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The South African billionaires fomenting a global race war
From their apartheid-era childhoods to Trump’s inner circle, billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel bring a colonial ‘divide and rule’ mindset to the global far-right project, where the masses turn on each other, writes JOE GILL
Elon Musk speaks at Life Centre Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on October 19, 2024

THERE is a common origin story to the new far-right billionaire backers of Donald Trump: apartheid South Africa.

Both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel — the biggest tech billionaires backing Trump — grew up there, where their fathers grew rich, respectively, mining diamonds and uranium — sectors at the core of the apartheid economy.

“The centrality of South Africa for the far right and for neoliberals is quite extraordinary,” said Boston University’s Professor Quinn Slobodian in a recent interview. “For Musk himself the experience of growing up there with a very authoritarian dictatorial father was a very dystopian one, from the way his biographer recounts it.”

Thiel on Gaza

Fear of the billionaires

Elon’s plans for Britain

Staying top dog

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