Elon Musk Is Just Don Juan de Oñate With WiFi

I have just arrived in Austin, which means I now share a city with a certain South African tech billionaire whose idea of legacy involves turning a communications platform into a digital dumpster fire, mumbling about Mars, doing potbellied jumping jacks for MAGA, and posting memes like a divorced Reddit dad on ‘shrooms.

And let’s acknowledge what history’s been broadcasting for over 400 years:

This isn’t new.

We’ve seen this play before.

Different stupid hat. Same stupid hubris.

Because Elon Musk?

He’s just Don Juan de Oñate in a Cybertruck with slightly worse hair.

Colonizer Starter Pack: Wealth, Narcissism, and a Bible

Let’s rewind. Juan de Oñate—Spanish conquistador, born in New Spain in 1550, son of a colonizer-slash-mining-magnate in Zacatecas, heir to the violent fantasy that you can manifest destiny by force. He rolls up into Tewa indigenous land in what’s now New Mexico, plants a flag, flashes a cross, and starts swinging Catholicism like a broadsword.

His vibe? "6’1, into empire, not here to make friends." Every colonizer's Tinder bio from that era, minus a few inches.

Then came the Acoma Massacre in 1599. Oñate ordered the slaughter of hundreds of Acoma Pueblo people after a Spanish soldier was killed by the Acoma because he raped their matriarch. Survivors were enslaved. And—just to send a message—Oñate ordered the feet of all Acoma men literally chopped off.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Because he, like Musk, was a sadistic fuck.

And because every colonizer needs a hype man, Oñate hires a dude named Gaspar de Villagrá to write an epic poem glorifying him, in hopes everyone back in Spain would read it. Eleven. Thousand. Lines. Of fawning, pooly-written colonial fanfic. It’s called A History of New Mexico, but it’s mostly pure bullshit. Scholars now call it the worst thing ever written in the Spanish language. Think Musk’s tweets, but with more rhyming and fewer Pepe memes.

But here’s the twist: Oñate eventually failed.

His rule was a mess. The Spanish Crown charged him with crimes against humanity (before that phrase even existed), stripped him of all titles and most of his money, put him in prison for a spell, then deported his sorry ass back to Spain.

His statues? Toppled.

His poems? Cringe.

His empire? Ashes.

The man who tried to buy his legacy with violence and verse ended up disgraced and mostly forgotten—until descendants of the people he tried to erase started telling the truth.

Fast-Forward 400 Years to the TechnOñate

Enter: Elon Musk.

Apartheid baby. Apartheid emeralds. Apartheid mindset.

Born into wealth in South Africa under a white supremacist regime, son of, yes, a mining magnate who made his fortune off enslaving the locals, Musk brought that same colonizer energy into the digital age. Only now the silver mine is an emerald mine, and the missionary work is sold as "saving humanity" from melanin.

He didn’t invent Tesla.

He didn’t invent PayPal.

He didn’t invent Twitter.

He bought those things.

Like every rich white psychopath with a God complex and a wallet full of daddy’s sins.

A stunted adolescent in a dumpy middle-aged man suit, he bought Twitter to cosplay as Tony Stark and then ran it into the ground like it was a 1996 Dodge Neon with no oil.

He posts Nazi memes. Parrots the Great Replacement Theory—a white supremacist fantasy that claims white people are being “replaced” by immigrants and people of color—like it’s a TED Talk. Amplifies hate speech while whining about “cancel culture” from a $90 billion megaphone.

If that’s not white Christian supremacy in a graphic tee, I don’t know what is.

And just like Oñate, he’s obsessed with controlling the narrative.

That’s what X really is.

Not a business.

Not a platform.

A mirror.

But both men, being epically incoherent, were/are incapable of recognizing a pitifully bad narrative when they see one.

Musk wanted a place to rewrite his own myth in real time. But instead of a loyal poet writing heroic verse, he got community notes, advertisers ghosting him like a Tinder match, and Tesla stock crashing harder than his rockets.

Inept Empire Builders

Let’s call it what it is:

Neither of these men was good at what they claimed to do.

• Oñate couldn’t hold a colony together.

• Musk can’t run a social platform, maintain a safe factory floor, or stop tweeting like a coked-up teenage boy who just learned what a meme is.

They weren’t visionary geniuses.

They built their “empires” with stolen tools.

They mistook cruelty for competence.

And when the consequences arrived?

They cried persecution.

Boo hoo.

So What’s Musk’s Endgame? Ask Oñate.

Oñate thought he was building a dynasty.

He ended up broke, in court, and exiled to obscurity.

That’s the map.

That’s the forecast.

That’s the vibe.

Because Musk’s empire is already fraying:

• Tesla's Tumbling Fortunes: Tesla's brand value has plummeted by 26%, dropping from $58.3 billion to $43 billion. This decline has been exacerbated by global protests and consumer boycotts linked to Musk's political activities.

• Neuralink's Ethical Quandaries: Neuralink has come under federal investigation for alleged animal welfare violations, with reports indicating significant concerns over the treatment of test subjects. ​

• X's Identity Crisis: The platform formerly known as Twitter, now rebranded as X, is experiencing a significant decline in user engagement and brand value, reflecting broader public disillusionment with Musk's ventures. ​

• The American people hate DOGE almost as much as they hate cybertrucks, and Trump is already feeling the heat and seems to have asked Musk to step away from it.

These developments underscore a pattern: privileged and pathologically mediocre sociopaths failing upward, leaving a trail of exploitation, ethical breaches, and societal harm in their wake.​

And the guy still thinks colonizing Mars will be easier than hiring a functioning HR department, despite his SpaceX rockets being more prone to exploding than Ford Pintos in the 1970s.

But the fall won’t come all at once. It never does.

It’ll come like Oñate’s did:

Slowly. Then all at once.

Through “friends” turning about him. Through lawsuits. Through losses.
Through people finally refusing to worship at the altar of anti-charisma and cash.

No cavalry is coming.

No AI Messiah.

No triumphant Mars utopia.

Just a long, humiliating reckoning for a man who built his legacy on lies and vibes.

Legacy Isn’t Bought. It’s Earned—or Torn Down.

Oñate’s statues are falling.

Musk’s mask is slipping.

And the most important thing we can do now?

Stop pretending these men were geniuses or, frankly, good at anything.

They were con men with subpar PR and a shit-ton of money.

Colonizers in different costumes.

And history, if we do it right, will remember them both not for what they built—but for what they broke.

PS: Read All About It

My new novel, WHERE RABBITS GATHERED, tells the story of what happened after Oñate arrived in my home state of New Mexico—the first hundred years of Spanish colonization in Tewa country, told through the eyes of the people who endured, resisted, and survived it. I’m descended from three men who were on Oñate’s expedition, but let me be thoroughly clear: I’m not proud of this.

This novel is me, apologizing for what my ancestors did.

It’s historical fiction with teeth.

No white saviors. No fantasy. Just truth, memory, and the stories we were never meant to inherit.

Out April 22 everywhere books are sold, from Tome Hill Press.