Speaker 1: Pushkin ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Give it up for the greatest capitalists in the history
Speaker 2: of the United States of America.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: In October twenty twenty four, nine days before the US
Speaker 1: presidential election, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, took to
Speaker 1: the stage at a rally for Donald Trump in New
Speaker 1: York City. He wore black jeans, a black T shirt,
Speaker 1: black blazer, and a black baseball hat. Had red in
Speaker 1: dark gray embroidery Make America great Again.
Speaker 4: I'm not just maga, I'm doc Gothic maga.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, an American oligarch and entrepreneurial genius, had stood
Speaker 1: on many stages before he sees the podium at Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden. Ted talks, Tesla product rollouts, SpaceX launch pads.
Speaker 1: He also owns a stage a platform ever since he
Speaker 1: bought Twitter and renamed it x, and he owns a
Speaker 1: sizable portion of the global communications infrastructure through his satellite
Speaker 1: company Starlink. But this Madison Square Garden gig was part
Speaker 1: of a different endeavor. Entirely, Musk spent a staggering amount
Speaker 1: of money to help get Trump and Republicans elected. The
Speaker 1: world's richest man, spent more than a quarter of a
Speaker 1: billion dollars on the return to power of the world's
Speaker 1: most powerful man, like some kind of superman or supervillain.
Speaker 1: Returning to the White House, Trump promised to bring Musk
Speaker 1: with him. You guys are awesome, And once Musk got
Speaker 1: a taste for this kind of thing, he began to
Speaker 1: involve himself in politics of other nations, in Germany, in
Speaker 1: the UK. What does Musk's reinvention of himself as a
Speaker 1: king maker mean for the United States and for the world.
Speaker 1: How long will it last? No one knows what's going
Speaker 1: to happen next, But what happened before in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: before Musk joined forces with Trump, before Musk bought Twitter,
Speaker 1: before Musk was in the news every day, He was
Speaker 1: in the news every other day, with headlines that sounded
Speaker 1: ripped from science fiction super fast underground trains, rockets to
Speaker 1: Mars brain control implants. I made a BBC series in
Speaker 1: which I tried to explain Musk by way of the
Speaker 1: science fiction he grew up with, tales of superheroes with
Speaker 1: origin stories that seemed to influence how he understands his
Speaker 1: own life. But so much has happened since then that
Speaker 1: we decided to update that series from four years ago,
Speaker 1: rename it, and add new episodes because Musk keeps changing,
Speaker 1: and so does his origin story. Welcome to X Man,
Speaker 1: The Elon Musk Origin Story. I'm Jill Lapour. I'm a
Speaker 1: professor of history and law at Harvard. I'm interested in
Speaker 1: the past Musk. He's interested in the future.
Speaker 5: The future is gonna be amazing or is he?
Speaker 1: Is Musk really a futurist or is he maybe an
Speaker 1: antique a throwback. I don't mean the retro vibe of
Speaker 1: the amazing extraordinary gadgets, the Tesla cyber trucks and Starlink
Speaker 1: satellites and SpaceX rockets. I mean Musk's ideas about politics
Speaker 1: and economics. I mean Muskism, extravagant extreme capitalism, a political
Speaker 1: economy with origins in the universe of comic books and
Speaker 1: science fiction that has fired Musk's imagination since he was
Speaker 1: a boy. In this series, I'm going to blast off
Speaker 1: not to the future, but to the past. Part of
Speaker 1: Musk's stick is that he's still boyish bit of a lad.
Speaker 1: Plays video games, has smoked pot, watches superhero movies, talks
Speaker 1: about testosterone.
Speaker 3: Word has it.
Speaker 2: Billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg possibly have now formally
Speaker 2: agreed to a cage match face off.
Speaker 1: He once changed his name on X to Kechius Maximus,
Speaker 1: which is a joke about on the one hand, the
Speaker 1: movie Gladiator and on the other hand, a cartoon frog
Speaker 1: named Pepe. Musk does this kind of thing so often
Speaker 1: people barely even notice it anymore. The tech bro va
Speaker 1: men will be boys, Boys will be gladiators. Trump has
Speaker 1: gotten into this too, tweeting during the campaign a picture
Speaker 1: of himself as Superman with J. D. Vance as his
Speaker 1: Batman and Musk as Cyborg. Why in grown men is
Speaker 1: this kind of thing? Okay, honestly, it's a little bewildering. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the stories Musk likes and the characters he identifies with matter.
