Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside President Trump to reporters in the Oval Office on May 30, 2025.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
By
Gustavo ArellanoColumnist
FollowJan. 15, 2026
3 AM PT
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Who the hell appointed Elon Musk to be the loudest defender of white men?
From the moment the South Africa native took over what was once called Twitter in 2022, the wealthiest human being on Earth has let neo-Nazi accounts flourish while repeating their insistence that white men are an endangered species as the world grows more diverse and minorities assume positions of power.
In 2023, Musk accused South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa of “openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa” because political opponents sang an apartheid-era anti-Boer song during a rally. That same year, Musk posted, “You have said the actual truth,” to a user who claimed Jews supported unchecked migration in order to destroy Western — read, white — civilization.
The mogul ended up apologizing for that babble, calling it the “dumbest post I’ve ever done.” That didn’t stop him from getting dumber ever since.
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Last year, X’s Grok feature pushed the white South African genocide claim to users on its own, then insisted the Freudian slip came from an “unauthorized modification” by a “rogue employee” that violated the chatbot’s “core values.” Who that could be, one can’t say for sure. But then Musk opined in September that “relentless propaganda portraying white men as the worst human beings” is what leads some of them to transition into becoming female.
All this garbage was prelude to this month, when Musk twice shared a post that stated nonwhite men “will be 1000x times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over Whites.”
Say this about Musk: He knows trends. And right now, the idea that white men are the most persecuted group out there is the Labubu of American conservativism.
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A widely read essay in the online magazine Compact labeled Gen Z white men “the lost generation,” adrift in a world where workplaces shun them in favor of minorities. The piece earned an endorsement by New York Times columnist Ross Douhat, who added that the “simple” way to not make young white men open to racial radicalization is by “just not discriminating against them” — whatever the hell that means.
White men have fretted about their place in a changing America ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1784 that a divine “revolution of the wheel of fortune” was “probable” against white people for their embrace of slavery. Fear of the sunset of white men has fueled lynchings, legal segregation, laws against immigration legal and not, lawsuits against affirmative action and so much more.
Their supposed plight has been a major plank of Trump’s political career since his first term — but it has become an obsession of his second. His administration’s social media accounts have regularly pushed posts lauding the days of Daniel Boone and Manifest Destiny while using the Ma and Pa American artworks of Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade to push its noxious agenda.
At the same time, as part of his deportation campaign, Trump has pushed the concept of forcing people who weren’t born in this country to go back to their birthplaces. But foreigners aren’t the only ones bringing down the white man, according to this regime.
In December, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas released a video encouraging white men — not white women, tellingly — who felt they were victims of workplace discrimination to file a claim with her agency. Vice President JD Vance shared Lucas’ request on social media along with the Compact essay, noting in the post sharing the latter that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is a “deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”
Trump, for his part, told the New York Times this month that the Civil Rights Act — the 1964 law signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to help nonwhite American citizens fight decades of segregation and discrimination — “was a reverse discrimination” where “white people were very badly treated.”
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As a nongringo, I’m as amused as I am sad about this industrial-scale pity party thrown by some of the most powerful men, white or otherwise, on the planet.
A poster showing the Trump Gold Card is seen as President Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on Sept. 19, 2025.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
When Trump and his allies claim to have the interest of white men in mind, they don’t really mean the sons of small-town Appalachia like Vance’s ancestors; they’re talking about white men like them: wealthy guys who want to get wealthier. They preach racial solidarity while gutting funding for SNAP benefits and healthcare, which will disproportionately affect poor people of all ethnicities.
The Pew Research Center found that 51% of white Republicans with no college degree voted for Trump in 2024 — a significant drop from the 63% who did the same in 2016. No wonder the president and his allies are doubling down on painting minorities as usurpers of the white American Dream. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket,” LBJ said. “Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Personally, I can assure all white men — but especially the blue-collar guys — that the children of Latino immigrants I know don’t plan to treat you all the way some of your grandparents treated our fathers when they migrated to this country in the 1960s and 1970s. Our parents didn’t come for us to turn into chillones — crybabies — seeking revenge for past sins.
In fact, many Latino men sadly did join their white counterparts in the grievance Olympics, as their drift toward Trump in the 2024 election proved.
Cousins and friends who should have known better spent most of 2024 railing to me against trans athletes, Kamala Harris, unchecked migration from Central and South America, and other Fox News talking points when they weren’t talking Dodgers and Raiders. None of them desired to be white, as wokosos insisted in postelection breakdowns of what happened; these rancho libertarians just wanted the fair shake that the colorblind policies would supposedly offer and thus cast their lot with Trump in a history-making decision.
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(Insert “The Price Is Right” losing horn sound here.)
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To see Trumpworld now limit male grievance to just whites threatens to destroy the Trump coalition in a year where they can’t afford to lose much more support.
Leave it to Grok to back me up on this. After Musk endorsed the post claiming nonwhite men will subjugate white men, a user asked the AI chatbot: “@grok is this true”?
This is how Grok replied, edited for length but not the thrust of what it said: “No, this claim aligns with the ‘white genocide’ conspiracy theory, which lacks evidence. ... It is speculative fear, not fact.”
Musk. Trump. Vance. Powerful white men. Why so afraid?
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that Elon Musk has become the primary amplifier of a false narrative portraying white men as a persecuted minority, despite evidence to the contrary. The author documents Musk’s promotion of the “white genocide” conspiracy theory regarding South Africa, including his false claims about government persecution of white people and his endorsement of antisemitic content.
The author contends that this white male persecution narrative represents a political trend gaining momentum in conservative circles, including endorsements from prominent figures like New York Times columnist Ross Douhat and magazines such as Compact, which labeled Gen Z white men “the lost generation”.
The article presents this narrative as a distraction mechanism used by Trump administration officials and wealthy allies to redirect working-class grievances away from economic policies that harm them. The author notes that while these leaders claim to defend white men’s interests, they simultaneously cut funding for social programs like SNAP and healthcare that disproportionately affect poor people across all ethnicities.
The author emphasizes that claims of white male persecution lack empirical support, citing the Trump administration’s own AI chatbot Grok, which labeled such claims as “speculative fear, not fact” and aligned them with unfounded conspiracy theories.
The article criticizes the selective application of grievance politics, noting that Latino men largely rejected participation in what the author calls the “grievance Olympics,” instead seeking economic policies they perceived as offering fair treatment.
Different views on the topic
Advocates argue that young white men face meaningful workplace discrimination through diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, with some characterizing such programs as systematically disadvantageous to white male employment and advancement opportunities. Supporters of this view contend that addressing perceived discrimination against white men represents a legitimate policy concern worthy of government attention.
Right-wing perspectives presented in search results argue that South African land reform and affirmative action policies constitute persecution of the white minority, framing these policies as forms of reverse discrimination that threaten economic security[1]. Proponents of this view characterize land expropriation efforts as targeting ethnic minorities and suggest that such policies serve as cautionary examples of what occurs when racial redress policies are implemented[1].
Some commentators maintain that the narrative of white male hardship reflects genuine economic anxieties among working-class white communities, suggesting that addressing these concerns through colorblind policies could mitigate susceptibility to political radicalization.