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- [00:06]
Jill Lepore
Pushkin. This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:14]
Justin Richmond
This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record. The three things I love about summer are pool days, blaring, all the new summer songs that come out, and endless refreshing iced drinks from Starbucks. Even better, my favorite summer drink has returned to Starbucks. The Summer Berry Refresher is available now, a mix of berry flavors shaken with ice and poured over raspberry flavored pearls. It's light, vibrant and just as refreshing as the summer fun you'll be having. So queue up your playlist and head over to Starbucks to check out their summer menu. There's something for everyone, from creamy cold brews to ice cold refreshers. Your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks.
- [00:52]
Unknown
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- [01:59]
Donald Trump
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the greatest capitalist in the history of.
- [02:06]
Jill Lepore
The United States of America, Elon Musk. In October 2024, nine days before the US presidential election, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, took to the stage at a rally for Donald Trump in New York City. He wore black jeans, a black T shirt, black blazer, and a black baseball hat that read in dark gray embroidery, Make America Great Again.
- [02:36]
Elon Musk
I'm not just maga, I'm dark Gothic maga.
- [02:43]
Jill Lepore
Elon Musk, an American oligarch and entrepreneurial genius, stood on many stages before he seized the podium at Madison Square Garden, Ted Talks, Tesla product rollouts, SpaceX launch pads. He also owns a stage, a platform ever since he bought Twitter and renamed it X, and he owns a sizable portion of the global communications infrastructure through his satellite company, starlink. But this Madison Square Garden gig was part of a different endeavor Entirely. Musk spent a staggering amount of money to help get Trump and Republicans elected. The world's richest man spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars on the return to power of the world's most powerful man, like some kind of Superman or supervill. Returning to the White House, Trump promised to bring Musk with him.
- [03:44]
Elon Musk
You guys are awesome.
- [03:46]
Jill Lepore
And once Musk got a taste for this kind of thing, he began to involve himself in politics of other nations. In Germany, in the uk. What does Musk's reinvention of himself as a kingmaker mean for the United States and for the world? How long will it last? No one knows what's going to happen next. But what happened before in 2021, before Musk joined forces with Trump, before Musk bought Twitter, before Musk was in the news every day. He was in the news every other day with headlines that sounded ripped from science fiction. Super fast. Underground trains, Rockets to Mars, brain control implants. I made a BBC series in which I tried to explain Musk by way of the science fiction. He grew up with tales of superheroes with origin stories that seem to influence how he understands his own life. But so much has happened since then that we decided to update that series from four years ago, rename it and add new episodes. Because Musk keeps changing. And so does his origin story. Welcome to X, the Elon Musk origin story. I'm Jill Lepore. I'm a professor of history and law at Harvard. I'm interested in the past. Musk, he's interested in the future.
- [05:17]
Elon Musk
The future is gonna be amazing.
- [05:22]
Jill Lepore
Or, Izzy, is Musk really a futurist? Or is he maybe an antique, a throwback? I don't mean the retro vibe of the amazing, extraordinary gadgets, the Tesla cybertrucks and starLink satellites and SpaceX rockets. I mean, Musk's ideas about politics and economics. I mean muskism, extravagant, extreme capitalism, a political economy with origins in the universe of comic books and science fiction that has fired Musk's imagination since he was a boy. In this series, I'm gonna blast off not to the future, but to the past. Part of Musk's schtick is that he's still boyish, bit of a lad, plays video games, has smoked pot, watches superhero movies, talks about testosterone.
- [06:23]
Donald Trump
Word has it billionaires Elon Musk and.
- [06:25]
A.O. Scott
Mark Zuckerberg possibly have now formally agreed.
- [06:27]
Donald Trump
To a cage match Face Off.
- [06:30]
Jill Lepore
He once changed his name on X to Kekius Maximus, which is a joke about, on the one hand, the movie Gladiator and on the other hand, a cartoon frog named Pepe Musk does this kind of thing so often, people barely even notice it anymore. The tech bro vibe. Men will be boys. Boys will be gladiators. Trump has gotten into this too, tweeting during the campaign a picture of himself as Superman with J.D. vance as his Batman and Musk as Cyborg. Why in grown men is this kind of thing okay? Honestly, it's a little bewildering. Anyway, the stories Musk likes and the characters he identifies with matter. He used to talk a lot about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Then he used to think of himself as Tony Stark, a do gooding superhero from the Marvel comics. Musk has always loved the Dark Knight movies, which are awesome. About two years ago, he likened himself to Batman, a brooding, angry, fabulously wealthy vigilante. After he bought Twitter, he posted a drawing of the Dark Knight standing on top of a gothic church watching over Gotham, Musk wrote. Some nights online, a lot of people started arguing about whether or not Musk is a real life Bruce Wayne. And then too, when the cybertruck came out, people said it looked like the Batmobile. Is that Batman? Like, unless you're trying to be Batman. What is that?
