“…activists focusing ire on a corporation has a long history in America.” ‘Troubling’, yes, rather than…

“…activists focusing ire on a corporation has a long history in America.” ‘Troubling’, yes, rather than people cheering on the destruction. It’s deeply unpopular to say this, and in populist cultures, that’s why it has to be said. /1 https://t.co/WebvuColHI https://t.co/FSPPI2Gjmi

It’s an American disease to attack institutions. It’s a culture defined by hostility towards anything institutional. Founded by Puritans escaping what they saw as institutional tyranny in Europe. Really they were extremists, which is why Europe was sick of them. /2

And that’s still playing out today, in everything we’re seeing. Not least with the open hostility towards Europe evoked by the MAGA cult. Smashing Tesla is a disgrace. I don’t give a shit that the current mob obsession is in doing it. I’ll explain. /3

Saying it will get the teams in play here trying to pigeonhole you as in this or that team. Pro-MAGA. or pro-any team against MAGA etc. Left, Right, blah blah. Fuck off with your team sports. Have some self-awareness of the same stupid patterns we’re living, over and over. /4

Tesla is an institution, all organisations are. I’ve worked for institutions, with noble and brilliant aims. Some had appalling senior management. Never once did it occur to me or anybody critical of that management, to destroy the institution to try to get rid of them. /5

As the Los Angeles Times notes in Tweet 1 of this thread, it is especially American to attack institutions. And now that social media, the libertarian attack weapon of US culture, is dominant in so many societies, that disease is spreading. It’s societies committing suicide. /6

Without institutions, societies are dead. All that remains is gang violence, between surviving, battling teams. That’s why institutions evolve, to counter that mob violence, the gang warfare that is the result of the absence of institutional governance. /7

Modern populist times are really, despite our rhetoric about democracy, a time of fundamentalism. We’re electoral fundamentalists. Electing people by popular vote is what many see *as* democracy. The US in particular, note the particular venom MAGA has for the ‘unelected’. /8

Democracy always was only an institutional thing, with checks and balances between arms of government defining democracy itself. Not elections. Similarly, Tesla is a brilliant organisation, headed by a member of the MAGA cult. Yes the MAGA cult must be defeated. /9

Not long ago electric cars were at the vanguard of opposing the fossil fuelled status hierarchy that has dominated our world for the past century. Now people are burning them, to the great delight of that hierarchy. How stupid can we be? /10

The work Musk’s organisation does is critical to undermining the status quo that desperately needs to be removed. We can want Musk gone, without destroying his organisation. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. /11

Again, never once did it even occur to the sane grown ups in the institutions I’ve worked in to destroy the organisation itself, to be rid of toxic senior management. That’s us all now being infected with the American anti-institutional disease. These platforms do it. /end