Elon Musk Fires: ‘The Woke Mind Virus Is Either Defeated Or Nothing Else Matters’

Hank BerrienDecember 12, 2022

After he was booed when he made a surprise appearance on stage with Dave Chappelle at Chappelle’s show at the Chase Center in San Francisco Sunday night, Twitter CEO Elon Musk followed by issuing a ringing denunciation of his leftist foes on Monday morning.

When Chappelle introduced Musk, much of the crowd booed, prompting Chappelle to quip, “It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” adding, “All of those people who are booing, I’m just pointing out the obvious, they have terrible seats. It’s all coming from way up there.”

Turns out Twitter can, in fact, be real life. https://t.co/FFpups1yEy pic.twitter.com/41jcZgdDR4

— Steven Goffman (@SteveGoffman) December 12, 2022

Turns out Twitter can, in fact, be real life. https://t.co/FFpups1yEy pic.twitter.com/41jcZgdDR4

— Steven Goffman (@SteveGoffman) December 12, 2022

On Monday morning, Musk took on his critics directly, tweeting, “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters.”

The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

Prior to his appearance at Chappelle’s show, Musk had indicated his disdain for the Twitter bots attacking him, tweeting, “Calling all 🤖& 🧌 Please attack me!” followed by “Cool, the bots are so far unable to swarm to the top of my replies!”

Cool, the bots are so far unable to swarm to the top of my replies!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

Cool, the bots are so far unable to swarm to the top of my replies!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

In late November, Musk posted a 12-second video of something he found in a closet at Twitter headquarters that revealed a truly leftist perspective.

Musk posted a video of the closet that had shelves stacked with T-shirts as part of Twitter’s merchandising, and showed a shelf filled with black T-shirts reading “#Stay Woke.”

“Here we are at the merch and there is an entire closet full of — ” Musk explained, before someone off-camera added, “secret closet.”

“— Hashtag Woke T-Shirts,” Musk concludes.

Found in closet at Twitter HQ fr 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/3xSI3KvvHk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

Found in closet at Twitter HQ fr 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/3xSI3KvvHk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

Despite criticism from the political Left at how he had handled the company, Musk noted at the time that Twitter had added 1.6M daily active users in the prior week.

Twitter added 1.6M daily active users this past week, another all-time high pic.twitter.com/Si3cRYnvyD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022

Twitter added 1.6M daily active users this past week, another all-time high pic.twitter.com/Si3cRYnvyD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022

Only hours before his tweet showing the woke T-shirts, Musk took aim at his critics, tweeting, “Wasn’t Twitter supposed to die by now or something … ?”

“Maybe we’ve gone to heaven/hell & don’t know it,” he quipped.

Maybe we’ve gone to heaven/hell & don’t know it 🤔

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

Maybe we’ve gone to heaven/hell & don’t know it 🤔

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

A coalition of 60+ civil rights and civil society groups calling themselves the “Stop Toxic Twitter” coalition had urged Twitter’s top advertisers to boycott the company, threatening, “Musk must not roll back the basic moderation practices Twitter already has on the books and he must invest the resources necessary to enforce those rules.”

“Sweeping layoffs at Twitter make it impossible for Twitter to uphold brand safeguards and content moderation. Companies should immediately stop advertising in response,” they continued.