- [08:11]
Unknown
Oh my God.
- [08:13]
Jill Lepore
I happen to be pretty interested in Batman. I once wrote a book called the Secret History of Wonder Woman. So this episode I want to look at the original Batman to see what he tells us about Elon Musk. Batman made his debut in the 1930s, and fairly soon he was on the radio.
- [08:33]
Unknown
A tall, masked figure wearing a bright blue hood and cape approaches. Listen.
- [08:38]
Jill Lepore
It turns out that a whole lot of Elon Musk's vision for the future, his ideas about politics and governments and economics come from the 1930s, nearly a century ago. They're old ideas, and a lot of them, I think, are failed ideas. But they're also bound up with the Dark Knight, a guy Dark MAGA really likes to talk about.
- [09:01]
Elon Musk
It's like Dark Knight. Like the friggin Joker is in charge. The criminals run free and the citizens are arrested.
- [09:08]
Jill Lepore
That's Musk on the Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the us they're talking about life in Democrat run New York City and complaining about how authorities in New York had seized and killed some guy's pet squirrel.
- [09:24]
Elon Musk
Still pretty shook about the freaking squirrel thing. It's like, meanwhile, you know, violent felons are running free. It's the Joker.
- [09:31]
Jill Lepore
It's the Joker, Batman's arch nemesis. A madman, a sadist, an anarchist. It's mayhem. And who can save the people of Gotham? If Elon Musk were Batman, what would he intend to answer that question? I want to go back to that night at Madison Square Garden, smack in the Middle of Gotham. Nine days before the election, the arena was sold out. 20,000 seats were filled with Trump supporters dressed in red, white and blue, carrying signs that read Fight, fight, fight and Trump can fix it. They had a lot to celebrate. Trump was making the most impressive comeback in American political history. Critics had been calling Trump a fascist. Hulk Hogan, the flamboyant former wrestler, had an answer to that.
- [10:26]
Donald Trump
This is Donald Trump's house, brother. I don't see no stinking Nazis in here.
- [10:33]
Jill Lepore
Musk didn't speak for long. Mainly, he rallied Trump's troops.
- [10:38]
Elon Musk
Usa. Usa. Usa.
- [10:43]
Jill Lepore
And then Donald Trump, in a preview of his inauguration rally, promised to usher in a new golden age.
- [10:51]
Donald Trump
I'm here today with a message of hope for all Americans.
- [10:56]
Jill Lepore
Trump spoke for more than an hour. He mocked journalists, talked about fake news, made a promise about immigration.
- [11:04]
Donald Trump
On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out. I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.
- [11:16]
Jill Lepore
He denounced indoctrination.
- [11:18]
Donald Trump
We will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.
- [11:24]
Jill Lepore
And he pledged himself to a policy of isolationism.
- [11:28]
Donald Trump
It's called America First.
- [11:32]
Jill Lepore
When Trump finished, a crooner in a black tux sang Sinatra starts crediting I'm leaving today. It was a big, bold, glammy, star studded night in Gotham with a lot of talk about crime and Elon Musk dressed as if he were Batman on a casual Friday. But it all reminded me of a very different night at Madison Square Garden.
- [12:02]
Unknown
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans, American patriots, I am sure I do not come before you tonight as a complete stranger. You all have heard of me through the Jewish control Press.
- [12:20]
Jill Lepore
In 1939, the German American Bund, an organization of American Nazis, held a sold out rally in Madison Square Garden. They wore swastikas as armbands, raised their arms to Heil Hitler, and in front of a giant portrait of George Washington, celebrated him as America's first fascist. Here's Fritz Kuhn, the Bund Fuhrer, warning about a Jewish conspiracy against the United States.
- [12:49]
Unknown
Unless you aliens, Nordics and Christians wake up and speak out to the men that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it.
- [13:02]
Jill Lepore
These American Nazis were searching for someone to blame.
- [13:06]
Unknown
The people far and wide feel that somebody must have fallen down on the job.
