’s not a conservative, but is more of a moderate when it comes to politics. As CBN News reported last year, the Space X and Tesla founder told a Live podcast at a Miami technology conference that he would classify himself as a “moderate”, “neither Republican or Democrat.”
Maher asked the entrepreneur about what he called the “woke mind virus”. He contends wokeness is not building on liberalism, it’s the opposite of liberalism, including free speech.
“Free speech used to be a left or a liberal value,” Musk responded. “And yet we see from the Left, the desire to actually censor and that seems crazy. We should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment. There’s a reason for the First Amendment. People came from countries where they could not speak freely and where saying certain things would get you thrown into prison. And they were like, well, we don’t want that here. And by the way, in many parts of the world, including part of what the people might think are relatively similar to the United States, the speech laws are draconian.”
“The thing about censorship is, for those who would advocate it. Just remember, at some point, that would be turned on you,” he added.
When Maher asked Musk how the “woke mind virus” started, the Tesla CEO replied the indoctrination has been brewing for a long time in U.S. colleges and universities, and it’s far beyond what parents realize.
“I was trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I think it’s actually been a long time brewing, in that it’s, I think it’s been going on for a while,” Musk said. “The amount of indoctrination that’s happening in schools and universities is I think far beyond what parents realize.”
“And I only sort of came to realize this somewhat late,” Musk continued. “The experience that we had in high school and college is not the experience that kids today are having and hasn’t been for, I don’t know, 10 years, maybe 20.”
“Let me … give you an example that a friend of mine told me which his daughters go to high school in the Bay Area,” he elaborated.
“And, and he was asking them like, ‘Well, so who are the, you know, who are the first few presidents of the United States?’ They could name Washington. And he said, ‘So what do you know about him?’ ‘Well, he was a slave owner.’ What else? Nothing. Right, like, okay, maybe you should know more than that. You know?”
Maher said that’s the world’s mind virus exactly.
“Slavery was a horrendous institution,” Musk said. “But we should know more about George Washington than that.”
Maher noted slavery has been practiced all over the world since the beginning of time by every race including people of color, and is frequently mentioned in the Bible.
The talk show host told Musk he and his guests frequently talk about change on his show. He credited Musk as “one of the few people in the world that makes change happen.”
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN
