'Appropriating a noble cause...': Salman Rushdie would love for Elon Musk ‘to be the first man on Mars’, here’s why

Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie does not mince his words. On the sidelines of the Hay Festival in Colombia's Cartagena Rushdie recently called out tech billionaire and X CEO Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed champion of freedom of expression. 

On the contrary, Rushdie feels Musk's intentions are dishonest when it comes to the freedom of expression. 

"Elon Musk doesn’t defend free expression. His social network curates the discourse of the extreme-right. Appropriating a noble cause — such as freedom of expression — when what you really do is the opposite is very dishonest. I’m not a fan of Mr. Musk. And I would love for him to be the first man on Mars," he told Spanish daily EL PAÍS in an interview. His answer came in response to a question on his thoughts on  Musk saying he defends free expression by allowing all kinds of speech on his social media network X.

Notably, Rushdie himself was threatened with death in 1989 for his book The Satanic Verses. He pointed out that at the time, literary critics forgot to read between the lines of the humor that he sprinkled his books with. In 2022, the Indian-born British and American author survived 15 stab wounds during a knife attack.

When the interviewer further prodded him on his 'first man on Mars' statement, Rushdie said, "Yes, let him go. If he likes it so much, then let him go. I once met him, in Los Angeles, 10 years ago. And he said that it would take seven years to get to Mars. Seven years have already passed, and I really want him to leave."

His remarks come amid rising influence of Musk in the newly elected Trump administration, which has cracked down on immigration in the US. 

Rushdie further said that values such as tolerance or empathy "are weaker now than at any other time in my life". "I’m a double migrant, from India to England, from England to the US... We live in an era of migration, a time in history when many people move around the planet for economic or political reasons," he said. 

"Isn’t the United States a nation of immigrants? Apart from Native Americans, everyone is a migrant. That’s been the case since the founding fathers. The great American myth is now said to be bad, evil. Even Elon Musk is from South Africa," he said.