March 27, 2025 • 28 mins
Elon Musk’s origin story keeps changing. First, he was Tony Stark, or Iron Man. Not too long ago, he compared himself to Batman. Arguments started online over whether or not Musk is a real-life Bruce Wayne. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at the original ‘Caped Crusader’, created back in 1939. Batman’s origin story is bound up with fascism. And every time Musk is compared to Batman it raises a very old question about the Dark Knight: is Batman fighting fascism, or is Batman — a brooding, fabulously wealthy vigilante — somehow, himself a fascist?
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Give it up for the greatest capitalists in the history
of the United States of America.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
In October twenty twenty four, nine days before the US
presidential election, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, took to
the stage at a rally for Donald Trump in New
York City. He wore black jeans, a black T shirt,
black blazer, and a black baseball hat. Had red in
(00:51):
dark gray embroidery Make America great Again.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I'm not just maga, I'm doc Gothic maga.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Elon Musk, an American oligarch and entrepreneurial genius, had stood
on many stages before he sees the podium at Madison
Square Garden. Ted talks, Tesla product rollouts, SpaceX launch pads.
He also owns a stage a platform ever since he
bought Twitter and renamed it x, and he owns a
(01:24):
sizable portion of the global communications infrastructure through his satellite
company Starlink. But this Madison Square Garden gig was part
of a different endeavor. Entirely, Musk spent a staggering amount
of money to help get Trump and Republicans elected. The
world's richest man, spent more than a quarter of a
(01:45):
billion dollars on the return to power of the world's
most powerful man, like some kind of superman or supervillain.
Returning to the White House, Trump promised to bring Musk
with him. You guys are awesome, And once Musk got
(02:07):
a taste for this kind of thing, he began to
involve himself in politics of other nations, in Germany, in
the UK. What does Musk's reinvention of himself as a
king maker mean for the United States and for the world.
How long will it last? No one knows what's going
to happen next, But what happened before in twenty twenty one,
(02:29):
before Musk joined forces with Trump, before Musk bought Twitter,
before Musk was in the news every day, He was
in the news every other day, with headlines that sounded
ripped from science fiction super fast underground trains, rockets to
Mars brain control implants. I made a BBC series in
(02:50):
which I tried to explain Musk by way of the
science fiction he grew up with, tales of superheroes with
origin stories that seemed to influence how he understands his
own life. But so much has happened since then that
we decided to update that series from four years ago,
rename it, and add new episodes because Musk keeps changing,
(03:13):
and so does his origin story. Welcome to X Man,
The Elon Musk Origin Story. I'm Jill Lapour. I'm a
professor of history and law at Harvard. I'm interested in
the past Musk. He's interested in the future.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
The future is gonna be amazing or is he?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Is Musk really a futurist or is he maybe an
antique a throwback. I don't mean the retro vibe of
the amazing extraordinary gadgets, the Tesla cyber trucks and Starlink
satellites and SpaceX rockets. I mean Musk's ideas about politics
and economics. I mean Muskism, extravagant extreme capitalism, a political
(04:06):
economy with origins in the universe of comic books and
science fiction that has fired Musk's imagination since he was
a boy. In this series, I'm going to blast off
not to the future, but to the past. Part of
(04:30):
Musk's stick is that he's still boyish bit of a lad.
Plays video games, has smoked pot, watches superhero movies, talks
about testosterone.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Word has it.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg possibly have now formally
agreed to a cage match face off.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
He once changed his name on X to Kechius Maximus,
which is a joke about on the one hand, the
movie Gladiator and on the other hand, a cartoon frog
named Pepe. Musk does this kind of thing so often
people barely even notice it anymore. The tech bro va
(05:09):
men will be boys, Boys will be gladiators. Trump has
gotten into this too, tweeting during the campaign a picture
of himself as Superman with J. D. Vance as his
Batman and Musk as Cyborg. Why in grown men is
this kind of thing? Okay, honestly, it's a little bewildering. Anyway,
(05:31):
the stories Musk likes and the characters he identifies with matter.
He used to talk a lot about The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. Then he used to think of himself
as Tony Stark, a do gooding superhero from the Marvel comics.
Musk has always loved the Dark Night movies, which are awesome.
(05:52):
About two years ago, he likened himself to Batman, a brooding, angry,
fabulously wealthy vigilante. After he bought Twitter, he posted a
drawing of the dark Night standing on top of a
Gothic church, watching over Gotham, Musk wrote some nights online,
(06:12):
a lot of people started arguing about whether or not
Musk is a real life Bruce Wayne, And then two
when the cyber truck came out, people said, it looked
like the batmobile. Is that Batman?
Speaker 6 (06:26):
Unless you're trying to be Batman?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Why isn't that out of my crown? I happen to
be pretty interested in Batman. I once wrote a book
called The Secret History of Wonder Woman. So this episode
I want to look at the original Batman to see
what he tells us about Elon Musk. Batman made his
debut in the nineteen thirties, and fairly soon he was
(06:51):
on the radio.
