“Free Jacob Chansley.” Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has called for justice for “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley, as new video evidence has confirmed that Chansley was acting peacefully in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and was escorted around by friendly police. Another video shows that he then urged his fellow protesters to leave the Capitol as soon as Trump tweeted that they should do so. In light of this evidence, it sure seems that Chansley’s sentence of over three years in prison is unjust.
Free Jacob Chansley https://t.co/8BbeXF2Fye
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2023
As good as it is that Musk is calling for justice for Chansley, who is among the Jan. 6 protesters being treated worse than terrorists in jail, Musk shouldn’t stop there. Musk, who is heavily invested in his Tesla China branch, should also be urging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to free the Uyghurs, their religious prisoners (such as Chinese Catholics and Falun Gong), and the political prisoners who have been jailed or put in camps in unknown numbers. But Musk won’t do that, because he’s too beholden to the CCP—and he wants increased CCP support.
Chansley got 4 years in prison for a non-violent, police-escorted tour!?
Dave Chapelle was violently assaulted on stage by a guy with a knife. That guy got a $3000 fine & no prison time. https://t.co/qDRWxozD8B
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2023
Musk has made his attitude toward the CCP pretty clear. For instance, he wrote an Aug. 2022 article for China Cyberspace, which is “run by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the central agency for internet control and regulation,” according to Beijing Channel and The Post Millennial. In the piece, Musk urged “more like-minded Chinese partners to join us in exploring clean energy, artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration, and space exploration.” Musk described his AI, robot, brain microchip, space, and “green” energy projects in the piece, which was published, as noted above, in an official CCP state publication. CAC oversees the CCP’s authoritarian censorship regime.
Musk also said in Oct. 2022 that Taiwan should belong to the CCP, even though Taiwan is a free and sovereign nation, and he was praised for his propagandizing by CCP state media. Right after Musk’s Taiwan comments, the CCP reportedly gave Tesla tax-exempt status in China.
In China, every major business is directly answerable to and surveilled by the CCP, meaning that Tesla China will be allowed to prosper only as long as Musk praises the CCP and ignores its status as the greatest mass murderer of all time. China practices “civil-military fusion,” where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the Chinese military.
Among the CCP’s many recent or ongoing crimes are the genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, cultural genocide against Tibetans, the harsh persecution of Chinese Christians, disastrous and deadly COVID-19 lockdowns, and the recent crackdown on anti-regime protesters that was reportedly so bad it was called “Tiananmen 2.0.”
It is certainly praiseworthy that Musk is calling to “Free Jacob Chansley.” But he also ought to be calling to “Free the Uyghurs.”