- [13:12]
Jill Lepore
They were Denouncing the press.
- [13:14]
Unknown
The whole country now must see that there is no free radio for white.
- [13:19]
Jill Lepore
Men campaigning to cut government spending.
- [13:22]
Unknown
Who is not familiar with a billion dollar yardstick that is required to measure this stupendous total of our national public debt?
- [13:33]
Jill Lepore
They were demonizing immigrants.
- [13:35]
Unknown
Great floods of tears for a few hundred thousand job taking so called poor Jewish refugees.
- [13:42]
Jill Lepore
And here's Fritzkoen again. They were fighting indoctrination.
- [13:47]
Unknown
We, I say, will not fail you. When called upon to give every lawful support in our power in the fight to break the grip and the poundside hand of Jewish communism in our schools, our universities, our very homes.
- [14:08]
Jill Lepore
History often sounds like a broken record. But it would be easy to make too much of the echoes between these two Madison Square Garden rallies. Separated by decades, the whole calling people Nazis because you disagree with them. I'm sick of it. You're sick of it. So let me be clear. The nearly 80 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 were sick of Democrats, unhappy about inflation, annoyed by progressive purity crusades and unimpressed by Kamala Harris. I get it, Hulk Hogan. I don't see no stinkin Nazis here. Still. Look, I'm a historian and there is history here. Fascism has a history and it casts a very long shadow. And there's another very particular reason to spend a little time thinking about the year 1939 right after that Bund rally. Maybe even the very next day in an office building just a few blocks away. And out of the same political tensions, the rise of fascism, the. The fear of fascism. Some guys at a little New York comic book publishing house decided to create a new superhero.
- [15:24]
Unknown
Batman.
- [15:25]
A.O. Scott
What are you doing here?
- [15:26]
Jill Lepore
Enter the Caped crusader. Superman had only just made his debut, a wild success. Pretty soon he was on the radio.
- [15:37]
Unknown
Faster than a speeding bullet.
- [15:41]
Jill Lepore
It took the writers a few weeks to to come up with a new superhero. But he made his debut that spring 1939. And now it is my privilege to introduce our friend, Bruce Wayne, otherwise known as the Batman. Superman comes from another planet. Batman's just a guy with a cape, but he does have a lot of money. Bruce Wayne is a millionaire head of Wayne Enterprises. He's also pretty nifty with a pistol, which soon became a problem. At the time, the publishers of comic books were taking a lot of heat for glorifying violence. The month that Batman made his debut, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of two new firearms laws that among other things, outlawed machine guns. Then that September, Hitler advanced.
- [16:32]
Unknown
Germany has invaded Poland. France has decreed General mobilization and martial law.
- [16:38]
Jill Lepore
Europe was going to war, and Americans were sick of guns. The publisher of DC Comics told the guy who wrote Batman to lay off the guns. Batman's gone, Mr. Cannon, and I'm afraid we'll never see him again. Well, only the original Batman was gone, replaced with a new one. This Batman hates guns. And you know what he also hates? Fascists. Right after Germany invaded Poland, Batman got an origin story. As a kid, Bruce Wayne had watched his parents get gunned down on the streets. And so now here he was in 1939 fighting an organization of American fascists, a thinly disguised American bund known as the Scarlet Horde.
- [17:25]
Unknown
I must stop this Scarlet Horde before they become dictators of the world.
- [17:30]
Jill Lepore
At the time and over the next few years, critics of the comics would argue that they glorified strongmen. Time magazine published a story called Are comics Fascist? To defeat the argument that comics were too violent, Batman gave up his gun. To defeat the argument that comics were fascist, Batman took on this new enemy, the Scarlet Horde. American Nazis.
- [17:55]
A.O. Scott
I, Karl Kruger, will be dictator of the world.
- [17:58]
Jill Lepore
The Scarlet Horde's leader is pretty recognizably Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the Bund, America's top Nazi.
- [18:05]
Unknown
Tell me, is our army ready?
- [18:08]
Jill Lepore
2000 strong, waiting for your command. Batman defeats him and without a gun, saves Gotham from fascism. During the 2024 election, there was a lot of talk about fascism in the United States. Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist? Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
- [18:30]
Donald Trump
Joe is surrounded by fascists around the Oval Office.