Speaker 7 (06:52):
The whole masked figure wearing a bright blue hood and
cape approaches Listen.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It turns out that a whole lot of Elon Musk's
vision for the future, his ideas about politics and governments
and economics, come from the nineteen thirties, nearly a century ago.
They're old ideas, and a lot of them I think
are failed ideas, but they're also bound up with Batman.
That Dark Knight, a guy dark Maga really likes to
(07:19):
talk about.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
It's like Dark Knight, like the friggant joker is in charge.
The criminals run free and the citizens are arrested.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That's Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular
podcast in the US. They're talking about life and Democrat
run New York City and complaining about how authorities in
New York had seized and killed some guy's pet squirrel.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Still pretty suke about the freaking squirrel thing. It's like, meanwhile,
you know, violent falons are running free?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Is a joker, It's the Joker, Batman's arch nemesis, a madman,
a sadist, an anarchist. It's Mayhem? And who can save
the people of Gotham? If Elon Musk were Batman, what
would he intend to answer that question? I want to
(08:11):
go back to that night at Madison Square Garden, smack
in the middle of Gotham, nine days before the election.
The arena was sold out. Twenty thousand seats were filled
with Trump supporters dressed in red, white and blue, caring
signs that read Fight, Fight, Fight, and Trump can Fix It.
They had a lot to celebrate Trump was making the
(08:33):
most impressive comeback in American political history. Critics had been
calling Trump a fascist Hulk Hogan, the flamboyant former wrestler,
had an answer to that.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
This is Donald Trump's house, brother Ilesino staking Nazis in here.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Musk didn't speak for long. Mainly he rallied Trump's troops.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
USA, USA, USA.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And then Donald Trump. In a preview of his inauguration
rally promised to usher in a new golden age.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
I'm here today with a message of hope for all Americans.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Trump spoke for more than an hour. He mocked journalists,
talked about fake news, made a promise about immigration.
Speaker 8 (09:24):
On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program
in American history.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
But to get the criminals out, I.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
Will rescue every city in town that has been invaded.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
In concorde, he denounced in doctrination, we.
Speaker 8 (09:38):
Will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out.
Speaker 9 (09:42):
Of our school.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
And he pledged himself to a policy of isolationism.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
It's called America First.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
When Trump finished, a crooner in a black tux sang Sinatra,
but it was a big, bold, glamy, star studded night
in Gotham with a lot of talk about crime, and
Elon Musk dressed as if he were Batman on a
(10:14):
casual Friday. But it all reminded me of a very
different night at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 10 (10:21):
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow American American patriots. I'm sure I
do not come before you tonight as a complete strange shot.
You all have heard of me through a Jewish control press.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
In nineteen thirty nine, the German American bund An organization
of American Nazis held a sold out rally in Madison
Square Garden. They wore swastikas as armbands, raised their arms
to Hyle Hitler, and in front of a giant portrait
of George Washington, celebrated him as America's first fascist. Here's
(11:03):
Fritz Kuhnn, the bund Feurer, warning about a Jewish conspiracy
against the United States.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Unless you Aliens nor the ten Christians wigap and speak
out to the men that our go women, how be
returned to the American people who founded it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
These American Nazis were searching for someone to blame.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
The people far and wide feel that somebody must have
fallen down.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
On the job.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
They were denouncing the press.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
The whole country now must see that there is no
free radio for white.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Men campaigning to cut government spending.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
Who is not familiar with a billion dollar yardstick that
is required to measure this stupendous total of our national
public debt.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
They're demonizing immigrants.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
Great bloods of tears were a few hundred thousand job
taking so called poor Jewish refugees.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And here's Fritzkun again. They were fighting in doctrination weed
I see, will.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
Not you when called upon the gate ed will law
all support in our power in the fire to break
the trip and the power size ten of Jewish communism
in our schools, our university is our very homes.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
History often sounds like a broken record, but it would
be easy to make too much of the echoes between
these two Madison Square Garden rallies, separated by decades, the
whole calling people Nazis because you disagree with them. I'm
sick of it, You're sick of it. So let me
be clear. The nearly eighty million Americans who voted for
(12:47):
Trump in twenty twenty four were sick of Democrats, unhappy
about inflation, annoyed by progressive purity crusades and unimpressed by
Kamala Harris, I get at Hull Kogan. I don't see
no stinking Nazis here. Still. Look, I'm a historian, and
there is history here. Fascism has a history, and it
(13:10):
casts a very long shadow. And there's another, very particular
reason to spend a little time thinking about the year
nineteen thirty nine. Right after that Boone rally, maybe even
the very next day, in an office building just a
few blocks away, and out of the same political tensions,
(13:33):
the rise of fascism, the fear of fascism, some guys
at a little New York comic book publishing house decided
to create a new superhero Atman.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
What are you doing here?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I enter the caped crusader. Superman had only just made
his debut, a wild success. Pretty soon he was on
the radio.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
I still on a bullet.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It took the writers a few weeks to come up
with a new superhero, but he made his debut that
spring nineteen thirty nine, and now it is my brand.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Bruce Wayne of a wide.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Known as the Batman. Superman comes from another planet. Batman's
just a guy with a cape, but he does have
a lot of money. Bruce Wayne is a millionaire head
of Wayne Enterprises. He's also pretty nifty with a pistol,
which soon became a problem. At the time, the publishers
(14:32):
of comic books were taking a lot of heat for
glorifying violence. The month that Batman made his debut, the
US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of two new firearms
laws that, among other things, outlawed machine guns. Then that
September Hitler advanced.
