Some Immigrants to the US are a Threat to the American Way of Life

And none of them come from Latin America

When Donald Trump went down that escalator in Trump Tower in New York City as part of the publicity stunt announcing that the was going to run for president in 2015, he railed against immigrants to the United States. He said that Mexico weren’t sending their best immigrants but instead they were sending rapists, drug dealers, and other criminals. Since that time the Republicans have been complaining about immigration to the US and how this country must seal the southern border with Mexico (and, yes, it’s always the southern border—you will never hear similar calls to seal the northern border with Canada) and how immigrants are criminals who are a direct threat to the American way of life.

They have a point to some extent. There are some immigrants who really are a direct threat to the American way of life. But they are not Mexicans who are fleeing the poverty of their home villages nor Venezuelans who are fleeing an authoritarian dictatorship. They are immigrants who are all white men and they were already wealthy when they first came to the US and received American citizenship. Now they are taking advantage of the civil freedoms that America has given them by actively trying to destroy American values and ideals for their own vision of a United States that sounds like one of those dystopian societies that are described in novels like 1984 or The Hunger Games. There are four such individuals that I want to highlight here: Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel.

Rupert Murdoch

At the age of 93 Murdoch is the oldest of the immigrants profiled here. He was born in Australia in 1931. His father, Keith, founded the Murdoch media empire known as News Corporation. After Keith’s death in 1952 Rupert took over running his father’s company then expanded it to include more newspapers in both Australia and New Zealand. When he hungered for more, he set his sights on the United Kingdom where he purchased more publications, including many of the tabloids like The Sun and News of the World and regular newspapers like The Times and The Sunday Times.

When that wasn’t enough to satisfy Murdoch’s capitalist appetites, he decided to turn to the United States. He initially purchased The San Antonio Express-News then went on to purchase The New York Post. In 1984 he went into entertainment when he purchased 20th Century Fox film studio and Metromedia television stations. He decided to use those purchases to create a new television network, the first new network established in the United States since the demise of the old DuMont Network in 1956.

There were problems when he attempted to create his new TV network—as an Australian citizen he couldn’t own American television stations. He solved that problem by becoming a US citizen in 1985 and he has been an American citizen ever since. Years later he would have a similar dilemma when he found that many American fund managers were leery about investing in News Corporation because it was based outside of the United States. Murdoch solved that problem by moving the headquarters of the News Corporation from its longtime home in Adelaide, Australia to the United States. So the American fund managers felt more comfortable about investing in News Corporation.

Murdoch launched the new Fox Network, which had success with shows like Married…With Children, The Simpsons, The X-Files, In Living Color, MAD TV, Family Guy, Futurama, and a whole bunch of other shows.

But he really began to turn on his adopted country when he decided to create a new cable channel known as Fox News that would compete with ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. Fox News became notorious for being a right-wing channel. The vast majority of right-wing media personalities (such as Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Laura Ingraham, Jessie Watters, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity) had gotten their start towards far right-wing fame on Fox News. In time Fox News began to influence the Republican Party while blatantly promoting Republican and far-right talking points on the air.

One study suggests that those who frequently watch Fox News aren't just misinformed—they are literally being made ignorant through Fox News’ use of propaganda and misinformation. There are stories about how frequent and prolonged viewing of Fox News without watching other news channels or even seeking out alternative news sources online had brainwashed people to the point where they are alienated from their own family members. There are accusations that Fox News has taken the racism and white supremacy that has already existed in the US and amplified it to the point where people became more angry and xenophobic after watching Fox News for several hours per day. As Anand Giridharadas wrote in his own Substack post:

It’s very hard to rebut and fact-check and out-argue and deprogram these men who fell prey to Rupert Murdoch’s profit lust.

But when you see an older white guy [vice presidential candidate Tim Walz] who is just happy and can’t wait for the future — wow. It is going to burrow deep into many people with lost relatives.

When Donald Trump began his run for office in 2015 Fox News gave Trump a huge amount of airtime compared to other politicians who ran that year—both Democrat and Republican. Despite Murdoch's preferred candidate being elected that year, it has been said that Murdoch had soured on Trump so much that he loathes Trump and wishes that he was dead.

Despite his loathing of Trump, his Fox News had amplified Trump's claim that the 2020 election was rigged so much that Fox News was sued by Dominion Voting Systems. Ultimately Fox agreed to pay Dominion a whopping $787 million settlement.

On top of it, Rupert Murdoch has been close with Vladimir Putin since 2000 when he purchased a Russian billboard company. For years he allowed Tucker Carlson to parrot Russian propaganda on his Fox News show. It was only when Fox News made that huge settlement with Dominion after it was revealed that Tucker Carlson was among the Fox News hosts who promoted Trump's claim that the 2020 election was rigged was Carlson finally fired.

Despite all that Murdoch apparently still has a fondness for all things Russian. A few months ago the 93-year-old Murdoch got married for the fifth time. His new wife, 67-year-old Elena Zhukova, is a retired Russian biologist and the ex-wife of Russian oil billionaire Alexander Zhukov.

The one thing about Rupert Murdoch that sets him apart from the other immigrants listed here is that he was never a part of the PayPal Mafia.

Elon Musk

PayPal Mafia member Elon Musk founded an online bank called X.com (not to be confused with the letter that he rebranded Twitter with and he now calls X.com), which later merged with Confinity to create PayPal, the popular online payment platform. He not only owns the social media platform formerly known as Twitter but he also owns Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, OpenAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

I previously wrote about the 53-year-old South African-born immigrant but he's done more since then. Elon Musk was reportedly among those who convinced Donald Trump to choose J.D. Vance as his running mate. Musk subsequently endorsed Donald Trump for president and soon afterwards he had engaged in disinformation by sharing on his Twitter/X account an AI-generated video of Kamala Harris that also used AI to mimic her voice. That video seemed to violate his own platform's policy against sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media.” Musk later claimed that his video was a “parody.”

