We here at Whatfinger News have complete respect for Elon Musk, even as our own, such as Steve Bannon rail against him. In the grand theater of modern culture wars, few figures loom larger than Elon Musk—the rocket-riding, tweet-slinging, meme-lord billionaire who's turned X (formerly Twitter) into his personal Excalibur against what he calls the "woke mind virus." It's a term that's become his battle cry, a digital scarlet letter for everything from cancel culture to corporate DEI mandates, and it's not just hyperbole, it's a full-throated vow to eradicate what Musk sees as a civilization-eating ideology. Picture this: A man who builds electric cars and starships, now waging holy war on pronouns and "safe spaces." It's equal parts hilarious and heroic—like watching Tony Stark pivot from arc reactors to anti-woke therapy sessions. But beneath the snark, Musk's obsession reveals a deeper fear: that this "virus" isn't just annoying, it's existential, a meme-like contagion that could doom humanity faster than a rogue asteroid. Musk first unleashed the phrase in late 2021, amid Twitter's pre-Musk censorship frenzy, tweeting "traceroute woke_mind_virus" as if debugging society's firmware glitch. 

By 2023, it had evolved into a full manifesto. In a HBO sit-down with Bill Maher, Musk stammered through a definition: "anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that results in the suppression of free speech." Maher, no stranger to woke whacks himself, pressed for clarity, and Musk likened it to a "mind virus" propagating via social media—divisive identity politics that "amplifies racism, sexism, and all the -isms while claiming to do the opposite." It's not subtle: For Musk, wokeness isn't enlightenment, it's a zombie apocalypse for reason, turning smart people into scolds who prioritize feelings over facts. As he told Jordan Peterson in a two-hour barn-burner, it's "deadly" because it infects institutions—from Hollywood scripts to HR departments—forcing conformity over competence.

The personal sting? Musk's war got nuclear in 2024 when he revealed it "killed" his son. His transgender child, Vivian Jenna Wilson (formerly Xavier), transitioned amid the pandemic, a process Musk claims was "incredibly evil" and manipulated by "woke" counselors. "My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus," he lamented, vowing to "destroy" it like a SpaceX rocket shedding boosters. It's raw, rage-fueled rocket fuel: What started as gripes about Twitter bots morphed into a crusade against gender ideology, which Musk sees as the virus's crown jewel—pushing kids into irreversible changes under the guise of compassion. Critics call it transphobic projection, but Musk frames it as parental horror: "Adults manipulating children into believing they are the wrong gender."