Everything you need to know about Elon Musk by Seth Abramson

[CousinIT]

2. Here it is in its entirety, unrolled

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With Elon Musk, an unelected plutocrat, six weeks from becoming co-President of the United States, many people are just starting to research who he really is—that is, beyond the basics most already know.

Or, rather, think they know—as most of those basics are untrue.

This thread reveals the truth.

I’ve been a Musk biographer for two years. I’ve published hundreds and hundreds of pages of content about him—more than a book’s worth—at my independent media outlet PROOF, a Top 25 U.S. Politics substack.

I’ll be linking to PROOF at points in this thread, so I want to say a couple things about it.
For just $6 you get a month of unrestricted access to everything I’ve ever written on any political or politics-adjacent subject: 400+ reports (including every one I’ve ever written on Elon Musk); 2 full-length books from the NYT-bestselling Proof Series; Q&As, you name it. You can cancel anytime.

Proof | Seth Abramson | Substack
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sethabramson.substack.com
If you don’t wish to become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! If you subscribe for free, you get one paid report free. There are also buttons atop many articles offering a 1-week free trial (cancel after six days, pay nothing). Some PROOF reports are free at publication; others get temporarily unlocked.
Anyway, this thread isn’t intended as a PROOF advertisement. I just know that I’ll be linking to some reports on Musk that are only for paid subscribers to PROOF, and I want everyone reading this thread to know how that works and what it is and not be surprised by those links.

Okay—so here we go.
This, below, is the longest report I’ve published on Elon Musk.

It’s a novella in and of itself—despite being only one of my many fully sourced, professionally researched Musk reports as a bestselling historian and biographer.

The reason it’s so long is because it covers many different subjects.

PROOF EXCLUSIVE: Elon Musk’s Many Years As An Illegal Immigrant
This carefully researched and sourced series investigating Musk’s immigration status from 1988 through his receipt of US citizenship in 2002 reveals shocking new details about the world’s richest man.
sethabramson.substack.com
One focus is on how Musk got rich in business (how he had the money to get into the business world in the first place I will get to in a moment).

The simple fact is that Zip2, which made Elon the money he needed to do literally anything else in business, was an idea that he appears to have stolen.
I say appears to have stolen because there are two separate potential sources for the idea for Zip2; neither of them are Elon or his brother Kimbal. One was a phonebook salesman and the other is an entrepreneur who actually sued Elon for stealing the idea for Zip2. Both of these claims are credible.
The claims are so credible that after Elon and Kimbal for years told the story of the phonebook salesman in a way that—if you can believe it—made it seem they took his idea, they suddenly realized how that came off and changed the tale 180 degrees to make them the heroes and this other man the dolt.
They’ve enlisted family members to try to help them date the Zip2 idea as theirs; none of those claims are credible. Worse still, their own admission is that as they were developing the Zip2 idea—again, which seems stolen—they were acting wildly unprofessionally in ways that will make your jaw drop.
Elon and Kimbal would engage in full-on brawls—brawls producing blood and even hospitalization—in the office.

Let me repeat: in the office. In front of employees.

I know of no niceties of journalism that require me to say anything about that but the following: a boss who acts this way is deranged.
But it gets worse. Elon and Kimbal took the Zip2 idea just to sell it and get rich off it; they hardly cared about its success. So it’s in this context that I tell you that while pitching the (apparently stolen) idea to investors, both Elon and Kimbal Musk were illegal immigrants—and lying about it.
Can you imagine the gall required to shop an idea that’s not yours for hundreds of millions?

Now add to that the gall required to shop an idea that’s not yours for hundreds of millions to investors you’re lying to about your immigration status, hiding that you’re eligible for immediate deportation.
Now add to that gall—I’m putting aside the realities of their workplace (the brawls and so on) that Elon and Kimbal were hiding from investors—that Elon has ruthlessly lied for years and years and years about how he and Kimbal even had the money to keep Zip2 going for long enough to seek investors.
The simple fact is that they were funded by their rich, obscenely bigoted dad—a proud beneficiary of apartheid.

They didn’t want anyone to know they were living off daddy’s money, let alone when daddy was a contemptible figure the likes of which no one in Silicon Valley would condone, so they lied.
But there’s also evidence that Elon may have taken student loan money from the federal government and/or private lenders and funneled it into his illegal enterprise.

Did I not mention that it was illegal for Elon to be working on Zip2 at all, just as it was illegal for him to be in America at all?
And here’s where things get super weird—because we have to talk about Elon Musk’s educational background, which may be the single most lied-about component of his bio (and that is saying something).

