We’ve all had an employer from hell, but few have ever been threatened before a new boss took up their position. As Donald Trump’s presidency approaches, government employees are feeling the icy chill of incompetence looming over them – and at least one incoming “official” willing to can workers via X.com.
In another clear-cut example of “rules for thee and not for me,” Elon Musk hopped on his social media platform to repost the names of employees he’s deemed extraneous – and of course the meme-lord is doing no actual research before tossing them out.
Donald Trump appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, named after a satirical cryptocurrency Musk enthusiastically endorsed in early the 2010s. Despite the entire organization’s development hinging on a stupid internet joke, the agency has promised to gut the Federal Government and ax any position the pair of businessmen find wanting.
As January marches ever closer, the duo is laying out more concrete plans for what they want to accomplish. Spoiler alert: it sounds a lot like what Musk did with the site formerly known as Twitter. From dismantling the Department of Education and stripping money away from Public Broadcasting to slashing the budget of the Department of Defense, the pair has devised a way to cut back on national spending – even if they have no idea what the nearly 2 million civil servants do.
Musk, a well-known purveyor of garbage internet memes and disinformation, used X.com to repost a screenshot from a totally-legit-and-not-at-all-suspicious account that rained fire down on several federal employees. He shared the image with his millions of followers with the caption, “So many fake jobs,” referencing the Director of Climate Diversification listed in the PLUM database. The position focuses on developing diverse strategies to reduce climate change and its impacts, not demographic or hiring diversity but per usual, Musk and his brain-dead internet lackeys don’t care.
To be fair, sharing the information wasn’t actually doxxing. Government employees work for the public, and their information is readily available if you know where to look, but most people don’t have the wherewithal to dig through mountains of data. The tactic is clearly intended to terrify these employees out of their positions. If DOGE engages in mass firings, those employees qualify for unemployment. If they leave on their own, then Uncle Sam gets off scot-free.
Nothing says fascism like political violence, and while Elon Musk is calling for mass layoffs rather than death, posting your targets’ names and places of business is a surefire way to get someone harassed. The richest man in the world might not allow an independent X.com account to track his movement, but he’ll share the information of anyone he deems extraneous – and his influence continues to grow.