Pole Reversal
Questions about the Allen Outlet Mall Shooting for Elon Musk.
Autumn, 2023
Yelling at Clouds is a series that provides space for The Libertine to harasses people with way more clout in view of the public.In full transparency: The Allen Outlet Mall Shooting was extremely to home for The Libertine. It was local news.
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”
— Nikola Tesla
Elon Musk gave a lengthy interview on CNBC on 16 May 2023. Instead of linking to CNBC’s channel, I found a youtuber who posted a copy of the interview with the bulk of Musk’s exhausted verbal and thought pauses removed. It is much more listenable.
I do fear that it makes Musk seem significantly less deranged. I don’t mean this as an insult. I only recognize the negative effects of wakefulness because I can’t seem to put my sleep ahead of my thoughts either. Something in his presentation is definitely lost with the mental blanks absent.
Musk says at one point in the interview that he notices performance losses under six hours of slumber. If he watched himself speak unedited like I had to to make the transcription provided below the video link he may decide to try experimenting with seven hours. Just to see what changes.
I really only want to focus on a specific exchange within its context.
The part of the interview in question begins at about 38:28.
Transcription below video link.
MUSK: I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.
FABER: But I mean when you…when you link to somebody who is talking about the guy who killed children in a mall in Allen, Texas you say something like “it might be a bad psyop.” I’m not quite sure what you meant, but…
MUSK: In that particular case, there was…somehow…that’s…not that the…obviously people were killed, but the..it was I think incorrectly ascribed to be a white supremecist action, and the evidence for that was some obscure Russian web site that no one has ever heard of that had no followers and the company that found this is Bellingcat and do you know what bellingcat does? Psyops.
FABER: I couldn’t really even exactly follow what it was you were trying to express there, so that’s in part why I was curious.
MUSK: I am saying that I thought that ascribing it to white supremacy was bullshit and that the information for that came from an obscure Russian website and was somehow magically found by Bellingcat, a company that does psyops.
FABER: There’s no proof by the way, that he was not.
MUSK: I would say that there’s no proof that he is.
FABER: And that’s a debate you want to get into on Twitter?
MUSK: Because we should not be ascribing things to white supremacy if it’s false.
Let’s break down the claims he makes and re-arrange them in a digestible sequence. I will try to approach each one unromantically. My considerations and conclusions are purposefully not black and white.
Claim
MUSK: Do you know what Bellingcat does? Psyops.This is not a new, right-wing conspiracy theory. Academic and independent journalists (at least) have explored the potential ulterior purposes of Bellingcat prior to Musk’s statement. Their service is even described as untrustworthy on The World Socialist Website. I have not found any evidence to suggest that the pictures and documents that Bellingcat uses are inauthentic, but there is absolutely good reason to wonder if they (and their sources) are motivated by as the intentions they say they are. The arguments against Bellingcat, if true, confirm my general sense that authoritarianism (for example a psyop company) is often advertised as empowerment (“citizen-lead” for instance).
Even if they could be trustworthy, I wouldn’t recommend it. Most of the Bellingcat articles I reviewed read like they were written by someone with a lobotomy who had to rail a dose of Adderall to summon the right words. Writing that encourages your limbic system to feel excited by confirming your view instead of challenging it puts my hair on edge.
Can we be sure everything they say is a psy-op?
Not necessarily.
Would I go there to find scoops?
Not uncritically.
Claim
MUSK: The evidence for that was some obscure Russian web site that no one has ever heard of that had no followers.This “obscure Russian website" Musk refers to is “Odnoklassniki” (OK), a Russian language social media site that has existed since 2006 and has over 200 million registered users. It has more daily users in Russia than Facebook. The Bellingcat article that Musk cites as the source of our knowledge regarding the shooter’s OK account itself credits the discover of said account to the NY Times. So much for obscurity and magic. Not to say that The Paper of Record itself has always been innocent of peddling security state information, but there is no basis to speculate on specifics in the case of this shooting.
I don’t know how many followers the shooter had on OK, but I think it’s safe to assume that he doesn’t get along very well with most people. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t feel welcome on American social media. Maybe he shouldn’t. I do not find it at all unusual that such a person in such a position might seek other social spaces.
Does the shooter’s foreign social media profile make his stated intent (however horrible) suspect?
No.
Does it mean the story is everything it is said to be?
Probably a red herring.
Claim
MUSK: It was I think incorrectly ascribed to be a white supremacist action.In reviewing the shooter’s own posts on OK I found no reason to doubt that he was driven by a repugnant ethos of violent nationalism. Musk asserts multiple times in the interview that he does not believe that “white supremacy” was the motivating factor, although he does not explain why. The fringes of the internet provide a few perspectives. Most hinge on armchair analyses of his tattoos. The “why are they so fresh” thread is my favorite, reaching levels of escalating paranoia that even an unhinged stoner-speed-demon like me finds comically absurd.
A significant number of people believed that the obvious official logo of the City of Dallas tattooed on the back of the shooter’s left palm believed it was a symbol of Texas’ “Puro Tango Blast” prison gang. I have, let’s say an unnamed source, who is OG Tango Blast. I asked him if any Blast members get tattoos of large, official, city-of-Dallas logos as a symbol of affiliation. He told me he was more familiar with Houston. He showed me a tattoo of an Astro’s star, obscured within his arm sleeve. “Most guys like stars.” He said, pointing at it. “You wouldn’t want to put it right out in the open.” He also said something about how they don’t do violence for ideology (money, however…). The official City of Dallas logo does have a star. The gang and both cities are in the Lone Star State. One star could mean a lot. Or nothing at all.
The other major possibility is the assumption that people of a Latin background cannot be white supremacist. Both the Anglophone and Hispanic worlds of our hemisphere are aware that belief can’t last long under scrutiny. Don’t forget that fascism sprouted, not first in Germany with Hitler, but Spain with Franco. What Americans describe as “White Supremacy” may be a more specific expression of the traditional syncretism of nationalism and elitism identified by Umberto Eco as characteristic of Fascism.
Can we say that the shooting was “incorrectly ascribed to be a white supremacist action?”
I mean, what in god’s holy name are you blathering about, Elon?
Conclusion
Was the Allen Outlet Mall Shooting a Psyop?We don’t have grounds to be that specific. We can absolutely be skeptical of the security state, and the way they interact with mass media, but only in principle. I cannot find certain examples of it in this story.
It does not at all seem implausible in today’s America that the shooter was so lonely and powerless that he radicalized himself with abhorrant ideas that lead him to tragic actions. Billionaires like Musk may have trouble picking up on how thick that smell is in their air from their bubble, though. It is true that federal agencies have pushed desperate people into radical positions then coordinated with them on criminal activities, but in these cases it intends to lead to arrests prior to tragedy. We should be so lucky.
Would the security state allow such a tragedy in order to nudge the populace in favor of disarmament? In Texas, I think it is unlikely to have that effect. If they had it would not be the first tragedy caused by the gross incompetency of authority, but if that were the case I doubt they would cover their tracks so competently. To me, these horrific event seem far from having a guided, direct, purpose beyond the perverse catharsis misguidedly sought by the shooter himself.
If Mr. Musk feels inclined to clarify his position on any of these points, he is welcome to email us a Recipe for Crow. Or post in Substack Notes.