Warp: Elon Musk keeps boosting this anti-Black racist on X

Content Advisory: This post contains descriptions of vicious anti-Black and anti-immigrant racism.

The Point: For a man who claims to run several companies – and who purports to be saving humanity from extinction – Elon Musk sure does spend a lot of time boosting racists on social media. Does he think racism might also go extinct without his personal intervention?

No racist troll is too anonymous or small to receive personalized attention from the CEO of X/Tesla/SpaceX/Starlink/Neuralink. Musk even played a role in the racist blowup of a small software startup called Warp earlier this month.

Because of course he did.

The Backstory: As far as racist social media scandals go, what happened at Warp – a New York-based payroll software startup – is an absolute disaster. And it features a cameo appearance by Elon Musk.

The details are bizarre, but also very simple.

A super racist rant

Earlier this year, Warp apparently recruited a bunch of X-Twitter influencers to participate in an edgy guerrilla marketing strategy for the company. These accounts were given a special badge – Warp's company logo – to display on their X profiles.

On Sept. 5, one of those accounts – someone with the alias "Vittorio," with the handle of @IterIntellectus – launched a thermonuclear anti-Black racist rant:

i. don't. give. a. fuck.

i like White people more, the do more, they contribute more, they are better for the roles i need to climb the Kardashev scale

i'll let blacks run and play basketball

This super racist post came as part of a thread in which Vittorio had lamented the declining birth rate in the European Union, writing: "My race is dying and no one is doing anything about it." He then launched into his virulently anti-Black tirade, followed by anti-immigrant tweets.

"Do you think you're going to do something or do you continue to import layabouts who do nothing but ruin our country, rape young girls, and steal from poor workers?" he wrote, in Italian, to Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy.

Vittorio, apparently know for such rants, was quickly swamped by major backlash to his anti-Black tweet, with many people calling out his abject racism and bigotry. He deleted his post and temporarily deactivated his X account.

But Warp's problems were only getting started.

The founder and CEO of Warp, Ayush Sharma, then posted a bizarre and boneheaded response:

A few thoughts:

-Freedom of speech is essential, this includes speech that may be offensive.

-Speech should always be countered with speech – not by suppression, violence or power

-At Warp, we are comfortable taking risks while also being comfortable with feedback

Sharma made no effort to reject Vittorio's abject anti-Black racism. He simply gave an Elon Musk-style "free speech" defense without in any way calling out what his brand ambassador had said.

After receiving criticism, he deleted his post. But it gets worse.

Someone then leaked a group chat which appeared to show CEO Sharma sympathizing with the racist Vittorio.

"Just checkin in man, sorry to see a bit of a dogpile on you," wrote Sharma, according to screenshots posted on Twitter. "The contents of the post aside, just checking in as a friend, know you meant well overall."

Meant well overall? By being absolutely racist?

Warp then compounded the problem with another ridiculous statement, this one from the company's official account:

Earlier today, we came to know that one of the Warp affiliates was involved in making multiple posts which were wrong. We fundamentally believe excellence can come from anywhere.

Warp is focused on building the best payroll platform for founders to help them make a better world.

We removed that person’s badge immediately and have cut down on affiliate badges more broadly, keeping it to a smaller group of people that we personally know. To be clear, this person was never a Warp employee.

Thank you to everyone who’s reached out privately with feedback and support. We truly appreciate you all.

—Warp Team

Warp's response was disastrous on many levels.

First, the awkward and passive language made it clear that the company takes zero responsibility.

Second, it failed to directly address the rabidly racist comments posted by its affiliate, Vittorio.

Third, after deleting his initial disaster tweet, CEO Sharma did not address the scandal again publicly. He didn't even retweet his company's official response.

Warp's botched response attracted more criticism, with people noting that the company was evading accountability and failing to address the flagrant racism.

Misogyny, too

And the hits kept coming for Warp, which recently raised $5.7 million from Y Combinator, HOF, Abstract Ventures, Elad Gil, Amjad Masad, Eric Stromberg, Niv Dror, Jordi Hays, Dan Romero and Balaji Srinivasan.

A local San Franciscan did a bit of searching and found that Warp's Head of Growth, Varunram Ganesh, has a habit of posting weird incel and misogynistic thoughts on Twitter:

Apparently, this payroll software startup's vision for growth does not include women, Black people or non-racists. (And, apparently, searching any tech bro's posts for the word "women" is a great way to figure out who they are.)