First, understand that Musk does not believe in or care about education. Not at all. Not whatsoever.
Elon believes in making money—usually with the ideas of others—and in using his dodgy skills as a hype man to turn some money into more money and more money into obscene money.

From the start—from his childhood—he did not believe education (as opposed to networking) had anything to do with success.
One reason for this is that Elon isn’t particularly bright. He was such an indifferent student in South Africa that he had to start telling lies about reading multiple Encyclopedia Britannica sets (multiple!) all the way through multiple (multiple!) times to try to hide a human-average intelligence.
He flamed out at University of Praetoria because he didn’t want to be in South Africa at all—he wanted to be rich and he needed to be in America for that. So he launched an obscene story about choosing to leave South Africa because he was anti-apartheid. In fact, he was (and is) a white supremacist.
Even today, the story—which PROOF debunked—is told about Elon leaving South Africa to avoid having to do a racism in South Africa’s military.

It’s all total garbage.

Elon—like Trump—saw military service as being for suckers, and he knew he wouldn’t become (even more) rich staying in South Africa.
It’s worth mentioning here that the Musks were obscenely wealthy. Obscenely wealthy. Elon made it his goal to get to America because the obscene wealth the Musks had wasn’t enough for him—he wanted a level of wealth that would make him both famous and powerful. What he desired was to be filthy rich.
So he emigrated to Canada, where he did...well, no one knows. Every timeline he’s offered about Canada has fallen apart. His biographers can’t make heads or tails of it. There’s an entire lost year where his whereabouts are unknown, which year he explains with—per usual—heroic self-mythologizing.
Elon claims he wandered Canada like Cain, doing odd jobs with no paper trails that conveniently established his persona as a self-starter, alpha male, dreamer, and man willing to work with his hands (he’s not). But there’s no evidence any of it happened. But there’s evidence he enrolled in school...
...and once again flamed out—his second flameout. He didn’t study, didn’t go to class, and spent his time...partying and networking. All of which makes it inexplicable that he would be accepted to Penn on a full ride, though per usual all of the facts surrounding his time at Penn are contested also.
Sometimes Elon says he had a full ride to Penn, sometimes he says he had to take out massive loans. Sometimes he says he graduated on time, sometimes he says it was years later. Sometimes he claims to have been resident in Philly for his whole time at Penn, sometimes he admits to hardly being there.
Sometimes he says he had help from his dad, sometimes he says he didn’t. Sometimes he admits to working on Zip2 while at Penn, sometimes he doesn’t. We know this much: his dad would’ve been powerful enough to pull strings at Penn to help him get in; Elon was flush with cash his whole time at Penn...
...he once again didn’t care about academics at all and mostly partied and rented out two separate mansions (yes, really): one to live in, one to run as a nightclub. He may well have been on campus as little as 14-18 months in total, and while we have no idea where his money came from it is clear...
...it wasn’t going to his education. The most likely scenario based on the data we have is that his dad helped him get in with some sort of scholarship and paid for all his lavish living expenses, and that Elon then took out loans to use as seed money for Zip2. And he was, in fact, rarely in Philly.
Okay, so if daddy’s money is what kept Elon afloat in Canada and then in America, where did that money come from?

Illegal apartheid-era mines in Zambia that exploited their black workers and made the Musks rich. The Musk Family refused to pay taxes on these mines or reveal their interest in them...

PROOF EXCLUSIVE: Prospective Trump Co-President Elon Musk Got Rich Off the Backs of Exploited Black Laborers in Africa
As the Trump-Musk axis woos Black voters, this new exploration of the dark history of the Musk Family reveals that Musk—already steeped in the outrage of apartheid—was enriched by racial exploitation.
sethabramson.substack.com
...for a reason that makes sense if you know that the Musks are white supremacists and some of them (e.g. Musk's grandparents) were Nazis: the Musk Family didn’t believe any Black-run government could be deemed legitimate, whether in South Africa or Zambia, so it saw no need to acknowledge Zambia’s.
Errol Musk called into question the legitimacy of Black governance in South Africa this year (see below).

It’s a view of governance that Elon holds as well—which is why when his mother Maye went on TV a few weeks ago to describe the sort of people Elon planned to fire from the federal government...

