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Elon Musk [who promised to fire government employees en masse through DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency to be created by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump] has taken his animus to another level by cruelly singling out an individual federal employee named Ashley Thomas, who works a relatively obscure job at the US International Development Finance Corporation, to be harassed online.

[…]

Things kicked off when a popular right wing account ridiculed Thomas in a tweet, writing, “I don’t think the US Taxpayer should pay for the employment of a ‘Director of Climate Diversification (she/her).’”

Musk quoted the post with a dunk of his own, effectively inviting his hundreds of millions of followers to join in on harassing this random government worker.

“So many fake jobs,” Musk wrote in the tweet, which now has over 200,000 likes.

Seemingly, the billionaire culture warrior saw the word “diversification” and thought “diversity,” “DEI,” or some other form of “wokeness” — his favorite punching bags — as did his many followers.

“You aren’t getting rid of all the good jobs are you?” replied one of his courtiers. “I just applied for Chief Climate Gender Diversification Administrator.”

[…]

Aside from the harassment and the abhorrent massacring of comedy on display here, this is a truly bizarre job to single out.

The work of climate diversification, a subset of economic diversification, does not involve sitting around at the office and inventing pronouns or whatever Musk is imagining, but to develop strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on various sectors of the economy, especially agriculture. If certain food crops end up failing, for example, diversifying what we grow ensures that we don’t all literally starve. But Musk and his cronies clearly heard the job and thought it sounded like out-of-control wokeness.

[…]

At any rate, Musk clearly knows what he’s doing here by making that tweet. And if he doesn’t, he’s an idiot.

In the past, Musk disparaged Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth by more or less implying that he was pedophile, which his followers capitalized on by sending him death threats. So intense was the onslaught of hate that followed that Yoel felt forced to flee his home.

That, and this latest episode, are a testament to the power of even just one tossed-off post by Musk — who now tweets as if it’s his job.

  • j4p@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Perfect that the thing they are attacking her for is not even what she does. Just proves complying in advance is worthless, as Musk and his lackeys will attack for what they perceive to be true regardless of reality.

    • tardigrada@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, that’s what they said before the election. For example, leaked videos of two speeches Russell Vought delivered during events of a pro-Trump think tank led by Vought showed what they intend to do:

      “Put Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda – (archived)

      “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so."

      “We want to put them in trauma.”

      • ɔiƚoxɘup@beehaw.org
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        1 month ago

        This is why the Democrats lost, among other things.Always on the defensive, never on the offensive.

          • ɔiƚoxɘup@beehaw.org
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            1 month ago

            Yeah. This is part of why I think Harris only briefly had a progressive message during the election. I assume she was told to cut it out.

  • fossphi@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Absolutely sickening. Words can not express how much I loathe this prick

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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    1 month ago

    Additionally, it’s pretty ironic that Musk is picking a bone with the International Development Finance Corporation, because it was his buddy-slash-father-figure Donald Trump that created it.

  • bloup@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 month ago

    Its actually insane that the guy who owns the most valuable electric car company in the world would have a problem with climate diversification

  • Midnitte@beehaw.org
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    1 month ago

    I hope someone with resources back her up and take Musk to court - forcing him to pay and have a criminal record is the only recourse for getting that shitbag to stop.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      Virtually every single country on earth - “Nah mate you can’t have absolute free speech, it leads to people spouting hate and general disorder. Much better to be civilised”

      The US - “Well that’s just like, your opinion man. Hold my high fructose corn syrup”

    • xavier666@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I remember Musk getting away from calling someone a pedophile because his lawyers argued that he said ‘pedo’ and not pedophile because pedo is a south african slur. It will be hard now that he has even more power.

  • sunbather@beehaw.org
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    1 month ago

    We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week

    this guy is so utterly insane i dont know what to say. if this thing comes to fruition its gonna be a fun punching bag for literally every other country but this stuff is very sad to see, particularly as someone who wants to work in climate research/development in the future. the fact maybe one in 10000 of elons lackeys would do as much as a simple google to check what theyre even clowning on speaks volumes of how gross this shit is

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Can you say government full of children masquerading as adults? I swear the right see the most mild thing and immediately turn into crying babies (which is an insult to babies everywhere, so I apologize to the real babies).

  • Odys@beehaw.org
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    1 month ago

    X has become a cesspool. I’m afraid that this harassing will only increase.