Speaker 1: He used to talk a lot about The Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 1: to the Galaxy. Then he used to think of himself
Speaker 1: as Tony Stark, a do gooding superhero from the Marvel comics.
Speaker 1: Musk has always loved the Dark Night movies, which are awesome.
Speaker 1: About two years ago, he likened himself to Batman, a brooding, angry,
Speaker 1: fabulously wealthy vigilante. After he bought Twitter, he posted a
Speaker 1: drawing of the dark Night standing on top of a
Speaker 1: Gothic church, watching over Gotham, Musk wrote some nights online,
Speaker 1: a lot of people started arguing about whether or not
Speaker 1: Musk is a real life Bruce Wayne, And then two
Speaker 1: when the cyber truck came out, people said, it looked
Speaker 1: like the batmobile. Is that Batman?
Speaker 6: Unless you're trying to be Batman?
Speaker 1: Why isn't that out of my crown? I happen to
Speaker 1: be pretty interested in Batman. I once wrote a book
Speaker 1: called The Secret History of Wonder Woman. So this episode
Speaker 1: I want to look at the original Batman to see
Speaker 1: what he tells us about Elon Musk. Batman made his
Speaker 1: debut in the nineteen thirties, and fairly soon he was
Speaker 1: on the radio.
Speaker 7: The whole masked figure wearing a bright blue hood and
Speaker 7: cape approaches Listen.
Speaker 1: It turns out that a whole lot of Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: vision for the future, his ideas about politics and governments
Speaker 1: and economics, come from the nineteen thirties, nearly a century ago.
Speaker 1: They're old ideas, and a lot of them I think
Speaker 1: are failed ideas, but they're also bound up with Batman.
Speaker 1: That Dark Knight, a guy dark Maga really likes to
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 4: It's like Dark Knight, like the friggant joker is in charge.
Speaker 4: The criminals run free and the citizens are arrested.
Speaker 1: That's Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular
Speaker 1: podcast in the US. They're talking about life and Democrat
Speaker 1: run New York City and complaining about how authorities in
Speaker 1: New York had seized and killed some guy's pet squirrel.
Speaker 4: Still pretty suke about the freaking squirrel thing. It's like, meanwhile,
Speaker 4: you know, violent falons are running free?
Speaker 1: Is a joker, It's the Joker, Batman's arch nemesis, a madman,
Speaker 1: a sadist, an anarchist. It's Mayhem? And who can save
Speaker 1: the people of Gotham? If Elon Musk were Batman, what
Speaker 1: would he intend to answer that question? I want to
Speaker 1: go back to that night at Madison Square Garden, smack
Speaker 1: in the middle of Gotham, nine days before the election.
Speaker 1: The arena was sold out. Twenty thousand seats were filled
Speaker 1: with Trump supporters dressed in red, white and blue, caring
Speaker 1: signs that read Fight, Fight, Fight, and Trump can Fix It.
Speaker 1: They had a lot to celebrate Trump was making the
Speaker 1: most impressive comeback in American political history. Critics had been
Speaker 1: calling Trump a fascist Hulk Hogan, the flamboyant former wrestler,
Speaker 1: had an answer to that.
Speaker 8: This is Donald Trump's house, brother Ilesino staking Nazis in here.
Speaker 1: Musk didn't speak for long. Mainly he rallied Trump's troops.
Speaker 4: USA, USA, USA.
Speaker 1: And then Donald Trump. In a preview of his inauguration
Speaker 1: rally promised to usher in a new golden age.
Speaker 8: I'm here today with a message of hope for all Americans.
Speaker 1: Trump spoke for more than an hour. He mocked journalists,
Speaker 1: talked about fake news, made a promise about immigration.
Speaker 8: On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program
Speaker 8: in American history.
Speaker 3: But to get the criminals out, I.
Speaker 8: Will rescue every city in town that has been invaded.
Speaker 1: In concorde, he denounced in doctrination, we.
Speaker 8: Will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out.
Speaker 9: Of our school.
Speaker 1: And he pledged himself to a policy of isolationism.
Speaker 8: It's called America First.