The Dangers of An Elon Musk Shadow Presidency Are Now Clear Following a Shockingly Raw Interview By His Father
Errol Musk has given up the game—and the world can never see his son the same way again. This is the story of how a bigoted coot detonated a charade the Richest Man on Earth spent decades perfecting.
sethabramson.substack.com
...she used language that echoes the coded adjectives Errol uses in speaking of women and nonwhites—and which Elon himself uses in describing any class of persons that’s disproportionately nonwhite (whether in reality or his imagination).

Elon has lied about the Musks’ mines for most of his life.
I say most of his life because—get this!—Elon was the first person to reveal the existence of the mines to major media. Per usual, he was showing off and bragging and trying to make himself sound interesting rather than the dolt he actually is, so despite the fact that he was passing as a liberal...
...at the time (see the link above for his dad confirming Elon is an arch-conservative who’s hid his politics for decades to make friends in California) he slipped up and admitted to something his white-supremacist mind couldn’t instantly grasp would hurt him: an illegal, racist, apartheid-era mine.
The evidence that Elon knew of the mine, visited the mine, knew his family was rich from the mine, knew the mine was illegal—et cetera, et cetera—is legion, but he still denies all of it (after first revealing all of it) because he does not believe in Truth. He believes in what he can get away with.
But as with every aspect of Elon’s life... it gets worse.

Elon didn’t just know everything about the mine, he was obsessed—for years and years—with the idea that he could get rich by working alongside (or as an agent of) his father selling illegal gems inside the United States for beaucoup profits.
This is why the two periods—one of which was while he was an illegal immigrant—in which Elon fell off the map while living in Canada and then the United States are so unnerving. Because we know Elon sold illegal gems for his dad in NYC at least once and aimed to keep doing it afterward. So...did he?
We don’t have a final answer on that. We just know that during the period this would’ve happened Elon (a) had way (way!) more money than can be explained, and (b) was lying about where his money was coming from. It is certainly reasonable to believe he helped his dad with his gem-smuggling business.
The point is, Elon Musk flamed out at Penn—leaving without a degree.

It was his third (third!) straight flameout in higher ed.

But not his last!

Because in order to hide his illegal immigration status Musk had to tell decades of lies about attending Stanford University—which he absolutely didn’t.
Elon did look into going to Stanford, though he well knew he couldn’t be admitted because he had no BA (remember, he flamed out at Penn). He may even have had a prof interested in his research who would’ve helped him get in if he had a BA... or, alternately, did help him because he thought Elon did.
But the point is this: Elon Musk does not care about education. He cares about money. He never intended to go to Stanford and never matriculated at Stanford. But he needed the lie that he had or was about to or [whatever] in order to explain why he didn’t leave the U.S. after flaming out from Penn.
At the time Elon was living in California and using an idea he’d heard from a phonebook salesman to try to get rich. His dad was supporting him. He was an illegal immigrant subject to immediate deportation. He and his brother were acting like depraved, spoiled, rich-apartheid-kid lunatics in public.
You may have noticed that, as a Musk biographer, I can’t find a single component of the man’s biographer he hasn’t lied about.

No, not just lied about—lied ruthlessly about.

Shamelessly. For decades. Without any integrity or fidelity to truth whatsoever. And always to hide what a bad person he is.
So some of you still want to give him credit for Tesla.

Don’t.

He used emerald-mine money and a likely stolen idea—certainly a fraudulent investor pitch (he was an illegal immigrant)—to make money at Zip2, then got himself fired as the CEO because he was... crazy.

He took that money and formed...
...a company that did little of value and was essentially a failure but lucked into merging with PayPal, after which merger he became CEO and again got fired for being crazy.

So his dad’s dirty money, his own immigration lies, a likely stolen idea and two successive failures as a CEO made him rich.
He failed upward, over and over, via lies and money that wasn’t his and ideas that weren’t his and in-office conduct so odious people paid him—a lot!—to go away. No one wanted anything to do with him. It’s a batshit crazy way—excuse my language—for a man with few skills to make hundreds of millions.
So at the dawn of his investment in Tesla, Elon was a man who had flamed out at four universities and gotten one years-late degree—at Penn—in 1997 because (you won’t believe this!) his Zip2 investors pulled strings to make it happen as part of a desperate bid to keep the illegal immigrant stateside.
And after they pulled strings to get Elon his BA they had to fire him anyway because—as noted—crazy.

