Why Did Fascists Punch Elon Musk?
Elon tried to fit in. They punched him in the face. Here's why.
Elon Musk showed up with a black eye this week.
At first, he said it was because his toddler son — X Æ A-12 — punched him. Now, I don’t know your toddler, but most can barely stack blocks, let alone deliver a shiner like a welterweight. Also, I’m pretty sure if your kid’s name is X Æ A-12 and you carry him on your shoulders to stop assassins from shooting you in the head, there are bigger parenting discussions to be had.
But sure. Blame the baby.
Then, surprise! Newsweek and The Daily Beast reported the real story: Musk was punched in the face at a Trump donor event, by hedge fund guy and Trump adviser Scott Bessent. Right there in the middle of the MAGA mixer. Bam. At the same time, new video and insider testimony is suddenly leaked, showing that Musk was high AF on a cocktail of ketamine, ecstasy and Godknowswhatelse the entire time he was gutting the National Parks Service, stealing your social security data and taking away your meemaw’s Medicare.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve officially entered the ‘dumb jocks shoving the robotics club president into the lockers’ phase of the movement.
And now — in what I’m sure was purely coincidental timing — Musk has announced he is leaving the Trump administration.
Voluntarily, of course. Totally his idea. No, no — he’s simply moving on, he says. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s unlikely a guy so desperate to fit in with these newfangled Nazis — so much so he spent recent holidays hanging around Mar-a-Lago like a stepchild no one ordered, hoping someone would invite him to the cool table — would just walk away.
My dudes, he was pushed out the door.
Except it was less a push than a punch in the face.
Trumpism: Not Just About Ideas or Competence. It’s About Aesthetics.
Let’s be clear: MAGA has ideas. They’re stupid, hateful ones — authoritarian, misogynist, racist, anti-intellectual, violent — but ideas nonetheless.
The issue is that within Trumpworld, how you look while pushing those ideas matters more than how smart or strategic you are. It’s theater. It’s dominance posturing.
It’s also not about qualifications or competence whilst being a Nazi. If it were, there would be zero people left in the administration at all. No, friends. It’s about whether you look cool and successful to stupid people.
If you can sell cruelty while looking like a Fox News anchor, you’re golden. If you sell it while looking like you just hacked the Pentagon in a hoodie and Jerry Seinfeld’s black skinny jeans, you’re a liability.
Elon Musk walked into this theater dressed like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation tour bus crashed into a coding convention. And then made it worse by carrying that poor machine-generated-password–named kid around high-level meetings like an emotional support laptop plus gladiator shield.
The expulsion of Elon Musk isn’t about ideology or competence. It’s about vibes.
The Halo Effect: Pretty People Get Passes
Psychologists call it the halo effect — the human tendency to believe attractive, polished people are smarter, better, more trustworthy.
A 1991 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin confirmed this bias across cultures. A 2011 study showed it’s even stronger in authoritarian movements, where visual dominance signals status and power.
In authoritarian movements, being weird is the one thing they will not forgive. This is why, for a time, the Harris campaign’s “they’re weird” campaign seemed to work, a little.
In Trumpworld, this “vibe over substance” is why Kristi Noem — an extremist who literally shot her own puppy and has the dead eyes of a sedated alligator — still gets invites. She looks the part, to dumbasses: Fox News glam, ice-cold poise. Even if she DOES hold her gun wrong.
Musk? Not so much. His herky-jerky movements are off. He does awkward jumping jacks for no reason, his soft white underbelly pouting and jiggling with a total lack of decorum. His speech patterns don’t match the room. He publicly admits drug use, and zones out in cabinet meetings like Woody Harrelson on an ayahuasca vision quest. He’s openly autistic. And in a movement that fetishizes alpha vibes, visible neurodivergence and desperate-to-be-loved vulnerability are a flashing “OTHER” sign.
He’s off-brand. He freaks the tribe out.
And when THIS tribe gets freaked out? They cannibalize.
And Now They’re Literally Punching the Nerd
So what happens? They punched him. In public. At a donor event.
This wasn’t about policy differences. This was dominance policing — an old-fashioned, primate-court ritual: “You don’t belong here.”
And let’s remember, this is after Musk spent the last year trying to perform MAGA cool — platforming Nazis, turning X/Twitter into a sewer, inserting himself into Trump’s world like the overeager new kid at lunch.
Didn’t matter. His vibes were off. He kept dragging a toddler to international meetings with men who think children are for women. He kept dressing like the world’s most annoying nightclub bouncer. And in a crowd obsessed with aesthetic conformity, that was enough.
Fascism Is a Beauty Pageant
Hannah Arendt called it: authoritarian movements run on staged aesthetics.
From Mussolini to Trump, it’s about visual cues of power and belonging. Uniforms, lighting, posture. Today? It’s the Real Housewives of Hades aesthetic: Botox, bronzer, designer labels, weaponized smiles.
Trump himself — a Jack-o’-lantern in a $10,000 suit — understands this. He may be grotesque, but he knows to surround himself with hot people, sharp suits, media-pretty faces. He pays less attention to his uglier kids. He’s THAT guy.
Musk didn’t fit the frame.
And now that he’s no longer useful — no longer pulling in cash or followers — they’ve made it clear: you’re out, nerd.
Why This Signals Deeper Rot
When authoritarian movements start purging based on vibes, it signals instability.
The Trump machine is heading into an election year drowning in court cases, scandals, and public fatigue.
And Musk — with his public weirdness, black eye, and messy side quests — became bad for the brand. So they decided to do what every sociopathic narcissist does when they fuck up: Blame Someone Weaker.
But this won’t stop with Musk. Authoritarian movements always eat their own. As image policing ramps up, watch for more “off-brand” MAGA figures to get the boot next.
My money’s on Bannon.
The Deepest Truth
Trumpworld isn’t failing because it lacks ideas. It’s failing because it’s a court of bullies performing dominance in HD — and courts like this eventually implode under the weight of their own performance anxiety.
Elon Musk didn’t get punched because he was wrong — though he WAS every kind of wrong. He got punched because he was visibly, inescapably weird in a world that rewards polished cruelty.
And fascists fear nothing more than weirdness they can’t control.
Or toddlers they can’t control, apparently.
But that’s another story.
If you value my own brand of weirdness…
…please consider becoming a paid subscriber to ALISA WRITES. It helps me keep doing this work — with humor, bite, and no allegiance to any side but truth.
And unlike certain billionaires, I promise never to blame the baby.
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Hmm. Looks more like Phase 2 to me. The moment Elon is gone, Trump brings in Palantir to pick up the pieces. Given that Musk--like Vance--is really just a surrogate for Thiel, we are most likely witnessing a planned transition rather than a spontaneous event.
I wonder if this will turn into a Revenge of the Nerds scenario when the rest of the weird tech bros start to see the writing on the wall.