Elon Musk has publicly stated his 2021 declaration of war against what he terms “wokeness.”
X’s owner, Elon Musk, has attributed his acquisition of the platform (formerly Twitter) to his stated goal of eradicating what he calls the “woke mind virus,” a concept he links to various societal problems stemming from radical liberalism.
Musk posted on X on Saturday, referencing a 2021 post of his own that read “traceroute woke_mind_virus,” adding, “In 2021, I set out to destroy the woke mind virus and now it has been deleted.” A traceroute is a network diagnostic tool.
Responding to a user’s question about his primary motivation for buying Twitter, Musk confirmed, “Yes.”
Musk frequently criticizes the “woke mind virus,” a term used by some conservatives to broadly denounce liberal ideologies and policies concerning transgender rights, censorship, and workplace diversity initiatives.
In a July interview with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, Musk connected the “woke mind virus” to the death of his son, Xavier, who is transgender. Musk alleges that he was misled by medical professionals into consenting to his son’s hormone treatment, resulting in sterilization.
“I lost my son, essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason,” Musk stated. “The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus. I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”
Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022, subsequently rebranded as X, involved significant staff reductions in content moderation and a rollback of censorship policies. X was the first major social media platform to reinstate the account of US President-elect Donald Trump, previously suspended following the January 2021 Capitol Hill riot.
This approach initially set X apart from competitors who maintained stricter content moderation rules. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that his platforms (Facebook and Instagram) will reduce moderation efforts to promote “free expression,” ceasing collaboration with third-party “fact-checkers” for political content.
Concurrently, Meta ended its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring programs and, according to the New York Times, removed tampons from men’s restrooms, where they had been provided for “nonbinary and transgender employees.”