I thought the prize for the most ridiculous reaction to Elon Musk’s new trillionaire status had already been claimed by The Globe and Mail, which on Thursday published an op-ed titled, “The SpaceX IPO Makes Elon Musk the First Trillionaire. Here’s How to Properly Hate Him.” One reader pointed out the irony in the situation: the media outlet is “owned by Canada’s wealthiest billionaire family, all of whom inherited their wealth.”
Remarkably, the antisemitic Marxist streamer Hasan Piker, who believes that America deserved 9/11, and whose name — particularly since New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s November victory — is suddenly everywhere, managed to do just that.
Piker delivered a characteristically ludicrous assessment of the SpaceX founder, whose paper net worth topped $1 trillion after SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history in its Friday debut on the Nasdaq.
Trying desperately to sound profound, the current darling of the Left began: “Meritocracy is a lie. Lying is OP [gamer slang for “overpowered”]. And money is fake. This story that we are watching unfold in front of us is a great example of all three of those classic Hasan Minhaj tropes that I advance over and over again. Okay?
He continued:
Elon Musk is a f***ing failure and yet, in spite of his failures, because he lucked into a, uh, initial — because he happened to be at the right place at the right time, he has failed upwards with his endless wealth. He’s a horrible person, an unbelievably insecure person, and yet he’s the richest person on the planet. Right? We know he doesn’t f***ing work hard because he tweets all the goddamn time.
The sheer absurdity of Piker’s remarks is impossible to overstate. His attempt to portray Musk as a failure requires ignoring decades of extraordinary accomplishments. Musk helped build PayPal into a major success, transformed Tesla from a niche electric vehicle startup into one of the world’s most valuable companies, founded SpaceX and turned it into the dominant force in commercial spaceflight, and launched multiple other successful ventures along the way.
Anyone with a brain recognizes that these achievements are incompatible with any reasonable definition of failure. Piker’s claim is so detached from reality that it borders on self-parody.
Piker’s comments are less a political argument than an expression of resentment masquerading as analysis — a string of assertions that sound insightful to his followers but quickly unravel under examination.
In reality, Piker’s words are a case study in the politics of envy — a sentiment that has been on full display in the days leading up to, and following, the SpaceX IPO.
Needless to say, the Twitch streamer quickly became a target himself, as critics unimpressed by his pseudo-intellectual posturing were eager to highlight some of the glaring contradictions and vulnerabilities in his own record.
One X user posted that Piker was “born into an incredibly rich family, he never had to earn anything. His uncle [Cenk Uygur] gave him his platform which destiny helped boost.”
Fact check: Both true. Piker grew up in a wealthy and highly influential family in Turkey. His father, Mehmet Behçet Piker, was the vice president and a member of the board of directors for Sabancı Holding, one of Turkey’s largest business conglomerates.
And Uygur, the founder and host of the progressive online news network The Young Turks, is his uncle, and that’s precisely where Piker began his career.
https://x.com/brotherharryy/status/2065647037115183447?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Other comments were impossible to confirm, but interesting nonetheless.
https://x.com/_WTF_1111/status/2065642680416100474?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://x.com/NeverMi49223793/status/2065663726372418043?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://x.com/Lorien2733/status/2065985719588282412?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Other leftists, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Stacey reported on her reaction here), Bernie Sanders, and Ed Markey, spent the weekend floating ideas for how Musk’s wealth might be redistributed to fund everything from “free” college to subsidized childcare.
In the end, Piker’s rant serves as a reminder that envy is often mistaken for insight. Rather than engaging with Musk’s accomplishments, he dismissed them as luck, attacked his character, and declared success itself to be fraudulent. It’s an argument that may earn applause from an online audience predisposed to hate Musk, but it is unlikely to persuade anyone capable of distinguishing between resentment and reason.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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