Speaker 1: When Trump finished, a crooner in a black tux sang Sinatra,
Speaker 1: but it was a big, bold, glamy, star studded night
Speaker 1: in Gotham with a lot of talk about crime, and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk dressed as if he were Batman on a
Speaker 1: casual Friday. But it all reminded me of a very
Speaker 1: different night at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 10: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow American American patriots. I'm sure I
Speaker 10: do not come before you tonight as a complete strange shot.
Speaker 10: You all have heard of me through a Jewish control press.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, the German American bund An organization
Speaker 1: of American Nazis held a sold out rally in Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden. They wore swastikas as armbands, raised their arms
Speaker 1: to Hyle Hitler, and in front of a giant portrait
Speaker 1: of George Washington, celebrated him as America's first fascist. Here's
Speaker 1: Fritz Kuhnn, the bund Feurer, warning about a Jewish conspiracy
Speaker 1: against the United States.
Speaker 2: Unless you Aliens nor the ten Christians wigap and speak
Speaker 2: out to the men that our go women, how be
Speaker 2: returned to the American people who founded it.
Speaker 1: These American Nazis were searching for someone to blame.
Speaker 5: The people far and wide feel that somebody must have
Speaker 5: fallen down.
Speaker 4: On the job.
Speaker 1: They were denouncing the press.
Speaker 5: The whole country now must see that there is no
Speaker 5: free radio for white.
Speaker 1: Men campaigning to cut government spending.
Speaker 5: Who is not familiar with a billion dollar yardstick that
Speaker 5: is required to measure this stupendous total of our national
Speaker 5: public debt.
Speaker 1: They're demonizing immigrants.
Speaker 7: Great bloods of tears were a few hundred thousand job
Speaker 7: taking so called poor Jewish refugees.
Speaker 1: And here's Fritzkun again. They were fighting in doctrination weed
Speaker 1: I see, will.
Speaker 7: Not you when called upon the gate ed will law
Speaker 7: all support in our power in the fire to break
Speaker 7: the trip and the power size ten of Jewish communism
Speaker 7: in our schools, our university is our very homes.
Speaker 1: History often sounds like a broken record, but it would
Speaker 1: be easy to make too much of the echoes between
Speaker 1: these two Madison Square Garden rallies, separated by decades, the
Speaker 1: whole calling people Nazis because you disagree with them. I'm
Speaker 1: sick of it, You're sick of it. So let me
Speaker 1: be clear. The nearly eighty million Americans who voted for
Speaker 1: Trump in twenty twenty four were sick of Democrats, unhappy
Speaker 1: about inflation, annoyed by progressive purity crusades and unimpressed by
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, I get at Hull Kogan. I don't see
Speaker 1: no stinking Nazis here. Still. Look, I'm a historian, and
Speaker 1: there is history here. Fascism has a history, and it
Speaker 1: casts a very long shadow. And there's another, very particular
Speaker 1: reason to spend a little time thinking about the year
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. Right after that Boone rally, maybe even
Speaker 1: the very next day, in an office building just a
Speaker 1: few blocks away, and out of the same political tensions,
Speaker 1: the rise of fascism, the fear of fascism, some guys
Speaker 1: at a little New York comic book publishing house decided
Speaker 1: to create a new superhero Atman.
Speaker 3: What are you doing here?
Speaker 1: I enter the caped crusader. Superman had only just made
Speaker 1: his debut, a wild success. Pretty soon he was on
Speaker 1: the radio.
Speaker 5: I still on a bullet.
Speaker 1: It took the writers a few weeks to come up
Speaker 1: with a new superhero, but he made his debut that
Speaker 1: spring nineteen thirty nine, and now it is my brand.
Speaker 3: Bruce Wayne of a wide.
Speaker 1: Known as the Batman. Superman comes from another planet. Batman's
Speaker 1: just a guy with a cape, but he does have
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Bruce Wayne is a millionaire head
Speaker 1: of Wayne Enterprises. He's also pretty nifty with a pistol,
Speaker 1: which soon became a problem. At the time, the publishers
Speaker 1: of comic books were taking a lot of heat for
Speaker 1: glorifying violence. The month that Batman made his debut, the
Speaker 1: US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of two new firearms
Speaker 1: laws that, among other things, outlawed machine guns. Then that
Speaker 1: September Hitler advanced.
