Twitter CEO Elon Musk said during an interview with Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time” this week that the so-called “woke mind virus” was a threat to humanity because it stifles free speech and is fundamentally anti-meritocratic.
The subject came up during a 21-minute interview on the show when Maher said that one of the “big civilizational issues” that Musk seems to be taking on is wokeness.
“You have talked about this woke mind virus in really apocalyptic terms,” Maher said. “You should explain why you don’t think it’s hyperbole to say things like ‘it’s pushing civilization towards suicide.'”
“First of all, what is the woke mind virus?” he asked. “And if we don’t deal with this, nothing else can get done. Tell me why you think that?”
Musk said that it was important to be “very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that results in the suppression of free speech.”
“So, you know, those are two of the aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are dangerous, is that it’s often anti-meritocratic,” he said. “You can’t question things. Even the questioning is bad.”
Musk emphasized that “free speech is actually extremely important” and that it was “bizarre” that the political Left went from being pro-free speech to now advocating censorship.
“I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment,” he said. “There’s a reason for the First Amendment. The First Amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely, and where saying certain things would get you thrown into prison. And they were like, well, ‘we don’t want that here’. And by the way, in many parts of the world, including parts of the world that people might think are relatively similar to the United States, the speech laws are draconian.”
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“I really can’t emphasize this enough, we must protect free speech,” he added. “And free speech only matters, it’s only relevant when it’s someone you don’t like saying something don’t like, because obviously, speech that you like is easy. So it’s, and it’s, the thing about censorship is that for those who would advocate it, just remember at some point that will return on you.”
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