It's wrong to use Elon to get away with anti-Afrikaner bigotry

Elon Musk is an oligarch who is undermining the institutions of the United States in a grotesque and unacceptable fashion. He is someone that liberals should oppose. But this opposition should not veer into bigotry. In the last few months, Reddit has been filled with comments disparaging Elon on the basis of his race and ethnicity. These are wrong on so many levels that it is unbelievable, and discredits legitimate criticism of Musk.

First and foremost, no individual should be judged on the basis of their group membership and no group should be judged by the action of one individual. That applies to White people just as much as any other group. The idea that Elon does what he does because he is a White South African or Afrikaner is wrong. In fact, it is racist. And the broad insults lobbied against those groups under the banner of insulting Musk are wrong. Racism is bad.

Clever historical observations and witty jokes are one thing. But people repeatedly calling for Elon, an American citizen, to be deported "back to Africa" and asking "what you would expect of an Afrikaner" is wrong. They would sound disgusting if Elon was Black. They are equally disgusting even though he is White.

Secondly, and more embarassingly, Elon Musk is literally not an Afrikaner. There are two major White ethnic groups in South Africa: English and Afrikaner. Elon is English.

Thirdly, if you really really do want to play the game of ethnic and ancestral guilt, then you should know that on his mother's side, Elon is from North America. His mother was born in Canada, and her father was born in the United States but raised in Canada. If you really feel that Elon's present beliefs must be attributed to his ancestry, then you are probably better off blaming it on his North American ancestors than his South African ones. Elon's dad was a member of the Progressive Party, which opposed Apartheid in South Africa. Elon's grandfather on the other hand...

In 1950, he emigrated with his family to South Africa and settled in the capital Pretoria, where he opened a chiropractic clinic. He served as secretary of the South African Chiropractors Association (SACA) from 1952 to 1959, after which he was its president until 1969.

Haldeman was a supporter of South Africa's apartheid policies and the ruling National Party of South Africa, telling a reporter for the extremist Die Transvaler newspaper, a tool of the Nazis in South Africa during World War II: “Instead of the Government’s attitude keeping me out of South Africa, it had precisely the opposite effect—it encouraged me to come and settle here”.[2] In 1951, he wrote an article about South Africa for the Saskatchewan newspaper, the Regina Leader-Post, defending apartheid and writing of Black South Africans: “The natives are very primitive and must not be taken seriously... Some are quite clever in a routine job, but the best of them cannot assume responsibility and will abuse authority. The present government of South Africa knows how to handle the native question.”

Elon's American-Canadian grandfather was a member of the Technocracy movement, which was an American and Canadian movement that was illegal in Canada. Their beliefs:

Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population of this continent. For the first time in human history it will be done as a scientific, technical, engineering problem. There will be no place for Politics or Politicians, Finance or Financiers, Rackets or Racketeers. Technocracy states that this method of operating the social mechanism of the North American Continent is now mandatory because we have passed from a state of actual scarcity into the present status of potential abundance in which we are now held to an artificial scarcity forced upon us in order to continue a Price System which can distribute goods only by means of a medium of exchange. Technocracy states that price and abundance are incompatible; the greater the abundance the smaller the price. In a real abundance there can be no price at all. Only by abandoning the interfering price control and substituting a scientific method of production and distribution can an abundance be achieved. Technocracy will distribute by means of a certificate of distribution available to every citizen from birth to death. The Technate will encompass the entire American Continent from Panama to the North Pole because the natural resources and the natural boundary of this area make it an independent, self-sustaining geographical unit.

Wikipedia also says they had issues with anti-semitism. Elon's grandfather didn't become a racist when he got to South Africa. He was a homegrown American-Canadian racist who moved to South Africa as a result.

If you really want to draw some kind of familiar inheritance story for Elon Musk, this is obviously it. Elon hates his father. He left South Africa very young, in part because he didn't want to serve in the Apartheid army under conscription. He moved to Canada and was educated there and in the United States. He clearly identifies more with his mother and her side of the family.

Elon is as much an ethnic White North American as he is White South African. The politically problematic parts of his family are on his North American side, much less so his South African side. And he identifies very little with South Africa and very much with North America. If you really want to play ethnic politics, Elon is your guy. Maybe there is a case to be made about Elon's heritage. But if you do make that case, it doesn't go back to the Afrikaners.

I don't understand why so many White Americans are enjoying dunking on Afrikaners and White South Africans in general. The irony is, of course, that even if White South Africans are considered "the most racist people in the world", to quote Steve Bannon, White Americans are probably the second worst amongst White people and people of European heritage.

(WASP) White Americans and White South Africans share the same ethnic heritage - British and Dutch at their founding. Both societies were built by the descendents of settler colonists with substantial populations of religious extremists. Both peoples committed genocide, engaged in slavery and created segregated Apartheid societies. Even if you think it matters that Afrikaners dismantled their segregationist state forty or fifty years after White Americans did, you still have to remember that South African Apartheid endured in part because of the support of the United States itself. You point a finger and three point back at you.

Rather than engage in the detailed study of bloodlines and dredging up ethnic history to figure out "who is worse", we should simply resolve to judge each person on their own merit. Elon is a deeply flawed person all on his own. Judge him for that.

Afrikaners have a history of violence and human rights violations as do almost all groups of people. As of 1994, they are active participants of a flawed but rapidly consolidating liberal democracy, with equal rights for all which they helped to build. Even during Apartheid, there were Afrikaners who did the right thing and resisted it, from Sailor Malan to Bram Fischer to Breyten Breytenbach to Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. And even amongst those who were less progressive, their contributions to global politics are still important - Jan Smuts is basically the founder of the international system. "Afrikaners bad" is a braindead take for anyone who wants to make any statement about 20th century politics. And it's hypocritical when White Americans do it in particular. This applies to White South Africans as a whole too. There's more to them than just Apartheid.

For their achievements in the past, their cooperation in the democratic transition, and their real efforts to move beyond the injustices of the past, Afrikaners deserve more than to be judged on the account of a man who is literally not even an Afrikaner.

NB: I also made one or two jokes about Elon being the reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes and a representative of my country's penchant for corruption. But the tone that has evolved around Elon's heritage makes me now regret those jokes as well. Let's all do better™️.