Speaker 10 (14:51):
Germany has invaded Poland.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
France has decreed general mobilization and martial law.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Europe was going to war and Americans were sick of guns.
The publisher of DC Comics told the guy who wrote
Batman to lay off the guns. Batman on mister Cannon,
and I'm afraid we'll never see him again. Well, only
the original Batman was gone, replaced with a new one.
(15:19):
This Batman hates guns, and you know what, he also
hates fascists. Right after Germany invaded Poland, Batman got an
origin story. As a kid, Bruce Wayne had watched his
parents get gunned down on the streets, and so now
here he was in nineteen thirty nine fighting an organization
of American fascists, a thinly disguised American bund known as
(15:43):
the Scarlet Horde.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I must stop the Scarlet Hoard before they become dictators
of the world.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
At the time and over the next few years, critics
of the comics would argue that they glorified strong men.
Time Magazine published a story called are Comics Fascist? To
defeat the argument that comics were too violent? Batman gave
up his gun. To defeat the argument that comics were fascist.
Batman took on this new enemy, the Scarlet Horde.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
American nazis Hi Karl Kruger will be dictatle of the world.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
The Scarlet Hords leader is pretty recognizably Fritz Kuhn, the
leader of the Bund, America's top Nazi.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
Tell me, is our army ready, two thousand strong, waiting
for your command.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Batman defeats him, and without a gun, saves Gotham from fascism.
During the twenty twenty four election, there was a lot
of talk about fascism in the United States.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump
is a fascist?
Speaker 10 (16:48):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 8 (16:50):
Joe is surrounded by fascists surround the ovalas I've said.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It before, but I'll say it again. Everyone's tired of
everyone calling everyone else a fascist. But with everything that's
going on the rise of far right parties across Europe,
including one in Germany endorsed by Elon Musk, I can't
not talk about fascism, and Batman's whole origin story is
bound up with fascism. Every time Musk is compared to Batman,
(17:18):
it raises an old question, is Batman fighting fascism? Where
is Batman somehow himself a fascist? That was actually a
question in the nineteen thirties, and over the last decades
it's been a question again ever since a trilogy of
Dark Night films came out, directed by Christopher Nolan, the
(17:38):
movies that shaped Musk's view of Batman.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
I did think that there is a strong fascist current,
certainly in the look and mood and the sort of
just Wagnerian atmosphere of those movies.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
That's Ao Scott, longtime critic from the New York Times,
talking about those Nolan films from Warner Brothers Pictures, the
very very dark Dark Night series. It starts with Batman
begins in two thousand and five.
Speaker 8 (18:10):
What are you?
Speaker 6 (18:12):
I'm Batman?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Nolan's films brought forward in time the fascist themes and
concerns of the original nineteen thirties Batman.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
There is a very not entirely coherent, but strongly kind
of authoritarian political bent, and one that takes some interesting forms.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
A lot of characters in these movies say a version
of democracy has failed. We need a strong man. Take
this scene from the two thousand and eight film The
Dark Night.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would
suspend democracy in a point one man to protect the city,
and it wasn't considered an honor, it was considered a
public service.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
Harvey.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
The last man that they appointed to protect the republic
was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.
Speaker 9 (19:01):
Okay, fine, you either die a hero or you live
long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
The people need a he. The people need here that
the people can't take care of themselves. That in a way,
the sort of the democratic institutions that might have met
the people's needs and kept them safe have failed, and
what they need is a strong figure from outside of
the political system. There's no sense of any kind of
democratic participation in the Batman world.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Oh my god, No, they're all dupes. Everybody's a dupe.
Every Gothamite is a dupe, right Aoscott has a theory that,
unlike the Dark Knight films, the Marvel Universe films, Iron Man,
Captain America, ant Man, the Avengers, a team of do gooders,
these films represent an Obama Biden view of the world.
Speaker 6 (19:50):
He says, It's just like this kind of weird global
committee of superheroes who are going to go around solving problems,
who put their own kind of personal feelings and motives
and vendettas aside to kind of to work for the
common good in a way that like a committee of
the in Brussels might try to solve supply chain issues.
(20:13):
That's a bureaucratic, technocratic idea of heroism.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But the Dark Knight films, which come not from Marvel
but from DC, those movies are about the failure of
Obama Biden politics, the failure of the liberal democratic state,
the failure of liberalism itself. And this is true most
of all of Batman.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
His own personal story, his own kind of grievance and grief,
gets mapped on to the political situation and becomes kind
of evidence of just the rottenness and untenability and corruption.
