New Republic slaps 'Scoundrel of the Year’ title on X owner Elon Musk, calls him ‘evil’, 'deeply hateful'

tech.hindustantimes.com:

In a shocking development, the American magazine, the New Republic has crowned X owner Elon Musk as ‘The Scoundrel of the Year'. In a long article liberally seeded with choice name-calling, the magazine charted out the actions and decisions made by the billionaire in 2023 that got his this dubious award. The New Republic said, “He proved this year that he's not just evil but deeply stupid too”. This comes after Musk made the headlines recently for posting anti-semitic comments on X, which led to multiple advertisers boycotting the platform and also using expletives during a live interview.

Awarding Musk the controversial title, the publication highlighted all his decisions made after taking over Twitter as the reason why. The magazine added, “It is hard to think of a billionaire who has done more to damage their own reputation in such a short period of time”.

In particular, the magazine highlighted Musk's move to invite back Alex Jones and Donald Trump, controversial figures who were banned from the platform for making hateful and inciting posts. The magazine claimed that behind the billionaire's real intentions of calling X “a town square” and spreading the notion of free speech was so that he could voice his own hateful opinions. “He sees Twitter as a weapon, a way to not only push his agenda but to sic his army of loyalist losers on anyone he deems an enemy,” the magazine added.

The magazine also made a call back to his appearance at the New York Times' DeaBook event, where Musk used expletives to describe the advertisers that were boycotting X, and even said that they are the reason that the platform will shut down and people will remember it as their fault.

While the magazine highlighted some of the incidents where Musk