Musk’s posts take a dark, inflammatory turn after Charlie Kirk killing

Elon Musk has rejected calls for national unity and has instead embraced increasingly inflammatory rhetoric in the days since Charlie Kirk was killed.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has rejected calls for national unity and has instead embraced increasingly inflammatory rhetoric in the days since conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has told his millions of online followers five times since Kirk’s death that they need to “fight or die” in what he describes as a deepening cultural and political conflict, even as most elected officials across the country have called for calm.

In addition to calling on his followers to fight, Musk has demanded the imprisonment of rapper Bobby Vylan for insulting Kirk after his death, called upon fellow tech executives to deplatform or fire other critics of Kirk and accused the media and educational institutions of “programming people to murder” — all part of a dark turn in Musk’s language since Kirk was shot.

Responding to the killing, a strain of activists and commentators on the far right has pushed for civil war, mass arrests or other forms of retribution.

At the White House, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vowed vengeance Monday, and Musk, although he has been out of the White House since May, has pushed in the same direction.