Speaker 10: Germany has invaded Poland.
Speaker 7: France has decreed general mobilization and martial law.
Speaker 1: Europe was going to war and Americans were sick of guns.
Speaker 1: The publisher of DC Comics told the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: Batman to lay off the guns. Batman on mister Cannon,
Speaker 1: and I'm afraid we'll never see him again. Well, only
Speaker 1: the original Batman was gone, replaced with a new one.
Speaker 1: This Batman hates guns, and you know what, he also
Speaker 1: hates fascists. Right after Germany invaded Poland, Batman got an
Speaker 1: origin story. As a kid, Bruce Wayne had watched his
Speaker 1: parents get gunned down on the streets, and so now
Speaker 1: here he was in nineteen thirty nine fighting an organization
Speaker 1: of American fascists, a thinly disguised American bund known as
Speaker 1: the Scarlet Horde.
Speaker 3: I must stop the Scarlet Hoard before they become dictators
Speaker 3: of the world.
Speaker 1: At the time and over the next few years, critics
Speaker 1: of the comics would argue that they glorified strong men.
Speaker 1: Time Magazine published a story called are Comics Fascist? To
Speaker 1: defeat the argument that comics were too violent? Batman gave
Speaker 1: up his gun. To defeat the argument that comics were fascist.
Speaker 1: Batman took on this new enemy, the Scarlet Horde.
Speaker 6: American nazis Hi Karl Kruger will be dictatle of the world.
Speaker 1: The Scarlet Hords leader is pretty recognizably Fritz Kuhn, the
Speaker 1: leader of the Bund, America's top Nazi.
Speaker 7: Tell me, is our army ready, two thousand strong, waiting
Speaker 7: for your command.
Speaker 1: Batman defeats him, and without a gun, saves Gotham from fascism.
Speaker 1: During the twenty twenty four election, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about fascism in the United States.
Speaker 9: Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump
Speaker 9: is a fascist?
Speaker 10: Yes?
Speaker 1: I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 8: Joe is surrounded by fascists surround the ovalas I've said.
Speaker 1: It before, but I'll say it again. Everyone's tired of
Speaker 1: everyone calling everyone else a fascist. But with everything that's
Speaker 1: going on the rise of far right parties across Europe,
Speaker 1: including one in Germany endorsed by Elon Musk, I can't
Speaker 1: not talk about fascism, and Batman's whole origin story is
Speaker 1: bound up with fascism. Every time Musk is compared to Batman,
Speaker 1: it raises an old question, is Batman fighting fascism? Where
Speaker 1: is Batman somehow himself a fascist? That was actually a
Speaker 1: question in the nineteen thirties, and over the last decades
Speaker 1: it's been a question again ever since a trilogy of
Speaker 1: Dark Night films came out, directed by Christopher Nolan, the
Speaker 1: movies that shaped Musk's view of Batman.
Speaker 6: I did think that there is a strong fascist current,
Speaker 6: certainly in the look and mood and the sort of
Speaker 6: just Wagnerian atmosphere of those movies.
Speaker 1: That's Ao Scott, longtime critic from the New York Times,
Speaker 1: talking about those Nolan films from Warner Brothers Pictures, the
Speaker 1: very very dark Dark Night series. It starts with Batman
Speaker 1: begins in two thousand and five.
Speaker 8: What are you?
Speaker 6: I'm Batman?
Speaker 1: Nolan's films brought forward in time the fascist themes and
Speaker 1: concerns of the original nineteen thirties Batman.
Speaker 6: There is a very not entirely coherent, but strongly kind
Speaker 6: of authoritarian political bent, and one that takes some interesting forms.
Speaker 1: A lot of characters in these movies say a version
Speaker 1: of democracy has failed. We need a strong man. Take
Speaker 1: this scene from the two thousand and eight film The
Speaker 1: Dark Night.
Speaker 9: When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would
Speaker 9: suspend democracy in a point one man to protect the city,
Speaker 9: and it wasn't considered an honor, it was considered a
Speaker 9: public service.
Speaker 6: Harvey.
Speaker 1: The last man that they appointed to protect the republic
Speaker 1: was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.
