Celebrities
Ellie Abraham
Mar 15, 2022
LBC
Over the last few weeks, the world has looked on horrified as Russian troops have waged a bloody war on Ukraine and its civilians.
Public figures around the world have condemned the violence and shown their support for the Ukrainian people, but billionaire Elon Musk has struck an odd tone by sharing memes about the war just ten days after showing support.
While the billionaire has offered tangible support for Ukraine by providing the country with satellite internet through SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system, and tweeting on 4 March, writing: “Hold Strong Ukraine", he has also been ridiculed for challenging Putin to physical combat and criticised for the memes.
One meme read, “I support the current thing” with a Ukrainian flag edited onto it.
What happened in 10 days?pic.twitter.com/1ePAo0w0nG— David Weigel (@David Weigel) 1647262129
Washington Post journalist David Weigel posted the side by side of two of Musk’s differing tweets and questioned: “What happened in 10 days?”
In another tweet, Weigel wrote: “I guess the sincere Ukraine position got scanned as cringe so Musk had to reverse-virtue-signal with the NPC meme to recover his based cred.”
Others were also deeply offended by Musk’s distasteful posts. Another meme read: “Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender russian soldier.”
Someone took a screengrab of Musk’s tweet, and wrote: “please log tf off forever.”
please log tf off foreverpic.twitter.com/ijaQvYu1jS— Marlow Stern (@Marlow Stern) 1647247912
Commenting on the pivot, one person wrote: “Ukraine went from a foreign policy problem to the culture war issue of the hour, and a lot of people lost their everliving minds.”
Ukraine went from a foreign policy problem to the culture war issue of the hour, and a lot of people lost their everliving minds.https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1503352450371264518\u00a0\u2026— Martin Skold (@Martin Skold) 1647309581
Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter
Someone else simply said: “he’s such a loser like how are u a billionaire but still trying to impress losers on twitter.”
he\u2019s such a loser like how are u a billionaire but still trying to impress losers on twitterhttps://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1503352450371264518\u00a0\u2026— bean \ud83c\udccf (@bean \ud83c\udccf) 1647294598
Another wrote: “When you’re such an edgelord that you end up trolling yourself. @elonmusk is a clown.”
When you\u2019re such an edgelord that you end up trolling yourself. @elonmusk is a clownhttps://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1503352450371264518\u00a0\u2026— Carolossous8B (@Carolossous8B) 1647290716
The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.
Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
Top 100
The Conversation (0)