Twitter/X would later suspend an account affiliated with a fundraising drive known as “White Dudes For Harris.”

Twitter/X's AI chatbot known as Grok has been accused of spreading false election information.

The worst of his antics concerns his America PAC website. America PAC decided to launch an online voter registration drive. However it's not your typical voter registration drive. If you use America PAC to register to vote and you live in a regular non-competitve state, you will get directed to your state's voter registration page once you input your zip code.

On the other hand, if you input your zip code and you live in a battleground state where the voting is expected to be competitive and tight, the site will ask you for your name, full street address, and phone number. If you enter the information you'll be directed to a page that says “Thank you for taking the first step to register to vote…Please complete the form below and we will help you complete your registration.” However there is no form below on that page so you won't know if you've really registered to vote or not when you first input your personal information. Of course it raises questions as to what does Musk and America PAC plan to do with all that personal information that it has collected from people living in the battleground states.

It looks like an attempt to interfere with the election in such a way that Trump will win. Recently election officials in North Carolina and Michigan have announced that they are launching an investigation into America PAC.

If all that weren’t enough, this week Musk hosted a live interview with Donald Trump on his Twitter/X platform, which was plagued with all kinds of technical problems that left some users unable to tune in. All I can say is don't hold your breath waiting for Musk to do the same with Kamala Harris because it will never happen.

Then there is Musk’s continued siding with Vladimir Putin and Russia. He has said that the US should stop helping Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invasion. The Pentagon is currently investigating one of Musk’s other companies, SpaceX, regarding the fact that a number of Starlink terminals have become available on the black market in Russia.

Meanwhile Musk’s embrace of Donald Trump along his frequent shitposting about his embrace of far-right issues on Twitter/X is having an effect on his bottom line. Sales of his Tesla electric cars are declining while the number of daily users of Twitter/X has declined 23 percent since Musk bought the social media platform in October 2022. It seems like many people would prefer not to deal with any company that's owned by an overgrown manchild whose emotional maturity seems to be permanently stuck at the mental age of 12.

David Sacks

Like Elon Musk the 52-year-old David Sacks was also born in South Africa. Like Musk Sacks also immigrated to the US. (He was five years old when he moved with his family.) Like Musk Sacks also involved in the early creation of PayPal (he eventually became the chief operating officer) and he is considered to be part of the PayPal Mafia.

Sacks has a few other things in common with Musk. He is a supporter of Donald Trump and he was among those who convinced Trump to select J.D. Vance as his running mate. He also doesn't hesitate to go after Kamala Harris using ridicule. (I hate to break it to Sacks but most Americans aren't paranoid about another potential Cuban Missile Crisis like he is.)

Sacks believes that unregulated cryptocurrency will somehow lead to more innovation in the US. He is such a big fan of cryptocurrency that he gave it as a reason why he supports Donald Trump.

Sacks’ politics is a blend of isolationism, Trumpist nationalism, suspicion of the mythical deep state, increasing the alarm about the supposed rise in urban crime in many cities across the US, and advocating criminal crackdowns on the homeless.

Like Musk Sacks has also sided with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Sacks has denigrated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a beggar.

He also made this totally wrong prediction that Ukraine will be destroyed and it will be defeated soon.

That tweet has quickly aged very poorly because just days after Sacks posted it, Ukraine made an incursion into Russia and took over the border region of Kursk.

Maybe David Sacks needs to stick with business and technology and stay out of politics.

Peter Thiel

The 56-year-old Thiel was also an immigrant but he was born in Germany. His family moved to the United States in 1968 when Thiel was one year old and they initially settled in Cleveland, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. The family moved around a lot because of his father’s job and in 1977 the family moved to South Africa and what is now Namibia for a few years. The family eventually moved back to the US where Thiel attended middle school, high school, and Stanford University.

Thiel was one of the co-founders of what is now PayPal and he is a member of the PayPal Mafia along with Elon Musk and David Sacks. Even though he became a US citizen, Thiel seems to take a dim view of the US system of democracy. He once famously wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” In that same essay he also took a dim view of women’s suffrage.

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

His version of free enterprise doesn’t include hundreds of small businesses. He coauthored a book called Zero to One, which advocated that entrepreneurs should aspire to create monopolies.

Peter Thiel is a backer of Rumble, a video hosting platform that’s a right-wing alternative to YouTube and it contains pro-Putin and pro-Trump propaganda that also has plenty of conspiracy theories, anti-semitism, racism, and misogyny.

He is also the one who has made the political career of Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance. Peter Thiel hired Vance to work at his global investment firm in 2017. When Vance felt ready to strike out on his own, he moved back to his native Ohio in 2019 where Thiel backed Vance’s own venture capitalist firm. Thiel then financed Vance’s successful campaign for the US Senate in 2022. Thiel was among those who successfully convinced Donald Trump to take on J.D. Vance as his running mate.

The Last Word on These Immigrants

To paraphrase Donald Trump's infamous 2015 “I'm running for president” speech at Trump Tower, Australia, Germany, and South Africa really weren't sending their best when Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel immigrated to the US and became American citizens.

I'm not saying that immigrants to the US shouldn't do anything that could potentially benefit American society as a whole. American medicine, research, politics, technology, and culture would be way poorer without contributions from immigrants. But if you immigrate to the United States then proceed to put all of your time, effort, and money into turning it into an authoritarian system because you prefer to live under a dictatorship, then maybe the US isn't the right fit for you. Perhaps you would be better off living in an authoritarian country like Russia or China.

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