Speaker 9: Okay, fine, you either die a hero or you live
Speaker 9: long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Speaker 6: The people need a he. The people need here that
Speaker 6: the people can't take care of themselves. That in a way,
Speaker 6: the sort of the democratic institutions that might have met
Speaker 6: the people's needs and kept them safe have failed, and
Speaker 6: what they need is a strong figure from outside of
Speaker 6: the political system. There's no sense of any kind of
Speaker 6: democratic participation in the Batman world.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, No, they're all dupes. Everybody's a dupe.
Speaker 1: Every Gothamite is a dupe, right Aoscott has a theory that,
Speaker 1: unlike the Dark Knight films, the Marvel Universe films, Iron Man,
Speaker 1: Captain America, ant Man, the Avengers, a team of do gooders,
Speaker 1: these films represent an Obama Biden view of the world.
Speaker 6: He says, It's just like this kind of weird global
Speaker 6: committee of superheroes who are going to go around solving problems,
Speaker 6: who put their own kind of personal feelings and motives
Speaker 6: and vendettas aside to kind of to work for the
Speaker 6: common good in a way that like a committee of
Speaker 6: the in Brussels might try to solve supply chain issues.
Speaker 6: That's a bureaucratic, technocratic idea of heroism.
Speaker 1: But the Dark Knight films, which come not from Marvel
Speaker 1: but from DC, those movies are about the failure of
Speaker 1: Obama Biden politics, the failure of the liberal democratic state,
Speaker 1: the failure of liberalism itself. And this is true most
Speaker 1: of all of Batman.
Speaker 6: His own personal story, his own kind of grievance and grief,
Speaker 6: gets mapped on to the political situation and becomes kind
Speaker 6: of evidence of just the rottenness and untenability and corruption.
Speaker 6: So he doesn't assume power, but he represents a non democratic,
Speaker 6: non state, extra legal, extra judicial form of power.
Speaker 1: Nolan's Gotham is how the right understands San Francisco, Go
Speaker 1: or Portlands seeah, Right, it's always a nighttime in Gotham,
Speaker 1: people marching to their doom, being beaten up on the streets, homeless, bedraggled.
Speaker 1: Because in all of the DC movies, right, Gotham is America.
Speaker 6: Right, there's predators and prey, and then there are some
Speaker 6: people who might, for their own reasons or motives, you know,
Speaker 6: protect some of the prey from the from the predators.
Speaker 6: But there is strength and there is power, and to
Speaker 6: be a hero, to be kind of righteous, is to
Speaker 6: understand that and to be able to use it.
Speaker 1: For Scott, this view is maybe Musk's view of Twitter,
Speaker 1: of politics of everything.
Speaker 6: So you know, you could see like getting rid of
Speaker 6: content moderate sort of opening up Twitter to what he
Speaker 6: likes to call free speech, is a way of saying, look,
Speaker 6: you know, stop kidding yourself that people are going to
Speaker 6: come here and be nice and behave themselves. Nobody does that.
Speaker 6: Nobody believes that we'd be better off if we got
Speaker 6: rid of the idea that people.
Speaker 1: Would Batman might have given up guns.
Speaker 10: No guns, no killing.
Speaker 1: Where's the fun in that? But deranged Dark Knight fans
Speaker 1: have used guns, and they have killed. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old PhD student named James Holmes
Speaker 1: went to a showing of a Batman movie at a
Speaker 1: theater in Colorado.
Speaker 3: As though re enacting a scene from a Dark Knight comic.
Speaker 3: Witnesses say Holmes fired into the air and then started
Speaker 3: shooting into the crowd.
Speaker 1: He killed twelve people. At his apartment, police found more
Speaker 1: guns and Batman masks.
Speaker 3: Holmes immediately surrendered. Police observed his hair was dyed orange.
Speaker 3: He told them I am the joker.
Speaker 1: The Dark Knight might not have guns. But in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, campaigning for Donald Trump, Elon Musk Dark Maga
Speaker 1: became an advocate for an armed citizenry.
Speaker 4: The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.
Speaker 4: They want to take away your right to bear arms.
Speaker 1: He'd begun defending the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
Speaker 4: Free speech is the bedrock of democracy. That's why it's
Speaker 4: the first Amendment and the second Amendment is there to
Speaker 4: ensure that we have the First Amendment Free speech.
