Elon Musk says teachers should be imprisoned for teaching 'negative' US history

Tech billionaire and self-styled “free speech absolutist” says that teachers who teach students US history that portrays the country negatively should be imprisoned for the charge of treason. Musk was referring to the US history of racism and the displacement of Native Americans.
In a post on his social media platform, Musk accused them of “teaching people to hate America”. He was responding to a post which was suggesting that 45 per cent of US students believe that the country was built on stolen land.
“In 2022, 45% of high schoolers polled say they were taught that 'America is built on stolen land' in class at school, and another 22% heard it from an adult there,” read the post. Musk retweeted the post, saying these kinds of teachings were acts of “treason.”

Was America built on stolen land?

A minor glimpse at US history shows that the statement was undisputed. European settlers, primarily English, Spanish, and French, arrived in North America from the 16th century onward. They colonised the land and subjected Native Americans to a three-century-long, forced migration, displacement, wars of extermination and coercive treaties. Europeans contacted them with diseases like measles, smallpox, and influenza, killing an estimated 5-10 million people. Scholars suggest that from the 14th century to the 19th century, at least 12-20 million Native Americans died and lost 99 per cent of the lands they had historically occupied.

The poll shows that students were also taught ideas that are politically contentious but backed by historical and empirical data, such as “America is a systematically racist country” and “white people have white privilege”. There have been state-level bans on critical race theory, gender ideology and other “divisive concepts” to erase the uglier parts of US history.

“Teaching people to hate America fundamentally destroys patriotism and the desire to defend our country,” Musk wrote. “Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it should be imprisoned.”