Elon Musk’s renewed embrace of race rhetoric fuels the New Right’s obsession
After a brief fallout with MAGA supporters, Elon Musk increased his public focus on race, prompting the right-wing to welcome him back.
Elon Musk fell out of favor with the MAGA movement after acknowledging the contributions of foreign workers and clashing with Donald Trump over fiscal legislation, even accusing the former president of sabotaging the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Within months, Musk began posting daily about race, a pattern one outlet identified as a three-fold increase compared with the prior two years. Right-leaning users on X lauded his rhetoric, and Musk later endorsed the film “Citizen Vigilante,” which depicts the killing of immigrants, echoing language from the white-supremacist novel The Turner Diaries.
The author, a former MAGA adherent and Claremont Institute fellow, contends that the New Right’s primary unifying force is racial conflict, a dynamic that has revived formerly fringe white-nationalist ideas into mainstream GOP discourse. Historical references to the Southern Strategy and recent examples such as Scott Greer’s rehiring illustrate how race has become a central political weapon. The analysis concludes that this obsession limits any chance of internal GOP reform and underscores the need for a broader Democratic coalition.
Why it matters
It shows how race has become the core rallying point for the modern right, shaping political alliances and public discourse.
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