So he doesn't assume power, but he represents a non democratic,
(20:57):
non state, extra legal, extra judicial form of power.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Nolan's Gotham is how the right understands San Francisco, Go
or Portlands seeah, Right, it's always a nighttime in Gotham,
people marching to their doom, being beaten up on the streets, homeless, bedraggled.
(21:23):
Because in all of the DC movies, right, Gotham is America.
Speaker 6 (21:26):
Right, there's predators and prey, and then there are some
people who might, for their own reasons or motives, you know,
protect some of the prey from the from the predators.
But there is strength and there is power, and to
be a hero, to be kind of righteous, is to
understand that and to be able to use it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
For Scott, this view is maybe Musk's view of Twitter,
of politics of everything.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
So you know, you could see like getting rid of
content moderate sort of opening up Twitter to what he
likes to call free speech, is a way of saying, look,
you know, stop kidding yourself that people are going to
come here and be nice and behave themselves. Nobody does that.
Nobody believes that we'd be better off if we got
rid of the idea that people.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Would Batman might have given up guns.
Speaker 10 (22:18):
No guns, no killing.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Where's the fun in that? But deranged Dark Knight fans
have used guns, and they have killed. In twenty twelve,
a twenty four year old PhD student named James Holmes
went to a showing of a Batman movie at a
theater in Colorado.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
As though re enacting a scene from a Dark Knight comic.
Witnesses say Holmes fired into the air and then started
shooting into the crowd.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
He killed twelve people. At his apartment, police found more
guns and Batman masks.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Holmes immediately surrendered. Police observed his hair was dyed orange.
He told them I am the joker.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
The Dark Knight might not have guns. But in twenty
twenty four, campaigning for Donald Trump, Elon Musk Dark Maga
became an advocate for an armed citizenry.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.
They want to take away your right to bear arms.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
He'd begun defending the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy. That's why it's
the first Amendment and the second Amendment is there to
ensure that we have the First Amendment Free speech.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Musk seem to be saying must be defended if necessary
by force. Some people think of Elon Musk as a superhero.
Some people think of him as a super villain trying
to take over the whole planet with a style that
comes from the movies.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
You can have ambition without limits, and you can do
whatever you want. There's a kind of freedom and glee,
and like, I'll say anything to anyone, I'll do anything.
I'll say, you know, we're going to invade Greenland. I'm
gonna mess with everybody's elections. Just this is the behavior
that we've seen before in movies.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Aoscott has another theory, a theory about how, in both
the movies and in American politics, a lot of people
have started rooting for politicians of all political stripes who
seemed to style themselves as the bad guys. You wrote
this long piece called the Supervillain is the Hero Now
and it had a tagline how Americans learned to root
(24:34):
for the dark side from the Joker and Wicked to
Elon Musk. So how did they?
Speaker 6 (24:40):
I mean, the way the piece came about was sort
of just noticing that something had shifted, and Musk was
an important case study that he and Trump, the way
that they were acting, the sort of transgressive, aggressive energy
that they were projecting and that their followers seemed to love,
seemed like a supervillain vibe. You could say, and I
(25:02):
didn't mean that people who don't like them think of
them as supervillains, you know, because they're so bad, but
rather that the people who do like them are kind
of intrigued and seduced and excited by the villainy.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
This is the logic of the Dark Night movies. Batman
is the bad man, but you should root for him.
Don't trust the state, liberalism democracy. You need Batman, the
brooding vigilante and his batmobile, a character who's so unhinged
and tormented that he essentially collapses into his arch nemesis,
(25:36):
the Joker. Late last year, a delusional version of this
plot took form in the mind of a decorated American serviceman.
He rented a Tesla cyber truck and texted his girlfriend
that driving it made him feel like Batman. He parked
it in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas
and shot himself in the head. Just before a bomb
(25:59):
that he'd planted blew up. He loved a note saying
only Trump and Musk can save America. After the election,
in his victory speech, Trump called his comeback the greatest
political movement of all time. He credited Musk.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Let me tell you, we have a new star.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Trump had a lot of people to think, but the
person he talked about the longest was his own personal Batman.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
The star is born Elan.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Trump told the story of watching a SpaceX rocket land
an amazing feat of engineering. Said he'd called Musk afterward.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I said, that's why I love you, Elon.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That's grab He talked about calling On Musk the way
Gotham's police commissioner uses the bat signal.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
I said, Elon, you have something called starlink? Is that right?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
He had that there so fast, it was incredible.
Speaker 8 (26:57):
What is the characters especial guy as a super genius,
we have to.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Bring Elon Musk, the Dark Knight, head of Wayne enterprises
a super intelligence and quite possibly the only person on
the planet more powerful than the President of the United States.
Batman is the creation of a world that witnessed the
(27:22):
rise of fascism. The way I read it and you
can read it differently. Whatever Batman intends, he can't ever
really save Gotham because as a vigilante, Batman is part
of what went wrong with Gotham. But Batman's only one
(27:42):
of Muskism's touchstones. What came before the Dark Knight and
the rise of Dark Maga. To answer that question, we've
got to go back to the beginning of Elon Musk's life, when,
as a boy in South Africa under apartheid, he read
The Hitchaker's Guide to the Galaxy had discovered an origin story.
