I don't want to spend a lot of time focusing on tabloid-adjacent coverage of what an absolute piece of human dogshit Elon Musk is in his personal life, but in this case I think a recent story about Musk's obsession with creating an army of mini-Elon children, pronatalism, fearmongering about collapsing birthrates in "the West," and attitudes toward children in the developing world goes a long way towards explaining why Apartheid Space Karen is doing the things he's doing in his official capacity as Trump's "chainsaw" guy in the US government.

https://archive.ph/BR4Y8

The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers

"Musk has warned that “civilization is going to crumble” if people don’t start having more children, a view popularized as pronatalism in right-wing circles. The pronatalism movement is composed of people concerned about the birthrate and eager to implement policy and cultural solutions to the problem.

Martin Varsavsky, a friend of Musk’s who founded a large chain of in vitro fertilization clinics in the U.S., said he has spoken with Musk about the risks of falling birthrates.

“Without babies there’s no future, every problem becomes secondary to the problem of not having people on the planet,” said Varsavsky. “Elon believes that a country is not the geography, a country is the people.”

Speaking to an audience at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia last year, Musk laid out the urgency of the matter. “I think for most countries, they should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem they need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter,” Musk told the crowd over a live video.

When the interviewer joked that Musk was doing his part to address the issue, the billionaire agreed. “Yes. I am. I mean, you know, you’ve got to walk the talk. So, I do have a lot of kids, and I encourage others to have lots of kids.”

Separately, Musk has said he is concerned about what he called Third World countries having higher birthrates than the U.S. and Europe, a person familiar with the conversation said.

One of the most important ways to change these dynamics, he has repeatedly told people close to him, is for educated people to have more children."

Look, if you want to read the salacious details about what a domineering, misogynist supervillain freak Musk is to the women he convinces to have his children, I promise not to rat you out; if nothing else it speaks to the core patriarchal, reactionary, delusional sci-fi obsessive values by which the richest man in the world leads his extremely divorced life. Laughing at Musk is so much fun it would be our national sport if we weren't in the middle of a fascist takeover in America.

What interests me however is Musk's open articulation of the white supremacist, eugenicist, "race war" ideology that seemingly influences his decisions. Folks, I've had the misfortune of encountering a fair number of nazis and assorted other kinds of fascists in my life, and I can say without question that the freaks who obsess over racialized birth rates and raw demographics are by far the worst human beings, and some of the most dangerous of these odious shitlords. When a billionaire nazi who grew up under the apartheid system in South Africa starts talking about higher birthrates in "the Third World" and the need for "educated people" to have more babies, it doesn't take a psychic to realize that he's really talking about a perceived fascist need for white people to literally out breed non-white people as part of some implied racialized struggle for "the future of human civilization." He can dress it up with nonsense about going to Mars and preserving "civilization" and the human race, but it's very clear what "civilization" he's hoping to save, and what kind of humans he's hoping to "preserve" here; this is bog standard nazi shit.

All of which brings us to Musk's role as the head of the fascist Department of Government Efficiency and what Elon's beliefs can tell us about his actions in that role. DOGE hasn't touched the imperialist military, the police state, or government subsidies for corporations and the fossil fuel industry. Instead, under Musk's leadership DOGE has targeted global health programs, famine reduction efforts, and now has its eyes set on anything that helps America's poor; who I shouldn't have to remind you, are a segment of society where nonwhite people are overrepresented due to our long history of white supremacist capitalist and theft of generational wealth. Maybe the reason Elon Musk doesn't mind killing poor, mostly brown people is because he's a nazi freak who thinks we're in the middle of a race war to survive the apocalypse? And just maybe, that's news worth reporting to an American public being gutted by his department's "efficiency" cuts as we speak.

Quietly, and relying on the numbness created by their fascist "shock doctrine" so far, the Trump regime has stripped legal protections from and ordered the expulsion of thousands more law abiding people who are effectively refugees, including thousands of folks driven to seek asylum and protected status by US imperial and economic policy; this time targeting asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Cameroon:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-ends-tps-afghanistan-cameroon

'Cruel and Dangerous': Trump Ends Protected Status for Afghans and Cameroonians

"President Donald Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants a central plank of his 2024 campaign. However, since taking office, he has consistently moved not only to crack down on undocumented immigration but to revoke the status of migrants who are in the country legally. This has included attempting to strip TPS from other nationalities, revoking visas and even green cards from immigrants from certain countries or who voice opinions the administration dislikes, and ordering nearly 1 million people who entered the country using a Biden-administration app to leave "immediately."

Friday's decision would impact more than 14,600 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians, who would now have to leave the country by May and June respectively, according toAl Jazeera.

