7mo ago

Elon Musk pledges "war" over H-1B visa program, calls opponents racists

www.axios.com

Just a moment...

Trump, who has remained silent thus far on the schism, faces a quickly deepening conflict between his richest and most powerful advisors on one hand, and the people who swept him to office on the other.

All this is stupid. But I know one thing:

Trump is a billionaire.

And I predict his followers are going to learn who he’ll side with when push comes to shove.

Also, Bannon’s take is interesting:

Bannon tells Axios he helped kick off the debate with a now-viral Gettr post earlier this month calling out a lack of support for the Black and Hispanic communities in Big Tech.

politics @lemmy.world

brucethemoose @lemmy.world

7mo ago

Trump sides with Musk in H-1B fight

www.axios.com /2024/12/28/musk-war-h1b-racists-maga-doge

59 comments

H-1B is basically cheap corporate servitude, no wonder Musk likes it.
- “Do as you’re told, or you’re deported.” Nope, no potential for corporate abuse there.
  
  Can't forget "Burn through employees, and then deport them." Use and discard.
- Dude I knew was on one and essentially told me if he lost his job they’d just deport him
  
  I worked with a guy for 3 years (who had been there years before me) who then was told something was messed up on his paperwork and to continue a path to citizenship he had to leave the country for 6+ months and start the process over.
  He has to sell his house and car and move everything into a storage unit and take his kid out of school all inside of 30 days and then leave.
  He's back now and a citizen, but what a mess.
Muskrat is losing it and it's glorious
- "I'll go to war to replace American workers with H1B indentured servants"
- Musk might be rich, but he doesn't have a fucking military. And he's not "Have a Military" rich. Not one that can stand to the US military, anyways.
  What a dunce.
  
  To be fair, he is not saying "war" like "send a military to kill people".
  It's a metaphorical war. He'll probably throw a fit and tell people to do a bunch of shitty stuff, fund terrible things, etc..
No one believes he is standing up against racism while he is vocally and financially supporting the neo-Nazis AfD in Germany and Nigel Farage's racist far right in the UK, and working for and funding lifelong racist Donald Trump. Elon Musk's companies also have a known history of institutionalized racism. What he is taking a stand for is the ability to exploit and abuse cheap foreign employees by threatening them with deportation if they get out of line.
- I've tried to eschew phrasing like "No one believes" or "Everyone knows" because a whole lot of asshats live in a fantastical world completely divorced from reality.
On Friday afternoon, Musk doubled down, saying MAGA adherents who continued to blast immigration and the tech community were "contemptible fools," later clarifying he was talking about "racists" who would "absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed."
Okay first, "contemptable fools" sure sounds like it could be replaced with "basket of deplorables" to me.
Second, did he really just notice that MAGA/Republican party is made up of racists? I thought this guy was supposed to be smart.
- I think there's no way Musk isn't a racist, he just kinda hides it from public view. He thinks he can shame others to do what he wants by calling them racist (remember when he calls people pedos?), but that won't work. Certain ideologies literally have no shame.
  
  Musk is definitely racist, and his support for H1B is a feature of that racism. He thinks "those orientals and Indians" are good at tech and "hardcore." H1B lets him bring them over, treat them like slaves, and send them back home if they get uppity.
  MAGAs would feel the same about immigrants in agriculture and hospitality, if they thought there was a reliable way to send them back home at the end of the workday.
  
  Whoa whoa whoa. The apartheid trust fund baby racist?! Like you didn't steal and hock daddy's emeralds to get your start like everyone else did.
  And yes that's literally how Elon got started in the us. He'd be lucky to be flipping burgers if he wasn't born with wealth and privilege.
- First, maybe Clinton and Musk have more in common than Musk or Trump supporters realized until now…
  Second, he knows. He owns Twitter and their massive analytics apparatus, he probably knows more than most people on the planet. But I think musk is half blustering, and half frustrated Trump World is trying to do what it campaigned on instead of bowing to him.
  
  Musk once understood very well that Dems were good for business as they subsided electric cars and space exploration. Over time he became upset with the Dem policies especially on transgender issues (due to his transgender daughter), and more full of himself. He convinced himself that his business, which essentially exist on state support, could thrive without it. Leopards are now eating his face.
- It honestly sounds like he's cosplaying as Gandalf.
Does he think Maga cares?
They're openly racist and are proud of it, Elmo buying Twitter was a large part of them feeling comfortable to go mask off.
- Some do, just through a very different lens:
  Steve Bannon, one of the longest-tenured voices in Trump's orbit, had multiple guests on his show this week to talk about his hardline anti-H-1B views.
  Bannon tells Axios he helped kick off the debate with a now-viral Gettr post earlier this month calling out a lack of support for the Black and Hispanic communities in Big Tech.
  
