Last year, Elon Musk’s son, Xavier, filed legal documents to change his name—not only did he not want anything to do with his wealthy father, he was also transitioning to become “Vivian Jenna Wilson.”
In an upcoming biography of Elon Musk, the entrepreneur opened up about their relationship, or lack thereof, what he blames for his son's worldview, and how it factored into his decision to buy Twitter, now X.
Around the time he began buying shares of the company, Musk told biographer Walter Isaacson his concern about how rapidly the “woke mind virus” was spreading.
“Unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary,” he said.
These feelings were "partly triggered" by Xavier’s transition, Isaacson writes.
When Musk found out, he was generally sanguine, but then Jenna became a fervent Marxist and broke off all relations with him. “She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil,” he says. The rift pained him more than anything in his life since the infant death of his firstborn child Nevada. “I’ve made many overtures,” he says, “but she doesn’t want to spend time with me.” (WSJ)
Musk lay some of the blame for his son's worldview on the progressive school he attended in Los Angeles, Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, which as the New York Post points out, ironically charges up to $50,000 in annual tuition per student.
The story is woven into a lengthy discussion surrounding his decision to purchase Twitter, detailed in an excerpt published exclusively at The Wall Street Journal.
“Twitter, he felt, had become infected by a similar mindset that suppressed right-wing and anti-establishment voices,” Isaacson says, recalling those "stay woke" t-shirts Musk found in a closet at Twitter headquarters and bathroom signs that read, "gender diversity is welcome here.”
The much-anticipated biography is set to hit shelves Sept. 12.