Elon Musk is directing harassment toward individual federal workers

Elon Musk is, successful summation to galore different things, present the co-lead of the currently nonexistent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory group. Now, earlier it adjacent gets rolling, helium has begun singling retired idiosyncratic authorities employees helium says are emblematic of the government’s bloat and posting astir them to his hundreds of millions of followers connected X.

Earlier this week, arsenic archetypal reported by The Wall Street Journal, the X idiosyncratic “datahazard” shared a screenshot connected X highlighting the relation of Ashley Thomas, the Director of Climate Diversification astatine the US International Development Finance Corporation, saying, “I don’t deliberation the US Taxpayer should wage for the employment” of that role. Musk reposted it, adding the remark “so galore fake jobs” successful a station with much than 33 cardinal views.

As the WSJ notes, Musk’s followers person responded successful precisely the mode you’d expect: with a flood of memes and harassment targeting Thomas, whose LinkedIn and Facebook pages are present private. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the WSJ that the posts “are aimed astatine sowing panic and fearfulness astatine national employees.”

Flooding targets with harassment is simply a maneuver Musk has done successful the past, including calling caver Vernon Unsworth a “pedo guy,” criticizing a erstwhile Twitter exec pursuing his connection to bargain the company, and suggesting that caput of spot and information Yoel Roth was sympathetic to pedophilia. All, of course, nether the guise of “free speech.”

The ensuing harassment, of course, is precisely the point: Musk has systematically turned X into a megaphone for his views and has wielded that megaphone to immoderate extremity helium finds comic oregon useful. Musk and DOGE co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy person promised to bash overmuch of their enactment successful nationalist (and sometimes by X poll), too, which means this benignant of pointed attraction is apt headed toward galore different civilian servants successful the adjacent future.