Taylor Swift Recommendation Kamala Harris’ comments after Tuesday night’s ABC presidential debate infuriated many conservatives who were already upset by Donald Trump’s poor performance.
The pop superstar’s closing line, “Taylor Swift, childfree cat lady,” alluded to Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s frustration with childfree people holding political power, and her provocation became a powerful magnet for right-wing indignation.
One of the replies to Swift’s post was particularly creepy: “I get it Taylor… you win… I will give you kids and protect your cat with my life,” Elon Musk wrote. Posts.
Musk’s joke, broadcast to his 197.4 million followers, wasn’t just misogyny: it reflected a larger concern that remains the guiding ideological principle of the far-right today: pro-natalism, which sees women as a means to increase population and, by association, as a counterweight to the rise of racial minorities in the United States.
Musk himself 11 children He has had children with three different mothers, two of whom were born via surrogate.
On the one hand, it makes sense that this wealthy man is doing what he personally can to combat the falling birth rate, which he portrays as a problem that threatens civilization. But on the other hand, Musk is more patriarchal than family man. He is estranged from his transgender daughter, Vivian, who describes him as authoritarian and self-centered. Musk claims that Vivian “died, killed by the virus of the awakened mind,” and he nonchalantly comments about their estrangement, “You can’t win ’em all.”
Why would he prioritize having offspring if he doesn’t actually want to be a father? Musk’s position on this front becomes a little clearer when we consider his other views. He’s an outspoken border hawk and has said he ” Attempts at Awakening Imposing a cultural or ethnic regime Diversity In Western countries.
Musk’s response to Taylor Swift may have been an attempt to derisively downplay his support for Harris, but it treated her as a vessel within this larger ideological framework: to feel politically fulfilled, Swift would need to have children.
Among today’s far-right, white pronatalism is presented as the solution to both America’s demographic challenges and its political and cultural challenges. This marks a dramatic shift from the old conservative family politics that emphasized principles of freedom and dignity. Instead, the new pronatalism of the far-right is exclusionary and authoritarian. Instead of being portrayed as equal partners with men in building stable families, women in this paradigm are understood as mere reproductive tools or targets of sexual violence in need of male protection. In this schema, the family is not a good in itself; it derives its value instrumentally, as a means to achieve deeper goals that underlie the cultural politics of the right.
This is not to say that declining birth rates aren’t a real problem for Western democracies. By 2023, the U.S. birth rate will be 1.62 births per womanItaly is even worse. 1.2These figures are significant. Policy challenges This is due to the aging of the population.
Of course, increasing the birth rate among people already living in a country is not the only way to counter this trend. Primary Sources Population growth rate in the Northern Hemisphere since 1990. As a writer for the International Monetary Fund magazine putIncreasing immigration “will slow population decline, slow the shrinking labor force, improve the elderly dependency ratio, and have positive fiscal effects,” it said.
But Musk and other right-wingers are quick to point out the “Population collapse” tends to be against foreign immigrants. Musk himself was once an immigrant. probably It consistently emphasizes that immigrants entered the country through illegal means. weaken or threaten They have even brought in conspiracy theories that are shaking up American society. story President Joe Biden has been secretly flying hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country. publicly acknowledged His belief in his core aspects Great Substitution Theory.
These positions put Musk in a apparent contradiction. Assert The world is “basically empty of humans,” Musk said. Posts“When America tries to absorb the world, it fails.” Why would America “fail” if there is nothing to absorb?
Musk said immigrants civil war In Europe, people recklessly post that such violence is inevitable. Far-right riots These riots occurred across the UK in August. It’s worth noting that these riots were fuelled in part by anti-immigrant misinformation that many participants found through Musk’s own platform.
All of this suggests that Musk is interested in increasing the birth rate not for the sake of increasing the population itself, but for the sake of what he considers to be “higher birth rates.” Correct sorting It’s about the people. Claims “If Italian, Japanese and French women do not have more children, their cultures will disappear.” In today’s right-wing pro-natalist thinking, children are as much a demographic tool as women.
Billionaires often take singular political positions, but Musk’s is very much in line with that of larger right-wing movements that are growing in popularity around the world. Last year, then-Hungarian President Katalin Novak stopped by Tesla’s Austin headquarters during a U.S. tour and met with Musk. Novak said Anointed him He invited them to attend the next Budapest Population Summit as “new allies in the fight for family freedom.”
Musk has become a poster child for right-wing pro-natalists in the United States. Malcolm and Simone Collins, an odd couple Explained By Guardian As “America’s No. 1 pro-natalist,” he praised Musk as one of his most important allies in promoting his vision of genetic selection, IQ-focused, pro-natalism that borders on eugenics. “What Elon advocates for is primarily Completely “We support each other. Our politics are very aligned,” Malcolm told the profiler, before interrupting himself and slapping one of the children across the face.
Musk said: Lobbyed Trump has no intention of imposing Vance on the country. In addition to his fierce denunciations of the “childless cat ladies” who rule America, Vance has offered a wide-ranging commentary on the issue that blends cultural conservatism, anti-immigrant views and a pro-natalist agenda that toolkits women. Interview When making his infamous remarks about “childless cat ladies,” Vance also said, “If we want a healthy ruling class in this country, we should do more to support people who actually have children.”
Musk’s views are in line with those of Vance’s ally, Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel, Vance’s former employer and a key backer in his 2022 Senate bid, who has also donated money to pro-natal and anti-immigration politicians, including twice-failed Arizona candidate Blake Masters.
In 2022, I will be playing the Masters as a America First Pro-natalismI was invited to appear on an episode of Dr. Phil As part of a panel on fertility that included far-right radio host Jesse Lee Peterson, a Black pastor and activist. Declared “We need more white babies,” he continued. “If we lose white people, America is finished. We’ll just destroy the other races.” It was shocking logic. But how far were Peterson’s blunt words from where hardliners like Musk and Carlson are heading?
The demographic anxieties that drive these concerns also feed into right-wing pro-natalist views of white women. I begged. Taylor Swift called for people to reconsider their support for Harris due to the threat of sexual violence from immigrant men, writing: “You’re a pretty young girl. Do you know what Venezuelan gang members do to pretty young girls? It’s not pretty at all!”
Rubin’s comments show how the culture wars can frame any character or issue. Attractive white American women are not so much fellow citizens or citizens as sexual prizes to be protected from the threat of foreign male violence. Men like Musk may offer, seriously or not, to bear their children. Rubin may act as if he is protecting them from sexually violent barbarians. The common thread is that in all of this, the women’s role is to be beautiful, to bear children, and to remain untainted by foreigners. There is nothing family-friendly about it.
