“When something is important enough, you do it even when the odds are not in your favor.”
—Elon Musk
January 21, 2025— Day 1: Trump the 2nd dawns on Wall Street.
The indexes are euphoric: The S&P, Nasdaq and Dow are already up 2% year-to-date.
Hopes are high and rising. Traders went to bed giddy last night with Katamine dreams. After all, an AI nirvana, domestic deregulation and energy independence await.
And, God saved Trump to make America great again. Trump said so himself.
What could go wrong?
The progressives are hard at work trying to figure that out.
This morning, we ourselves awoke to a curious meme in the inbox.
Inspired by a screengrab of Musk at a rally yesterday in Washington, accusations of fascism flooded social media, pundits have wheeled out Musk’s South African roots, and the next meme war begins:
Elon Musk fires off a strange salute at a Trump rally; a far corner of the internet convulses
By breakfast, Musk, along with Peter Thiel and David Sacks, were labeled the standard-bearer of a new-tech oligarchy with a secret authoritarian streak.
An early test meme designed to undermine the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the emerging titans of tech-driven finance… maybe this will stick like Russiagate.
Let’s think like an operative.
The basics: Musk’s upbringing in apartheid South Africa is well-documented. The same goes for Thiel’s time in Namibia and Sacks’ childhood in Johannesburg.
But connecting these men to the Nazification of Afrikaner nationalism in the 1930s is a stretch. So far, in fact, it makes conspiracy theories about lizard people seem grounded.
Musk left South Africa at 17 to dodge conscription, not peddle authoritarian ideologies. Thiel and Sacks were kids, too young to absorb apartheid’s machinery of oppression.
Their real formative years were spent in the libertarian fever swamps of Silicon Valley, not the far-right fringes of Pretoria.
So why claim Musk is a devotee of National Socialism now?
Better question: If not now, when?
Musk and his peers are spearheading a seismic shift in how government, finance, and technology intersect.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) isn’t just a clever name; it’s Musk’s brainchild, a federal initiative to slash bureaucratic waste and infuse governance with Silicon Valley’s disruptive ethos.
It’s the kind of idea that terrifies traditional power structures: a streamlined, tech-driven reimagining of how government works.
Add to that the rise of decentralized finance, AI, and Musk’s Mars dreams, and you have a new oligarchy poised to upend the stale, moribund status quo.
Enter the fascist-salute narrative.
If an aspiring community activist, ne’er-do-well trained in the Gramscian-Alinsky-Obama tradition, can tie Musk to authoritarian roots — even in the flimsiest way — “they” might just chip away at his credibility and, by extension, DOGE’s legitimacy.
It’s clever. A slide from the Russiagate deck: find a controversial figure, paint them as a danger to democracy, and let the outrage machine do the rest.
But wait, what’s good for the goose must be good for the gander, too:
Are Barack and Kamala National Socialists like Elon? Maybe socialists, yeah. Funny how they project, eh?
It’s certainly moved the news cycle away from Joe Biden’s literal last-mandons, which extended to Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Milley, the January 6 Committee members (and staff).
Not to mention, preemptively pardoning his entire family as if to prove what critics on the right have been accusing him of all along: he’s the don of a white-washed crime family.
In total, Biden pardoned over 8,000 – not just a record, but one that likely won’t be surpassed, even as Donald Trump pardoned non-violent offenders who entered the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
Musk, for his part, thrives on chaos. Is he a provocateur? Definitely. A fascist? Maybe, if you take the literal definition of collusion between state and industry.
But this trial meme isn’t really about Musk — it’s about who gets to write the future. We suspect AI will have a say in the matter since the LLMs are producing something closer to a collective history than we’ve ever been capable of.
The establishment made a sincere effort to censor disinformation, and for a time, it was successful.
Now, just because Zuckerberg and Bezos have embraced “free speech” and went to the inauguration luncheon doesn’t mean progressives are going to go away quietly. Here’s where the real work for DOGE begins.
Regards,
Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan
P.S. Did you see the sourpusses at the inauguration? The tabloid media had a field day with them. Everyone loves to kick a loser. (For the record, the Grey Swan position on Melania’s hat… [thumbs up emoji]… she wore the Erik Javitz design well.)
“Biden and his acolytes are only pissed and jealous of the people who actually earned their wealth honestly through what remains of free markets,” writes our correspondent CC. “That’s what makes his comment about ‘tech oligarchs’ so ironic, many of them are already in bed with govt.
“I don’t think he’s pissed about the companies who donated to his campaigns in exchange for political favors. But he probably hates the “oligarchs” who are against him, like Elon, who made his wealth without gov’t involvement, at least at first. I suppose we should just consider ourselves lucky he didn’t do even more damage like Kamala would. Eisenhower’s address came to mind, too. If he could see us now. I wonder if he’d be surprised at the scale of corruption.”
P.P.S. “The tone you present sometimes sounds like you feel Trump is going to be more trouble,” adds Paul M. from Colorado, “and as a VP of a Colorado Caucus, I believe D.C. is 99% a uniparty. “
Paul continues:
“There are mostly those who only have their own goals in view and not the People of America. When they voted to be able to vote on their own pay raises, we should have all known there is nothing sacred in our money-grubbing government. I believe that if the Founding Father’s rose from their graves today, the first thing they would do would be to organize an army to march on Washington and destroy everything that has been perverted from their original intent, and I would volunteer on day one. They never intended for Politics to be a career!
“I do believe that in his first term, Trump was naive, as most new to D.C. are, and did not have a clue as to the inner workings of US politics. I also believe he has a pure intent to really tear apart every self-serving part of the Beast, The Swamp, and protect and help the everyman and woman in this country.”
It’s true that Trump’s plan is audacious. We suspect the devil will be in the details as he roles out his cabinet, tariffs, border policy and deportations. The markets seem to like him, and that’ll likely continue.
We’ve been digging into Trump’s reference to President William McKinley and his executive order to restore the American name Mount McKinley to the nation’s largest peak in Alaska during the inaugural address.
McKinley, president from 1897-1901, was a populist with vast continental and territorial ambitions that included among other places Cuba and the Philippines. He, too, was a protectionist and a champion of both gerrymandering the vote to win elections and using tariffs to conduct less violent economic warfare.
McKinley was assassinated while still in office in 1901 on the eve of the great Progressive Era, which culminated in the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the Income Tax and the direct election of Senators in 1913. (Full details of the carnage that followed The Revolution of 1913 can be found in our book Empire of Debt.
The devil and the details do matter. As do your ideas, thoughts and criticisms. All will make the Grey Swan ever more vibrant and productive.
Send your comments to: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