So at the dawn of his involvement in Tesla he’d been fired from every job he’d had, graduated under his own steam from no school (out of four), and was fueled by dad’s dirty money and others’ ideas.
What was Tesla? A company that already had a name, founders, a business plan, significant work toward its first release—but was failing. Because it was a bad idea? Because its founders were idiots? No! Because it was the 00s and it was early for EVs. Any company in that position would’ve needed aid.
The aid they needed was money. They needed nothing else Elon Musk had or could offer. His track record in business was abysmal except—except—for somehow falling into payoffs he didn’t deserve. So Elon gave lots of money to the Tesla founders and struck a deal that he could call himself a co-founder.
In the 1990s, if Elon wanted to take someone else’s idea to get rich and famous he had nothing to give in return. By the 00s he could at least pay the people whose idea he was going to claim was his own and whose labor would help him become rich and famous. Was Elon smart to bet on EVs? Sure! But...
...to think Elon alone saw a future in EVs in preposterous. Elon was part of a massive cadre in California who thought EVs could one day be successful. The difference was that Elon had lots of money and was a reckless gambler with it, perhaps in part—the irony!—because he knew he did not deserve it.
I’m going to leave off for now on the timeline.

Suffice to say the themes we have seen here—lies, “passing,” possible fraud, recklessness, a sort of violence, incompetence, stolen glory—continued into his time at Tesla and then at his most successful original venture, SpaceX.

But a few more notes.
First, I’ve published at PROOF and across social media all the links to the trail of broken promises the Boring Company has left behind it; the unethical testing at Neuralink; the hilarious switcheroos Elon pulled to make Optimus seem viable rather than a rehashing of ideas from many decades ago...
...the backroom lobbying against NASA that allowed SpaceX to rise, despite Elon’s routinely lied-about deadlines and reckless evasion of federal safety regulations; the bait-and-switch he pulled with his involvement in AI (from sponsoring OpenAI to trying to destroy it so that xAI could thrive)...
...and the dangerous lies he’s told about FSD and the Cybertruck and...

...well, it goes on and on. Few non-PROOF readers have seen, all in once place, the staggering mountain of evidence that Elon isn’t just an unethical businessman but a bad boss, a bad businessman, a bad leader, and a bad man.
He is also a TESCREAList.

This is a cadre of far-right billionaires who want to destroy humanity as we know it, in ways so scary I’d rather link to articles than discuss it, because I’ve actually had people call me (me, not Elon) deranged because the reports—in major-media sources—were that insane.

You Think You Understand How Dangerous Elon Musk and His Friends Are. You Do Not.
Until you understand TESCREAList thinking, which is what animates the creepiest Musk tweets—the ones intended only for his most cultist followers—you cannot see how dangerous the road we are on is.
sethabramson.substack.com
Elon, Peter Thiel, and a few other TESCREALists who are disciples of fascist madman Curtis Yarvin selected J.D. Vance to be VP (because Vance is also a secret Yarvinist).

And you have to read what the Yarvinists want to do to you and your family to believe it.

I’m not even going to say it anymore.

Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas
Yes, Peter Thiel was the senator’s benefactor. But they’re both inspired by an obscure software developer who has some truly frightening thoughts about reordering society.
newrepublic.com
My point: for a long time the lies Elon told—and all the disgusting things he did, like impregnating employees or arguably kidnapping Grimes’ child or offering a horse for a handjob or union-busting or his DOGE grift—seemed to be in service of money, power, and fame.

But his vision is much darker.
Mars is a misdirection—every scientist has told Musk that while we can get people there, we cannot keep them alive there and there will never be a significant Mars colony (nor should there be).

Musk’s focus isn’t on taking over Mars but taking over Earth.

His secret war is against humanity itself.
When you read up on Yarvinism and TESCREALism, you suddenly realize that there’s an amount of wealth, power and fame one can achieve which—if it’s achieved by a man as bad as Elon Musk is—leads to nihilism, not vision. You find you need to do something horrible and audacious just to stay interested.
If you wonder why Musk keeps insanely trying to convince his Elongelicals that there are Extinctionists out there who want to destroy humanity—why would anyone want that?—it’s because every accusation is a confession: he and the TESCREALists are narcissistic transhumanists who want humanity to die.
These are far-right rich white male billionaires who want to rule forever over a techno-dystopia where they’re immortal and most of humanity has been wiped out or...well, I’m not going to say what they want to do because it’s scary and echoes (of all things) a Rick & Morty episode. See the TNR link.
The man about to become co-President of the United States is not just an enemy of America. He’s an enemy of humanity itself, under the guise—because of course—of being its Savior.

I cannot overstate how dangerous the coming months and years will be for all of us who believe in Truth and Life.

/fin