TPS means that immigrants from certain countries undergoing conflict or hardship—who may not qualify for asylum—will not be deported and will be able to work legally in the U.S. until the situation in their home country improves."

As the article notes, it's entirely unclear if the Trump regime will get away with this clearly targeted suppression as part of its mass deportation scheme; a judge did temporarily block a similar order targeting Venezuelans legally living and working in America with TPS status after all. Looking at the types of people the regime is targeting however, puts to lie the government's arguments that they're enacting a mass deportation scheme to "keep us safe" or "remove dangerous criminals" from the US. Furthermore, looking a who they're targeting with orders like this, specifically nonwhite folks who are for all intents and purposes refugees, also exposes their fascist intentions to establish America as a white ethnostate in a way that should be being reported in corporate media, but simply isn't for reasons that range from cowardice, to capitalist greed, and even shared racist sympathies among the ruling class (and their minions) in our society. Quite frankly, the fact that for-profit media outlets are no longer telling Americans that mass deportations are recognized as crimes against humanity by international law, speaks volumes as to why they aren't talking about what the Trump regime's activities clearly represent when taken as a whole; the demographic bleaching of America by force, to create a while ethno-state.

Folks, the regime isn't targeting "dangerous criminals" for expulsion because there aren't enough migrants committing violent crimes to justify their mass deportation agenda and white nationalist schemes. These folks are refugees, coming from situations the US state has already recognized present a real and present danger to their lives. Cameroon is in the middle of a years-long civil war, against a regime executing peaceful protestors, that has already caused over a million people to flee the country. The denial of protected status to Afghans is even more galling because refugees fleeing that country are almost invariably being targeted by a Taliban regime the US just fought a two-decade long war with, or a byproduct of American imperial policy that bombed the country flat during that war. These are "our guys" in so much as there is ever an "our" in US imperial foreign policy situations.

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and keeps doing the same things historically fascist duck regimes have done in human history, it's time to start naming the beast; not just on blogs written by anarchists with a library card, but everywhere in our society. Failure to do so isn't just cowardice, it's collaboration with a fascist regime that is rapidly chugging towards openly genocidal behavior every day, while gleefully admitting that's where they intend to go if only anyone understood what "mass deportations" actually mean. These folks are fascists, they are actively trying to establish an American white entho-state, and they are making no effort whatsoever to hide their activities or intentions.

So, how ominous of a sign is it when the white nationalist government that's openly violating the US Constitution to facilitate fascist mass deportations, decides to declare thousands of immigrants legally dead for all intents and purposes? This week Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (aka Cracker Fascist Barbie) and acting Social Security commissioner (and gammon-y human thumb) Leland Dudek, got together and "terminated" the "financial lives" of 6,000 immigrants the regime claims are "convicted criminals and 'suspected terrorists,'" by moving their Social Security numbers into the agency's "death master file."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-social-security-immigrants

'Outrageous Abuse of Power': Trump Weaponizes Social Security for Deportation Spree

"The Trump administration this week reportedly classified thousands of immigrants living in the United States as dead in a Social Security database in an effort to force them out of the country, a scheme that was met with furious uproar from advocates and lawmakers.

By entering the names and Social Security numbers of roughly 6,000 immigrants into Social Security's "death master file," the administration has revoked their ability to legally work in the U.S. and receive benefits in a bid to get them to "self-deport," several news outlets reported Thursday.

"This is an outrageous abuse of power," Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement. "It will not only create extreme hardship, but kill people. Imagine, in one Trump administration keystroke, losing your income, your health insurance, access to your bank account, your credit cards, your home, and more."

"If they get away with this, it would be no surprise if they then move on to marking their perceived enemies as dead—citizens and non-citizens alike," Altman added. "This is a total misuse of the dedicated revenue that workers contribute to Social Security, with every paycheck. Though Trump claimed he wouldn't cut benefits, he essentially is by diverting dedicated monies from their intended purpose of paying Social Security benefits to the immoral purpose of maliciously ruining lives."

First off let me start by noting that some, if not the majority of folks targeted by the Trump regime for financial termination are people with valid social security numbers, and while undocumented immigrants can pay into Social Security, they can't collect even when they reach retirement age anyway; so this has nothing to do with migrants stealing benefits, or preventing fraud. Additionally it should be pointed out that while we're being assured that those targeted are all "convicted criminals and "suspected terrorists," our source for that is the very same administration trying to deport student visa holders for traffic tickets and telling you anti-Tesla protestors are "domestic terrorists," so who the fuck knows what that assertion even means anyway; it appears that at least some of the targets are simply people "who were allowed to enter and remain temporarily in the United States under programs instituted by the US president’s predecessor Joe Biden" according to The Guardian.

