It’s been a whirlwind week. Musk was in China. He met Donald Trump. They talked about AI. Trade. Manufacturing. Then, back home, a jury killed his lawsuit against OpenAI. He lost. Unanimously.
But did this stop him? No. He found time. Plenty of it. To scream about Hollywood casting. Specifically, he hates that Lupita Nyong’o will play Helen of Troy. In Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey.
Matt Walsh started this fire on X. The conservative commentator argued it’s hypocritical to accept a Black woman as the “face that launched a thousand ships.” But cast a white woman as the most beautiful person in an African-set movie, and people would riot. He named Sydney Sweeney. Said she’d be driven to “murderous violence” if she got such a role.
Musk agreed. “Absolutely true,” he tweeted. “Such hypocrisy.”
He kept going for days. Screenshot after screenshot. He called it “desecration.” He’s been ranting since January. About The Odyssey. And he’s just as upset by the rumor that Elliot Page might play the Ghost of Achilles. He called that “twisted.” And “dumb.”
Is this new? Not really. Conservatives love to fight casting calls. Look at The Little Mermaid. Halle Bailey was black. People hated it. Rachel Zegler in Snow White? Backlash. Rings of Power featuring Black elves? Same thing. These fans want the past to stay white. Always.
But Helen of Troy isn’t real. Neither is Achilles. They are myths. Fables. Stories with Cyclopes and sea monsters with six heads. History suggests the Trojan War happened. Maybe in Bronze Age Anatolia. But the characters? Invented.
Musk doesn’t care. He thinks it’s a plot.
He replied “True” to a post calling The Odyssey a left-wing attempt to destroy Western civilization. He sees a grand design. A nefarious plan. To erase whites. To replace them.
He believes whites are a “diminishing minority.” He accuses South Africa of racist policies against whites. A claim without evidence. It feeds into the “great replacement” theory. A white nationalist lie that says immigrants from nonwhite countries are systematically replacing white populations. Especially from Africa.
In January, he tweeted about race nearly every single day. He liked a post saying white men will be “slaughtered” if they become a minority. He agreed white solidarity was the only survival path.
Alvin Tillery from Northwestern University isn’t surprised. Musk is a white man from apartheid South Africa. He grew up under one of the most brutal racial regimes in history. Tillery says that worldview never left him.
“He’s even performed what appeared to many observers a Sieg heil salute… At some point, we are obligated a call pattern what it is.”
Musk looks at Nyong’o and sees a lie. Tillery sees something deeper. He calls it a “racial imagination.” Musk can’t conceive of Black beauty at the top. It goes against the “architecture of anti-Black racism.” It relies on degrading Black bodies. Always.
And now Musk mentions “Western civilization.” He thinks casting a Black woman hurts heritage. Tillery says it reveals Musk’s true stance. He wants white ownership of culture. Any change feels like vandalism to him. That is white nationalism. Pure and simple.
Kirsten Moana Thompson from Seattle University offers a softer take. Maybe it’s not just racism. Maybe it’s “essentialist” thinking. The idea that you need the right identity to play a role. That experience matters more than acting.
The industry is changing. Slowly. Very slowly. A UCLA study from 2026 says people of color play only 2.3 lead roles per ten theatrical films. Most are still white. But it’s shifting. Musk feels that shift. It makes him anxious. He hates the uncertainty.
Do we need Musk’s opinion? He has nearly 240 million followers on X. The most followed person alive. He talks about beauty. Heritage. Greece.
Maybe we shouldn’t listen. But we do. We have to. He shapes the narrative. For better. Or much, much worse.
