Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is “crap at critical thinking,” according to NBA legend turned Substack writer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but has the ability to “infect” others with his “bad thinking” thanks to his social network. Abdul-Jabbar, a novelist, civil rights advocate, and until recently the NBA’s leading all-time scorer—LeBron James ended his decades-long reign in February—shared his thoughts about Musk on his Substack blog on Thursday, and he did not mince words.
Musk, the NBA great wrote, is “unable to apply the use of facts in reaching conclusions about social and political issues” but possesses “a giant megaphone to amplify his bad thinking to infect others.”
Abdul-Jabbar focused on Musk’s ongoing battle against the media, arguing the billionaire “romanticizes it—and himself” by portraying it as a “conflict between a man who loves free speech and truth and corrupt news outlets slanting truths.”
Musk has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist” and has seen advertisers worried about more offensive content on the platform pull back spending.
Earlier this month, Musk tweeted that the “tragedy” of the New York Times—which has aggressively reported on Twitter and Tesla—“is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,” and he compared its “unreadable” Twitter feed to the “equivalent of diarrhea.” That followed the Times refusing to pay for a previously free blue verification check mark, which Twitter removed two weekends ago as part of Musk’s push for more subscriptions.
Musk has also been tussling with NPR, labeling it last week as “state-affiliated media”—how Twitter refers to China’s and Russia’s state-controlled media—and then quietly changing that on Saturday to “government-funded media” after days of criticism. NPR, which receives on average less than 1% of its funding from the government, disagrees with both labels and has stopped tweeting news, the first of several news organizations to leave Twitter amid this fracas.
Abdul-Jabbar called it “shocking” that Musk applied the first label “without having done a fact-check, changing it only after a reporter pointed out that NPR is not state-affiliated.
“This makes one question how he forms any of his opinions, since facts are not important to him,” Abdul-Jabbar added.
Abdul-Jabbar also linked to a Guardian report from earlier this month repeating accusations that Twitter had bowed to government pressure in India to block the accounts of journalists, politicians, and activists critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That amounts to Twitter actually serving as state-affiliated media for India’s government, Abdul-Jabbar argued.
“So much chest thumping, so little brain using,” he added.
That Abdul-Jabbar shared his criticism of Musk on Substack is also worth noting. After the newsletter platform announced a new Twitter-like service last week, users started reporting that Musk’s platform was censoring retweets of posts that included a Substack link (they appear to be working again, for now). This would be further evidence of the pattern Abdul-Jabbar noted: a knee-jerk decision, made without proper vetting, quickly reversed.
Abdul-Jabbar also noted Twitter’s new policy of responding to any journalist’s questions with a poop emoji, saying that behavior is “not exactly how you nurture free press in a democracy.”
Coins2Day reached out to Twitter for comments but received no immediate replies, beyond the emoji.