- [18:35]
Jill Lepore
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Everyone's tired of everyone calling everyone else a fascist. But with everything that's going on, the rise of far right parties across Europe, including one in Germany endorsed by Elon Musk. You can't not talk about fascism. And Batman's whole origin story is bound up with fascism. Every time Musk is compared to Batman, it raises an old Is Batman fighting fascism, or is Batman somehow himself a fascist? That was actually a question in the 1930s. And. And over the last decades. It's been a question again ever since a trilogy of Dark Knight films came out, directed by Christopher Nolan, the movies that shaped Musk's view of Batman.
- [19:22]
A.O. Scott
I did think that there is a strong fascist current, certainly in the look and mood and the sort of just Wagnerian atmosphere of those movies.
- [19:35]
Jill Lepore
That's A.O. scott, longtime critic from the New York Times, talking about those Nolan films from Warner Brothers Pictures, the very, very dark Dark Knight series. It starts with Batman begins in 2005. What the hell are you?
- [19:53]
Justin Richmond
I'm Batman.
- [19:56]
Jill Lepore
Nolan's films brought forward in time the fascist themes and concerns of the original 1930s Batman.
- [20:03]
A.O. Scott
There's a very. Not entirely coherent but strongly kind of authoritarian political bent, and one that takes some interesting forms.
- [20:16]
Jill Lepore
A lot of characters in these movies say a version of democracy has failed. We need a strongman. Take this scene from the 2008 film the Dark Knight.
- [20:27]
A.O. Scott
When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would suspend democracy and appoint one man to protect the city. And it wasn't considered an honor. It was considered a public service. Harvey, the last man that they appointed.
- [20:38]
Jill Lepore
To protect the republic was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.
- [20:42]
A.O. Scott
Okay, fine. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. The people need a hero. The people need a hero. That the people can't take care of themselves. That in a way, the sort of the democratic institutions that might have met the people's needs and kept them safe have failed. And what they need is a strong figure from outside of the political system. There's no sense of any kind of democratic participation in the Batman world.
- [21:10]
Jill Lepore
Oh, my God, no. They're all dupes. Everybody's a dupe. Every Gothamite is a dupe.
- [21:14]
A.O. Scott
Right?
- [21:15]
Jill Lepore
A.O. scott has a theory that unlike the Dark Knight films, the Marvel Universe films, Iron Man, Captain America, Ant man, the Avengers, a team of do gooders, these films represent an Obama Biden view of the world.
- [21:30]
A.O. Scott
He says it's just like this kind of weird global committee of superheroes who are going to go around solving problems, who put their own kind of personal feelings and motives and vendettas aside to kind of to work for the common good in a way that like a committee of the EU in Brussels might try to solve some supply chain issues. That's a bureaucratic, technocratic idea of heroism.
- [21:58]
Jill Lepore
But the Dark Knight films, which come not from Marvel but from dc, those movies are about the failure of Obama, Biden politics, the failure of the liberal democratic state, the failure of liberalism itself. And this is true, most of all of Batman.
- [22:17]
A.O. Scott
His own personal story, his own kind of grievance and grief gets mapped on to the political situation and becomes kind of evidence of just the rottenness and untenability and corruption. So he doesn't assume power, but he represents a non democratic, non state, extralegal, extrajudicial form of power.
- [22:42]
Jill Lepore
Nolan's Gotham is how the right understands San Francisco or Portland or Seattle. Right? It's always nighttime in Gotham People marching to their doom, being beaten up on the streets, homeless, bedraggled. Because in all of the DC movies, right, Gotham is America, right, there's predators.
- [23:08]
A.O. Scott
And prey, and then there are some people who might, for their own reasons or motives, you know, protect some of the prey from the, from the predators. But there is strength and there is power. And to be a hero, to be kind of righteous, is to understand that and to be able to use that.
- [23:28]
Jill Lepore
For Scott, this view is maybe Musk's view of Twitter, of politics, of everything.
- [23:34]
A.O. Scott
So, you know, you could see, like getting rid of content moderators, sort of opening up Twitter to what he likes to call free speech is a way of saying, look, you know, stop kidding yourself that people are gonna come here and be nice and behave themselves. Nobody does that. Nobody believes that. We'd be better off if we got rid of the idea that people would.
- [23:56]
Jill Lepore
Batman might have given up guns. No guns, no killing. Where's the fun in that? But deranged Dark Knight fans have used guns and they have killed. In 2012, a 24 year old PhD student named James Holmes went to a showing of a Batman movie at a theater in Colorado as though reenacting a.
