Fresh off his victory in the courtroom yesterday, tech billionaire turned political operative Elon Musk logged on to X and posted a QAnon video.
The sixty-second video has a fash-wave aesthetic, an art style popular with the online far-right that mixes fascist memes with a retro scanline-infused style. In the video, clips of Donald Trump from the 1980s and today mix with military imagery and scenes of docile suburban American life.
At the 36-second mark, the word “Patriots” appears on the screen, fuzzes, and becomes “PATRIQTS.” The other letters fade away, leaving only Q. “We will drive out the globalists…we will cast out the communists,” Trump says in the fuzzy images while Van Halen’s Jump plays. This is an overt reference to the QAnon conspiracy. One popular part of the conspiracy theory is that Trump will one day say a magic code word that activates Trump’s loyal sleeper cells across the country who will arrest and execute his political enemies.
Musk got the video from the West Bestern account, a blue check X user who has spent the past few weeks stumping online for Trump and posting similar content. The account’s banner references both an anti-trans and antisemitic conspiracy theory. In January, the account shared a racist meme about Amazon delivery drivers and called the company AmaZog, another reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
These are the kinds of people Musk is promoting on his platform on the final day of the election.
Seriously? Is Musk pointing a gun to their heads or something? Just ditch it. It’s not difficult. Millions already have. They need to grow a proverbial spine, close their account, and stop giving credibility and attention to that toxic nepo-baby man-child.