(28:03):
That's the next time on x Man
Pushkin ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Give it up for the greatest capitalists in the history
of the United States of America.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
In October twenty twenty four, nine days before the US
presidential election, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, took to
the stage at a rally for Donald Trump in New
York City. He wore black jeans, a black T shirt,
black blazer, and a black baseball hat. Had red in
(00:51):
dark gray embroidery Make America great Again.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I'm not just maga, I'm doc Gothic maga.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Elon Musk, an American oligarch and entrepreneurial genius, had stood
on many stages before he sees the podium at Madison
Square Garden. Ted talks, Tesla product rollouts, SpaceX launch pads.
He also owns a stage a platform ever since he
bought Twitter and renamed it x, and he owns a
(01:24):
sizable portion of the global communications infrastructure through his satellite
company Starlink. But this Madison Square Garden gig was part
of a different endeavor. Entirely, Musk spent a staggering amount
of money to help get Trump and Republicans elected. The
world's richest man, spent more than a quarter of a
(01:45):
billion dollars on the return to power of the world's
most powerful man, like some kind of superman or supervillain.
Returning to the White House, Trump promised to bring Musk
with him. You guys are awesome, And once Musk got
(02:07):
a taste for this kind of thing, he began to
involve himself in politics of other nations, in Germany, in
the UK. What does Musk's reinvention of himself as a
king maker mean for the United States and for the world.
How long will it last? No one knows what's going
to happen next, But what happened before in twenty twenty one,
(02:29):
before Musk joined forces with Trump, before Musk bought Twitter,
before Musk was in the news every day, He was
in the news every other day, with headlines that sounded
ripped from science fiction super fast underground trains, rockets to
Mars brain control implants. I made a BBC series in
(02:50):
which I tried to explain Musk by way of the
science fiction he grew up with, tales of superheroes with
origin stories that seemed to influence how he understands his
own life. But so much has happened since then that
we decided to update that series from four years ago,
rename it, and add new episodes because Musk keeps changing,
(03:13):
and so does his origin story. Welcome to X Man,
The Elon Musk Origin Story. I'm Jill Lapour. I'm a
professor of history and law at Harvard. I'm interested in
the past Musk. He's interested in the future.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
The future is gonna be amazing or is he?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Is Musk really a futurist or is he maybe an
antique a throwback. I don't mean the retro vibe of
the amazing extraordinary gadgets, the Tesla cyber trucks and Starlink
satellites and SpaceX rockets. I mean Musk's ideas about politics
and economics. I mean Muskism, extravagant extreme capitalism, a political
(04:06):
economy with origins in the universe of comic books and
science fiction that has fired Musk's imagination since he was
a boy. In this series, I'm going to blast off
not to the future, but to the past. Part of
(04:30):
Musk's stick is that he's still boyish bit of a lad.
Plays video games, has smoked pot, watches superhero movies, talks
about testosterone.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Word has it.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg possibly have now formally
agreed to a cage match face off.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
He once changed his name on X to Kechius Maximus,
which is a joke about on the one hand, the
movie Gladiator and on the other hand, a cartoon frog
named Pepe. Musk does this kind of thing so often
people barely even notice it anymore. The tech bro va
(05:09):
men will be boys, Boys will be gladiators. Trump has
gotten into this too, tweeting during the campaign a picture
of himself as Superman with J. D. Vance as his
Batman and Musk as Cyborg. Why in grown men is
this kind of thing? Okay, honestly, it's a little bewildering. Anyway,
(05:31):
the stories Musk likes and the characters he identifies with matter.
He used to talk a lot about The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. Then he used to think of himself
as Tony Stark, a do gooding superhero from the Marvel comics.
Musk has always loved the Dark Night movies, which are awesome.
(05:52):
About two years ago, he likened himself to Batman, a brooding, angry,
fabulously wealthy vigilante. After he bought Twitter, he posted a
drawing of the dark Night standing on top of a
Gothic church, watching over Gotham, Musk wrote some nights online,
(06:12):
a lot of people started arguing about whether or not
Musk is a real life Bruce Wayne, And then two
when the cyber truck came out, people said, it looked
like the batmobile. Is that Batman?
Speaker 6 (06:26):
Unless you're trying to be Batman?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Why isn't that out of my crown? I happen to
be pretty interested in Batman. I once wrote a book
called The Secret History of Wonder Woman. So this episode
I want to look at the original Batman to see
what he tells us about Elon Musk. Batman made his
debut in the nineteen thirties, and fairly soon he was
(06:51):
on the radio.
Speaker 7 (06:52):
The whole masked figure wearing a bright blue hood and
cape approaches Listen.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It turns out that a whole lot of Elon Musk's
vision for the future, his ideas about politics and governments
and economics, come from the nineteen thirties, nearly a century ago.