Cue Elon Musk

When I started looking into Warp's racism scandal, I had no idea Musk would be directly involved. What did cross my mind, however, is how Musk has made it trendy for certain tech companies to embrace toxic politics as part of their brand strategy. Warp's CEO, with his effort to hide behind "free speech" arguments, was clearly trying to emulate Musk. I planned to include this analysis in my piece.

But when I sat down to write, I discovered that Musk's connection to Warp's racist meltdown was more direct. As it turns out, Musk – with his 198 million followers on X – regularly interacts with the racist Vittorio account.

In fact, Musk has personally responded to tweets by Vittorio at least 20 times since July. And the X CEO responded directly to Vittorio's racist thread on Sept. 5!

On that day, as Vittorio lamented the EU's falling birthrate and raged against Black people, an account with the handle of @Frantastic7 urged him to help solve the population problem by procreating.

"You are the one with a wife, help us brother," wrote @Frantastic7.

"I'm planning to have a minimum 10," replied Vittorio. "The first one within ~2 years."

"You are already late," replied Musk, taking time from his busy day running several companies to chime in on an anonymous pro-natalist racist's thread about creating more white babies.

Musk's decision to participate in Vittorio's thread provided it with one of the biggest boosts one can get on X. Musk's reply came several hours after Vittorio posted the inflammatory racist tweet, and it seems unlikely that Musk would have been unaware of it, since Vittorio is one of only 760 accounts Musk follows on X. (Vittorio's account, which had approximately 19,000 followers on Sept. 5, has since gained around 2000 new followers.)

Racism = Free Speech?

While Vittorio's tweet unleashed a strong backlash, it also resulted in a surge of support from people who think vicious hate and racism are merely free speech.

Vittorio's defenders apparently had no problem with his racism but were very upset by the fact that he received criticism and alleged threats due to his post. They seem to believe that racists should be able to engage in public racism without any kind of blowback.

This is warped thinking, because if free speech means racists can be racists, it also means anti-racists can be anti-racist. But we can't expect such rigorous analysis from racists.

Whether or not Musk saw Vittorio's anti-Black post before he replied to the thread, he's certainly aware of the uproar it caused.

Yet Musk continues to interact with Vittorio on X.

"The problem with freedom of speech is that it's very fragile, it's easy to lose, but you need war to regain it," wrote the racist Vittorio on Sept. 17.

"Yes," replied Musk, knowing full well that Vittorio's big brush with "free speech" involved his public and vicious anti-Black racism.

Analysis: No wonder Warp was so hesitant to directly call out Vittorio's racist meltdown – Vittorio is online besties with the CEO of X! Perhaps this connection with Musk is why they recruited him to promote their brand in the first place.

It's no secret that Musk goes out of his way to boost antisemitism, conspiracy theories and racists. Pro-Nazi accounts have thrived since he bought Twitter. In 2022, he literally posted a picture of a Nazi soldier and urged Americans to vote Republican. Pushing extremist right-wing politics is the reason he bought Twitter in the first place.

These days, Musk posts a constant stream of delirious attacks on Kamala Harris, who would be the first woman of color to serve as president. His most recent stunt – questioning why no one has yet tried to assassinate Harris or President Joe Biden – got him branded a "national security risk" by Wired Magazine.

Musk has made toxic politics a core feature of his company brands, and he has clearly inspired others to do the same. His ownership of Twitter has created a surge of mini-Musks. These include Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, who tweeted "die slow" at seven members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in January. Then there's Shaun Maguire, a partner at the VC firm Sequoia Capital, who has become a superspreader of pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

This trend has trickled down to lower levels as well, where blue-checked tech bros at obscure companies compete to paint their brands with angry, misogynistic or racist right-wing politics. It almost seems as if certain segments of tech have become a funnel to recruit young people into extremist politics.

Warp's racist X scandal hit right at the end of Reboot 2024, the Heritage Foundation-sponsored conference that served as a coming out party for the alliance between SF tech and the far-right. In fact, Warp was hosting a party at Reboot in San Francisco even as its company became engulfed in controversy.

These fledgling tech bros risk sullying their brands and personal reputations with racism and sexism. But apparently it's a risk worth taking because it might win a sliver of attention from their champion, Elon Musk, reigning god-king of racist trolls.

Neither Warp nor Y Combinator responded to requests for comment.