- [24:18]
A.O. Scott
Scene from a Dark Knight comic. Witnesses say Holmes fired into the air and then started shooting into the crowd.
- [24:25]
Jill Lepore
He killed 12 people. At his apartment, police found more guns and Batman masks.
- [24:32]
A.O. Scott
Holmes immediately surrendered. Police observed his hair was dyed orange. He told them the I am the Joker.
- [24:40]
Jill Lepore
The Dark Knight might not have guns, but in 2024, campaigning for Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Dark MAGA became an advocate for an armed citizenry.
- [24:52]
Elon Musk
The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms.
- [24:58]
Jill Lepore
He'd begun defending the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution.
- [25:02]
Elon Musk
Free speech is the bedrock democracy. That's why it's the First Amendment and the Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment.
- [25:16]
Jill Lepore
Free speech, Musk seemed to be saying, must be defended if necessary by force. Some people think of Elon Musk as a superhero. Some people think of him as a supervillain trying to take over the whole planet. With a style that comes from the movies.
- [25:36]
A.O. Scott
You can have ambition without limits and you can do whatever you want. There's a kind of freedom and glee and like, I'll say anything to anyone, I'll do anything. I'll say, you know, we're gonna invade Greenland. I'm gonna mess with everybody's elections. Just, this is like behavior that we've seen before in movies.
- [25:52]
Jill Lepore
A.O. scott has another theory, a theory about how in. In both the movies and in American politics, a lot of people have started rooting for politicians of all political stripes who seem to style themselves as the bad guys. You wrote this long piece called the Supervillain is the Hero Now. And it had a tagline, how Americans learned to root for the dark side, from the Joker and Wicked to Elon Musk. So how did they.
- [26:21]
A.O. Scott
I mean, the way the piece came about was sort of just noticing that something had shifted. And Musk was an important case study. That he and Trump, the way that they were acting, the sort of transgressive, aggressive energy that they were projecting and that their followers seemed to love, seemed like a supervillain vibe, you could say. And I didn't mean that people who don't like them think of them as supervillains, you know, because they're so bad, but rather that the people who do like them are kind of intrigued and seduced and excited by the villainy.
- [26:56]
Jill Lepore
This is the logic of the Dark Knight movies. Batman is the bad man, but you should root for him. Don't trust the state. Liberalism, democracy. You need Batman. The brooding vigilante in his Batmobile. A character who's so unhinged and tormented that he essentially collapses into his arch nemesis, the Joker. Late last year, a delusional version of this plot took form in the mind of a decorated American serviceman. He rented a Tesla cybertruck and texted his girlfriend that driving it made him feel like Batman. He parked it in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas and shot himself in the head. Just before a bomb that he'd planted blew up, he left a note saying, only Trump and Musk can save America after the election. In his victory speech, Trump called his comeback the greatest political movement of all time. He credited Musk.
- [28:01]
Donald Trump
Let me tell you, we have a new star.
- [28:04]
Jill Lepore
Trump had a lot of people to thank, but the person he talked about the longest was his own personal Batman.
- [28:10]
Donald Trump
The star is born.
- [28:11]
Jill Lepore
Elon Trump told the story of watching a SpaceX rocket land, an amazing feat of engineering. Said he'd called Musk afterward.
- [28:20]
Donald Trump
I said, that's why I love you, Elon. That's great.
- [28:23]
Jill Lepore
He talked about calling on Musk the way Gotham's police commissioner uses the Bat signal.
- [28:28]
Donald Trump
I called Elon. I said, elon, you have something called Starlink. And is that right? He had that there so fast, it was incredible. But he's a character. He's a special guy. He's a super genius. We have to.
- [28:41]
Jill Lepore
Elon Musk, the dark Knight, head of Wayne Enterprises, a super intelligence, and quite possibly the only person on the planet more powerful than the President of the United States. Batman is the creation of a world that witnessed the rise of fascism. The way I read it, and you can read it differently, whatever Batman intends, he can't ever really save Gotham, because as a vigilante, Batman is part of what went wrong with Gotham. But Batman's only one of Muskism's touchstones. What came before the Dark Knight and the rise of Dark maga? To answer that question, we've got to go back to the beginning of Elon Musk's life, when, as a boy in South Africa under apartheid, he read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and discovered an origin story. That's next time on X Man.
- [29:51]
Unknown
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- [30:49]
Jill Lepore
This is an iHeart podcast.