They're old ideas, and a lot of them I think
are failed ideas, but they're also bound up with Batman.
That Dark Knight, a guy dark Maga really likes to
(07:19):
talk about.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
It's like Dark Knight, like the friggant joker is in charge.
The criminals run free and the citizens are arrested.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That's Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular
podcast in the US. They're talking about life and Democrat
run New York City and complaining about how authorities in
New York had seized and killed some guy's pet squirrel.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Still pretty suke about the freaking squirrel thing. It's like, meanwhile,
you know, violent falons are running free?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Is a joker, It's the Joker, Batman's arch nemesis, a madman,
a sadist, an anarchist. It's Mayhem? And who can save
the people of Gotham? If Elon Musk were Batman, what
would he intend to answer that question? I want to
(08:11):
go back to that night at Madison Square Garden, smack
in the middle of Gotham, nine days before the election.
The arena was sold out. Twenty thousand seats were filled
with Trump supporters dressed in red, white and blue, caring
signs that read Fight, Fight, Fight, and Trump can Fix It.
They had a lot to celebrate Trump was making the
(08:33):
most impressive comeback in American political history. Critics had been
calling Trump a fascist Hulk Hogan, the flamboyant former wrestler,
had an answer to that.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
This is Donald Trump's house, brother Ilesino staking Nazis in here.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Musk didn't speak for long. Mainly he rallied Trump's troops.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
USA, USA, USA.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And then Donald Trump. In a preview of his inauguration
rally promised to usher in a new golden age.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
I'm here today with a message of hope for all Americans.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Trump spoke for more than an hour. He mocked journalists,
talked about fake news, made a promise about immigration.
Speaker 8 (09:24):
On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program
in American history.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
But to get the criminals out, I.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
Will rescue every city in town that has been invaded.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
In concorde, he denounced in doctrination, we.
Speaker 8 (09:38):
Will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out.
Speaker 9 (09:42):
Of our school.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
And he pledged himself to a policy of isolationism.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
It's called America First.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
When Trump finished, a crooner in a black tux sang Sinatra,
but it was a big, bold, glamy, star studded night
in Gotham with a lot of talk about crime, and
Elon Musk dressed as if he were Batman on a
(10:14):
casual Friday. But it all reminded me of a very
different night at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 10 (10:21):
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow American American patriots. I'm sure I
do not come before you tonight as a complete strange shot.
You all have heard of me through a Jewish control press.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
In nineteen thirty nine, the German American bund An organization
of American Nazis held a sold out rally in Madison
Square Garden. They wore swastikas as armbands, raised their arms
to Hyle Hitler, and in front of a giant portrait
of George Washington, celebrated him as America's first fascist. Here's
(11:03):
Fritz Kuhnn, the bund Feurer, warning about a Jewish conspiracy
against the United States.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Unless you Aliens nor the ten Christians wigap and speak
out to the men that our go women, how be
returned to the American people who founded it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
These American Nazis were searching for someone to blame.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
The people far and wide feel that somebody must have
fallen down.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
On the job.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
They were denouncing the press.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
The whole country now must see that there is no
free radio for white.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Men campaigning to cut government spending.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
Who is not familiar with a billion dollar yardstick that
is required to measure this stupendous total of our national
public debt.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
They're demonizing immigrants.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
Great bloods of tears were a few hundred thousand job
taking so called poor Jewish refugees.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And here's Fritzkun again. They were fighting in doctrination weed
I see, will.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
Not you when called upon the gate ed will law
all support in our power in the fire to break
the trip and the power size ten of Jewish communism
in our schools, our university is our very homes.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
History often sounds like a broken record, but it would
be easy to make too much of the echoes between
these two Madison Square Garden rallies, separated by decades, the
whole calling people Nazis because you disagree with them. I'm
sick of it, You're sick of it. So let me
be clear. The nearly eighty million Americans who voted for
(12:47):
Trump in twenty twenty four were sick of Democrats, unhappy
about inflation, annoyed by progressive purity crusades and unimpressed by
Kamala Harris, I get at Hull Kogan. I don't see
no stinking Nazis here. Still. Look, I'm a historian, and
there is history here. Fascism has a history, and it
(13:10):
casts a very long shadow. And there's another, very particular
reason to spend a little time thinking about the year
nineteen thirty nine. Right after that Boone rally, maybe even
the very next day, in an office building just a
few blocks away, and out of the same political tensions,
(13:33):
the rise of fascism, the fear of fascism, some guys
at a little New York comic book publishing house decided
to create a new superhero Atman.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
What are you doing here?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I enter the caped crusader. Superman had only just made
his debut, a wild success. Pretty soon he was on
the radio.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
I still on a bullet.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It took the writers a few weeks to come up
with a new superhero, but he made his debut that
spring nineteen thirty nine, and now it is my brand.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Bruce Wayne of a wide.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Known as the Batman. Superman comes from another planet. Batman's
just a guy with a cape, but he does have
a lot of money. Bruce Wayne is a millionaire head
of Wayne Enterprises. He's also pretty nifty with a pistol,
which soon became a problem. At the time, the publishers
(14:32):
of comic books were taking a lot of heat for
glorifying violence. The month that Batman made his debut, the
US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of two new firearms
laws that, among other things, outlawed machine guns. Then that
September Hitler advanced.
