Elon Musks hässliches Verhalten hat sein Erbe zerstört

In a 2025 Fox News interview, Elon Musk was asked about what he hoped the history books would see as his legacy. The founder of SpaceX, and CEO of Tesla and social media platform X, pondered for a little while then explained he hoped he’d be seen as a man who “helped move civilisation forward”.

He has done that – that is undeniable – but the harsh reality is that the history books will instead dwell more on Musk’s failings and the harm he’s caused.

He and his followers will grouse that that’s because of a widespread bias against the entrepreneur, and say that’s exactly why it’s important that he has set up an alternative media ecosystem in the form of his [multi-billion-dollar takeover of Twitter (now X) ](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/ofcom-ban-x-uk-starmer-battle-musk-escalates-4161675?srsltid=AfmBOoqLRav5nXzQgt4Flte6vTdJJb4G7F9bdsF3lu7y3b0F3brsLaha&ico=in-line_link)and Grok, his AI chatbot. But this isn’t a hot take against a man many people disagree with. It’s a measured analysis of where he’s helped society – and how he’s undone that with culture war arguments and pushing his own, dangerous narratives on the world.

In an alternative universe, Musk would be remembered as the man who helped make electric vehicles feel normal, even aspirational, rather than a hair-shirt choice for early adopters. He also helped drag space exploration back from the realm of state vanity projects into something closer to a repeatable industrial capability: Nasa and a clutch of other national space agencies wouldn’t be able to get into orbit if it weren’t for Musk. He’d be praised as the man who brought Starlink satellite internet to Ukraine to keep it online against Russian meddling, and helped Iranian revolutionaries communicate amid internet shutdowns. Those achievements shift what societies see as possible – and what they demand.

Except Musk has made it close to impossible to separate those achievements from his own increasingly erratic public persona. He built a stage, then insisted on being the main character in the spotlight on it. The issue was never that he wanted attention. It was that he seems to need it and crave it, to the point that every success has to be filtered through his voice and every criticism treated as a personal affront.

His takeover of X gave him power over [how reality is negotiated in public](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/britain-far-right-elon-musk-4094429?srsltid=AfmBOoqGwdrVCWEAfd5SbYfScpVUpuTY-fCApD0MlObyHanDHKOBwae4&ico=in-line_link), and he’s chosen to use it in the worst possible ways. It’s amplified racists and bigots, and most recently enabled the mass sexual harassment of 51 per cent of the population by allowing Grok to create sexualised images of women and girls, then he’s reacted with little more than a shrug until concerted public pressure caused him to correct course – though by then, the damage was done. [Nearly two in three Britons](https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyougov.co.uk%2Ftopics%2Feconomy%2Fexplore%2Fpublic_figure%2FElon_Musk&data=05%7C02%7CAimee.Meade%40theipaper.com%7Cf6be417006fd4eed89b608de5d9449bf%7C0f3a4c644dc54a768d4152d85ca158a5%7C0%7C0%7C639051088667348712%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=il2f1ivibGgg%2FcNAVyRnCXDKn1G9KLwYHzH%2BhyE0rnk%3D&reserved=0) say they dislike him.

It’s not that Musk invented online nastiness. But he has dragged it into the mainstream and pushed onwards its worst instincts by shaping them from the top. In Musk’s world snark is a tool of governance and trolling is leadership. Pile-ons are fine, and damn the consequences. By owning the “de facto public town square”, as he described Twitter before he bought it and turned it ugly, he is poisoning public discourse and harming trust.

He was totally set to be a good Icon, but then he showed his nazi pedo side.