Elon Musk was recently nominated by the market as the world's first trillionaire by dubious means, of course, but the title is here.
Musk on January 20, 2025 at the inauguration of the Trump presidency.
Elon Musk is repeatedly found using the logic of colonialism to communicate his extraterrestrial aspirations. In his biography by Issac Walterson, it says, “The lens of getting to Mars has motivated every SpaceX decision”, very fitting given in the beginning, when he started SpaceX in 2002, he held weekly meetings called “Mars Colonizer”.
Phrases like “Colonize Mars” or “space colonies” lay the bedrock for his enterprise philosophy, and we should pay more attention to how this spills over in the communities that bear the brunt of his endeavors, or communities that have thus been rendered “sacrifice zones”. Apparently, to colonize Mars, you must first colonize Earth. Perhaps Elon Musk’s apartheid South African forefather, Cecil Rhodes, was an omen alluding to this moment, as he said,
“The world is nearly all parcelled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and colonised. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far”.
Left : Newsweek 2026 Right: Punch publication from 1892
It only makes me imagine and wonder if Newsweek’s editorial illustration of Trump's imperialism depicted as an alteration of the Rhodes Colossus was more fitting for Elon, or if Elon Musk’s Memphis data center was named the xAI Colossuses after Cecil Rhodes. After all, on inauguration day Elon’s 4-year-old son was wise enough to know who really had the power; as the young boy insulted Trump by saying, "You're not the president, and you need to go away," and "Shut your mouth."
Mischievous Musk and Son and their pet Trump
We can see the logic of (neo)colonialism in his personal endeavors and fascinations. Obsessions with WW2 innovations and wartime inventions, imperialist games like Polytopia. Perhaps most illuminating and what could be a precursor to his general business strategy, is his famed “broken record ”algorithm mentioned in his biography by Walter Issacson.
Question every requirement.
Delete any part or process you can. (waiving regulations, safety, environmental, legal; in the case of Louisiana, the 13 federal environmental regulations waived by the FAA )
Simplify and Optimize
Accelerate cycle time and speed up processes.
Automate.
To anyone knowledgeable of neoliberalism, this seems like a unanimous creed instead of a proprietary company policy.
Places that have been rendered disposable like; Southhaven, Mississippi ,Memphis, Tennessee , Cape Canaveral, Florida the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and most recently Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, must be observed as the “necessary evil”, or the people sacrificed and discarded in order to reach the goals of the richest man on Earth.
The brutality stemming from corporate interest by means less easily observable than outright colonial brutality is called neocolonialism. A term first coined by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre then applied Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah said as his first line in his book titled Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism “The neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage.” Nkrumah expressed that capital, global development finance, and market liberalization were tools of dependency and mechanism to keep states permanently underdeveloped. Nkrumah’s words below.
“More often, however, neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere”
An individual who poses moral, environmental, political, key man, financial, and existential risk to the Americas and the world writ large has essentially, through the same logic of colonialism, annexed large swaths of land across the Gulf South. Effectively 444 acres in Brownsville, Texas, with additional authority over the town's port; obtaining the rights to build on 125,000 acres in Vermillion Parish and more. Given that Elon Musk will potentially be one of the largest landowners in Louisiana, and that this state will be his largest base of operations, it seems important to know the risks associated with the person and his fiefdom.