Speaker 10 (14:51):
Germany has invaded Poland.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
France has decreed general mobilization and martial law.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Europe was going to war and Americans were sick of guns.
The publisher of DC Comics told the guy who wrote
Batman to lay off the guns. Batman on mister Cannon,
and I'm afraid we'll never see him again. Well, only
the original Batman was gone, replaced with a new one.
(15:19):
This Batman hates guns, and you know what, he also
hates fascists. Right after Germany invaded Poland, Batman got an
origin story. As a kid, Bruce Wayne had watched his
parents get gunned down on the streets, and so now
here he was in nineteen thirty nine fighting an organization
of American fascists, a thinly disguised American bund known as
(15:43):
the Scarlet Horde.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I must stop the Scarlet Hoard before they become dictators
of the world.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
At the time and over the next few years, critics
of the comics would argue that they glorified strong men.
Time Magazine published a story called are Comics Fascist? To
defeat the argument that comics were too violent? Batman gave
up his gun. To defeat the argument that comics were fascist.
Batman took on this new enemy, the Scarlet Horde.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
American nazis Hi Karl Kruger will be dictatle of the world.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
The Scarlet Hords leader is pretty recognizably Fritz Kuhn, the
leader of the Bund, America's top Nazi.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
Tell me, is our army ready, two thousand strong, waiting
for your command.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Batman defeats him, and without a gun, saves Gotham from fascism.
During the twenty twenty four election, there was a lot
of talk about fascism in the United States.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump
is a fascist?
Speaker 10 (16:48):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 8 (16:50):
Joe is surrounded by fascists surround the ovalas I've said.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It before, but I'll say it again. Everyone's tired of
everyone calling everyone else a fascist. But with everything that's
going on the rise of far right parties across Europe,
including one in Germany endorsed by Elon Musk, I can't
not talk about fascism, and Batman's whole origin story is
bound up with fascism. Every time Musk is compared to Batman,
(17:18):
it raises an old question, is Batman fighting fascism? Where
is Batman somehow himself a fascist? That was actually a
question in the nineteen thirties, and over the last decades
it's been a question again ever since a trilogy of
Dark Night films came out, directed by Christopher Nolan, the
(17:38):
movies that shaped Musk's view of Batman.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
I did think that there is a strong fascist current,
certainly in the look and mood and the sort of
just Wagnerian atmosphere of those movies.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
That's Ao Scott, longtime critic from the New York Times,
talking about those Nolan films from Warner Brothers Pictures, the
very very dark Dark Night series. It starts with Batman
begins in two thousand and five.
Speaker 8 (18:10):
What are you?
Speaker 6 (18:12):
I'm Batman?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Nolan's films brought forward in time the fascist themes and
concerns of the original nineteen thirties Batman.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
There is a very not entirely coherent, but strongly kind
of authoritarian political bent, and one that takes some interesting forms.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
A lot of characters in these movies say a version
of democracy has failed. We need a strong man. Take
this scene from the two thousand and eight film The
Dark Night.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would
suspend democracy in a point one man to protect the city,
and it wasn't considered an honor, it was considered a
public service.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
Harvey.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
The last man that they appointed to protect the republic
was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.
Speaker 9 (19:01):
Okay, fine, you either die a hero or you live
long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
The people need a he. The people need here that
the people can't take care of themselves. That in a way,
the sort of the democratic institutions that might have met
the people's needs and kept them safe have failed, and
what they need is a strong figure from outside of
the political system. There's no sense of any kind of
democratic participation in the Batman world.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Oh my god, No, they're all dupes. Everybody's a dupe.
Every Gothamite is a dupe, right Aoscott has a theory that,
unlike the Dark Knight films, the Marvel Universe films, Iron Man,
Captain America, ant Man, the Avengers, a team of do gooders,
these films represent an Obama Biden view of the world.
Speaker 6 (19:50):
He says, It's just like this kind of weird global
committee of superheroes who are going to go around solving problems,
who put their own kind of personal feelings and motives
and vendettas aside to kind of to work for the
common good in a way that like a committee of
the in Brussels might try to solve supply chain issues.
(20:13):
That's a bureaucratic, technocratic idea of heroism.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But the Dark Knight films, which come not from Marvel
but from DC, those movies are about the failure of
Obama Biden politics, the failure of the liberal democratic state,
the failure of liberalism itself. And this is true most
of all of Batman.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
His own personal story, his own kind of grievance and grief,
gets mapped on to the political situation and becomes kind
of evidence of just the rottenness and untenability and corruption.
So he doesn't assume power, but he represents a non democratic,
(20:57):
non state, extra legal, extra judicial form of power.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Nolan's Gotham is how the right understands San Francisco, Go
or Portlands seeah, Right, it's always a nighttime in Gotham,
people marching to their doom, being beaten up on the streets, homeless, bedraggled.