Finally, it should be understood that this is about a lot more than collecting Social Security benefits in your late 60's; in modern American society you typically need a Social Security number to open a bank account, get a credit card, rent an apartment, obtain health insurance, access car loans, and so forth, so when Dudek says they're trying to "exterminate" the "financial lives" of targeted immigrants, he's only partially employing a metaphor here; the opponents of the plan calling this "digital murder" are absolutely right to do so. This is definitely going to destroy lives and get people killed, and as the article notes the regime is reserving the right to expand the list of targets to "others in the country without authorization," which sounds rather ominous when we're talking about a government that's taken to having Marco Rubio instantly revoke visas and legal status for student protestors before ICE kidnaps them.

All of which means that even if the regime's actions are taken in the best possible light, this is fascist bullshit designed to push a nativist, white nationalist agenda while harming folks the administration deems illegal primarily for their skin tone and place of birth. As both a target of the regime's ongoing anti-trans pogrom, and a student of history however, I can't help but notice an ominous déjà vu quality in all of this. Historically speaking, mass deportations have always lead to mass graves, and when a fascist regime declares you and folks like you legally dead, it's usually because they mean to eventually make that a literal reality.

Thanks to a Trump-appointed judge once again playing legal Simon Says, the Trumpenreich has taken yet another step towards a type of apartheid system and the mass deportation of migrants who overwhelmingly represent no threat to America. Ruling that the rights groups opposing the move have no standing to challenge it, Judge Trevor Neil McFadden has allowed the Trump regime to move forward with a requirement that all noncitizens register with a government hell bent on enacting mass deportations, and carry documentary proof of registration or suffer criminal consequences.

https://apnews.com/article/illegal-immigration-immigrant-registry-trump-homeland-security-329d9b1523792aaf5940f72948d8b48b

Judge allows requirement that everyone in the US illegally must register to move forward

"While questions remain about how the registration requirement will function, its impact is potentially far-reaching. The Trump administration — which has worked to make good on campaign promises of mass deportations — has said between 2.2 million and 3.2 million people could be affected.

One of the groups that sued, the National Immigration Law Center, called the Thursday ruling “disappointing” in a statement.

“This disappointing ruling unfortunately means that, for now, Trump’s scheme to force people into an impossible choice moves forward. As we weigh next steps in our case, we urge affected community members to consult with an immigration attorney to better understand the consequences of registering or not,” said Nicholas Espíritu, deputy legal director at National Immigration Law Center.

Homeland Security officials announced Feb. 25 that it was mandating that all people in the United States illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. Failure to register is considered a crime, and people will be required to carry registration documents with them or risk prison time and fines.

Registration will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older without legal status. People registering have to provide their fingerprints and address, and parents and guardians of anyone under age 14 must ensure they registered."

This one is a little complicated because the Trump administration has argued that this requirement has existed for decades, but just wasn't being enforced. As the article notes, there's some truth to that line of (motivated) reasoning, but the reality is that these rules haven't been enforced since almost immediately after they were introduced in the 1940's because by and large, migrants are *not* a criminal threat to the United States. Furthermore the requirement to provide fingerprints and carry documentation of registration or face *criminal* penalties is as far as I know, a new and disturbing wrinkle the regime has thrown in to make their arguments that they're only deporting "criminals" a de facto reality in retrospect. As any student of history can tell you, if law enforcement can demand "papers, please" and then lock you up for not producing them, what you're talking about is the criminalization of human beings in something akin to an apartheid system, and a racialized legal pretext to arbitrarily detain anyone who *looks like* (this is crucial) they might be a foreign national; since after all, the authorities won't know if you have "papers" until they ask, and not having papers will be treated as a crime until such a time as you can prove that you (even US citizens of the wrong complexion) aren't legally obligated to carry them.

Of course, none of this is happening in a vacuum, and the reality is that no matter what the rules say, this is an openly white nationalist government that has falsely argued migrants don't have *any* Constitutionally protected rights, and have already begun the process of revoking legal status for hundreds if not thousands of people lawfully residing in the United States, while brazenly deploying deportation to engage in fascist ideological policing to target its perceived enemies. This is a regime that hates migrants, does not care if they "follow the rules," is willing to play legal Calvinball to deport literally anyone who isn't white and a natural born citizen, and has overwhelmingly targeted immigrants following the legal process to remain in the US as a sort of "low hanging fruit" to easily generate big numbers of deportations to brag about to its deeply racist base of support. They *are* going to use this registration system to locate and detain migrants for mass deportation, and they know full well you'd have to be some kind of crazy to willingly turn over your location and identity to a nativist regime dead set on bleaching the American population demographics through the force of law. What the administration is doing here is purposely criminalizing migrants to justify more and more repressive crackdowns on folks it has now effectively made truly "illegal."