Speaker 1: Musk seem to be saying must be defended if necessary
Speaker 1: by force. Some people think of Elon Musk as a superhero.
Speaker 1: Some people think of him as a super villain trying
Speaker 1: to take over the whole planet with a style that
Speaker 1: comes from the movies.
Speaker 6: You can have ambition without limits, and you can do
Speaker 6: whatever you want. There's a kind of freedom and glee,
Speaker 6: and like, I'll say anything to anyone, I'll do anything.
Speaker 6: I'll say, you know, we're going to invade Greenland. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna mess with everybody's elections. Just this is the behavior
Speaker 6: that we've seen before in movies.
Speaker 1: Aoscott has another theory, a theory about how, in both
Speaker 1: the movies and in American politics, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have started rooting for politicians of all political stripes who
Speaker 1: seemed to style themselves as the bad guys. You wrote
Speaker 1: this long piece called the Supervillain is the Hero Now
Speaker 1: and it had a tagline how Americans learned to root
Speaker 1: for the dark side from the Joker and Wicked to
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. So how did they?
Speaker 6: I mean, the way the piece came about was sort
Speaker 6: of just noticing that something had shifted, and Musk was
Speaker 6: an important case study that he and Trump, the way
Speaker 6: that they were acting, the sort of transgressive, aggressive energy
Speaker 6: that they were projecting and that their followers seemed to love,
Speaker 6: seemed like a supervillain vibe. You could say, and I
Speaker 6: didn't mean that people who don't like them think of
Speaker 6: them as supervillains, you know, because they're so bad, but
Speaker 6: rather that the people who do like them are kind
Speaker 6: of intrigued and seduced and excited by the villainy.
Speaker 1: This is the logic of the Dark Night movies. Batman
Speaker 1: is the bad man, but you should root for him.
Speaker 1: Don't trust the state, liberalism democracy. You need Batman, the
Speaker 1: brooding vigilante and his batmobile, a character who's so unhinged
Speaker 1: and tormented that he essentially collapses into his arch nemesis,
Speaker 1: the Joker. Late last year, a delusional version of this
Speaker 1: plot took form in the mind of a decorated American serviceman.
Speaker 1: He rented a Tesla cyber truck and texted his girlfriend
Speaker 1: that driving it made him feel like Batman. He parked
Speaker 1: it in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: and shot himself in the head. Just before a bomb
Speaker 1: that he'd planted blew up. He loved a note saying
Speaker 1: only Trump and Musk can save America. After the election,
Speaker 1: in his victory speech, Trump called his comeback the greatest
Speaker 1: political movement of all time. He credited Musk.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, we have a new star.
Speaker 1: Trump had a lot of people to think, but the
Speaker 1: person he talked about the longest was his own personal Batman.
Speaker 3: The star is born Elan.
Speaker 1: Trump told the story of watching a SpaceX rocket land
Speaker 1: an amazing feat of engineering. Said he'd called Musk afterward.
Speaker 3: I said, that's why I love you, Elon.
Speaker 1: That's grab He talked about calling On Musk the way
Speaker 1: Gotham's police commissioner uses the bat signal.
Speaker 8: I said, Elon, you have something called starlink? Is that right?
Speaker 3: He had that there so fast, it was incredible.
Speaker 8: What is the characters especial guy as a super genius,
Speaker 8: we have to.
Speaker 1: Bring Elon Musk, the Dark Knight, head of Wayne enterprises
Speaker 1: a super intelligence and quite possibly the only person on
Speaker 1: the planet more powerful than the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: Batman is the creation of a world that witnessed the
Speaker 1: rise of fascism. The way I read it and you
Speaker 1: can read it differently. Whatever Batman intends, he can't ever
Speaker 1: really save Gotham because as a vigilante, Batman is part
Speaker 1: of what went wrong with Gotham. But Batman's only one
Speaker 1: of Muskism's touchstones. What came before the Dark Knight and
Speaker 1: the rise of Dark Maga. To answer that question, we've
Speaker 1: got to go back to the beginning of Elon Musk's life, when,
Speaker 1: as a boy in South Africa under apartheid, he read
Speaker 1: The Hitchaker's Guide to the Galaxy had discovered an origin story.
Speaker 1: That's the next time on x Man