(21:23):
Because in all of the DC movies, right, Gotham is America.
Speaker 6 (21:26):
Right, there's predators and prey, and then there are some
people who might, for their own reasons or motives, you know,
protect some of the prey from the from the predators.
But there is strength and there is power, and to
be a hero, to be kind of righteous, is to
understand that and to be able to use it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
For Scott, this view is maybe Musk's view of Twitter,
of politics of everything.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
So you know, you could see like getting rid of
content moderate sort of opening up Twitter to what he
likes to call free speech, is a way of saying, look,
you know, stop kidding yourself that people are going to
come here and be nice and behave themselves. Nobody does that.
Nobody believes that we'd be better off if we got
rid of the idea that people.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Would Batman might have given up guns.
Speaker 10 (22:18):
No guns, no killing.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Where's the fun in that? But deranged Dark Knight fans
have used guns, and they have killed. In twenty twelve,
a twenty four year old PhD student named James Holmes
went to a showing of a Batman movie at a
theater in Colorado.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
As though re enacting a scene from a Dark Knight comic.
Witnesses say Holmes fired into the air and then started
shooting into the crowd.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
He killed twelve people. At his apartment, police found more
guns and Batman masks.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Holmes immediately surrendered. Police observed his hair was dyed orange.
He told them I am the joker.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
The Dark Knight might not have guns. But in twenty
twenty four, campaigning for Donald Trump, Elon Musk Dark Maga
became an advocate for an armed citizenry.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.
They want to take away your right to bear arms.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
He'd begun defending the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy. That's why it's
the first Amendment and the second Amendment is there to
ensure that we have the First Amendment Free speech.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Musk seem to be saying must be defended if necessary
by force. Some people think of Elon Musk as a superhero.
Some people think of him as a super villain trying
to take over the whole planet with a style that
comes from the movies.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
You can have ambition without limits, and you can do
whatever you want. There's a kind of freedom and glee,
and like, I'll say anything to anyone, I'll do anything.
I'll say, you know, we're going to invade Greenland. I'm
gonna mess with everybody's elections. Just this is the behavior
that we've seen before in movies.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Aoscott has another theory, a theory about how, in both
the movies and in American politics, a lot of people
have started rooting for politicians of all political stripes who
seemed to style themselves as the bad guys. You wrote
this long piece called the Supervillain is the Hero Now
and it had a tagline how Americans learned to root
(24:34):
for the dark side from the Joker and Wicked to
Elon Musk. So how did they?
Speaker 6 (24:40):
I mean, the way the piece came about was sort
of just noticing that something had shifted, and Musk was
an important case study that he and Trump, the way
that they were acting, the sort of transgressive, aggressive energy
that they were projecting and that their followers seemed to love,
seemed like a supervillain vibe. You could say, and I
(25:02):
didn't mean that people who don't like them think of
them as supervillains, you know, because they're so bad, but
rather that the people who do like them are kind
of intrigued and seduced and excited by the villainy.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
This is the logic of the Dark Night movies. Batman
is the bad man, but you should root for him.
Don't trust the state, liberalism democracy. You need Batman, the
brooding vigilante and his batmobile, a character who's so unhinged
and tormented that he essentially collapses into his arch nemesis,
(25:36):
the Joker. Late last year, a delusional version of this
plot took form in the mind of a decorated American serviceman.
He rented a Tesla cyber truck and texted his girlfriend
that driving it made him feel like Batman. He parked
it in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas
and shot himself in the head. Just before a bomb
(25:59):
that he'd planted blew up. He loved a note saying
only Trump and Musk can save America. After the election,
in his victory speech, Trump called his comeback the greatest
political movement of all time. He credited Musk.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Let me tell you, we have a new star.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Trump had a lot of people to think, but the
person he talked about the longest was his own personal Batman.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
The star is born Elan.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Trump told the story of watching a SpaceX rocket land
an amazing feat of engineering. Said he'd called Musk afterward.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I said, that's why I love you, Elon.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That's grab He talked about calling On Musk the way
Gotham's police commissioner uses the bat signal.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
I said, Elon, you have something called starlink? Is that right?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
He had that there so fast, it was incredible.
Speaker 8 (26:57):
What is the characters especial guy as a super genius,
we have to.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Bring Elon Musk, the Dark Knight, head of Wayne enterprises
a super intelligence and quite possibly the only person on
the planet more powerful than the President of the United States.
Batman is the creation of a world that witnessed the
(27:22):
rise of fascism. The way I read it and you
can read it differently. Whatever Batman intends, he can't ever
really save Gotham because as a vigilante, Batman is part
of what went wrong with Gotham. But Batman's only one
(27:42):
of Muskism's touchstones. What came before the Dark Knight and
the rise of Dark Maga. To answer that question, we've
got to go back to the beginning of Elon Musk's life, when,
as a boy in South Africa under apartheid, he read
The Hitchaker's Guide to the Galaxy had discovered an origin story.
(28:03):
That's the next time on x Man
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