  Bannon tells Axios he helped kick off the debate with a now-viral Gettr post earlier this month calling out a lack of support for the Black and Hispanic communities in Big Tech.
  I didn't make it all thru the video.
  But when people like that say "college should have X% of minorities" they're not saying they're gonna help accomplish that. It's a dig that they're not and an implication that it's their fault.
  They're definitely not talking about DEI.
  But trump apparently saying if you graduate from a US college you get a green card....
  That's not going to sit well with any Republican who wouldn't save money on labor costs.
  Bannon and trump aren't the same entity. MAGA and trump aren't even the same.
  If Republicans split over this, trump will try to stay out of it because he's a pussy. Elmo will head the b Oligarch half and someone like Bannon will try to capture the MAGA movement.
Trump is not a billionaire!
He’s a con artist that likes to make people believe he’s a billionaire. Did you forget he barely made payments that he was court-ordered to pay? Even going as far as looking for people to pay it for him in return for favorable political treatment once he’s in office?
Pepperidge farm remembers.
- You have to wonder how much money he does actually have. It's certainly enough to live like a rich person. And he surely will make more now that he won the presidency again.
  
  He can’t even organize enough to get a couple grand for venues. Even if he has money, he’s got shit spending habits on shit taste. For sure the guy who wants you to Venmo him for the coffee you had at lunch.
Oh no! I thought calling someone else a racist, justified or not, was the very worstest thing you could do!
Is Elon infected with the WOKE MIND VIRUS?
Bannon is an accelerationist who believes in the inevitability of and is trying to bring about a race war.
- I hate that Bannon has the right position on H-1B, but for very stupid and irrelevant reasons.
  
  Broken clocks and all that.
This dust up over HB1 is my favorite Christmas present. Seeing Vivak and Elon elitesplain why immigrants are good to MAGA is never going to get old.
We need to keep this issue in the cycle. Can we get Jefferies to declare that expanding HB1 is the Democrats top priority? Perhaps introduce legislation to loosen the restrictions on H1Bs.
- If we fix our higher education system, companies could hire citizens. Even then though, I think a lot of companies abuse the H1B system, because they can pay less. (You are supposed to have to make a case that no US worker could fill that job role.)
- Maybe it’s a prelude to a larger class war, when MAGA realizes they basically voted in a billionaretocracy, and wants it out.
- Is it possibly you guys are making too much of this? I've literally not heard one word about this topic outside Lemmy. I don't think MAGA knows.
  
  It’s objectively getting a lot of engagement on Twitter, hence political outlets like Axios (who live in that world) are reporting on it.
  Social media is siloed. Honestly, if you aren’t seeing this in your other feeds, that’s probably a good thing.
The apartheid nepo baby is calling other people racist? That's cute.
He is right calling the GOP racists. But that is the pot calling the kettle "black".
A racist calling those racist racist only makes them more racist.
Some great points made by users in this thread, but my main question from reading this was, "What the hell is Gettr?"
They always need to be at war with some element of American society. Since Dems are largely taking a break and waiting for the Find Out part of this disaster, they're going to have to quench their thirst by going to war with each other.
imagine thinking maga cares about a african american calling them racist. they wore diapers, bandages on their ears, and called themselves deplorables. elon aint finna find any shame in them
- TBF, they get quite chapped about being called racists. They think the act of calling someone a racist is worse than being a racist.
His followers are largely blue-collar, and have never heard of, nor care about H1B.
- Apparently they do, as it’s getting tons of engagement.
  It’s kinda like the trans bathroom/sports issue… Realistically, it hardly affects non trans people at all, but the idea makes a big stink anyway.
  Turns out MAGA’s rage culture doesn’t have an off switch.
- Software engineering employs a lot of people. Quite a few of them are qons, too. You can be sure that a whole lot of engineers know what H-1B is.
Also Musk: "I fully support the German racists seeking to end immigration!"
Wait bannon was posting in support of brown people?
- American brown people, who in his caste system are higher than foreign brown people.
they are racists, dipshit. you just seeing that now?
Deny, Defend, Deport

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