{"id":544,"date":"2026-06-30T21:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T21:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=544"},"modified":"2026-06-30T21:38:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T21:38:00","slug":"why-elon-musk-is-so-obsessed-with-this-violently-xenophobic-armie-hammer-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=544","title":{"rendered":"Why Elon Musk is so obsessed with this violently xenophobic Armie Hammer movie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A violent anti-migrant propaganda movie titled Citizen Vigilante<\/em> was a smash hit on Apple and Amazon over the weekend, and the online right is celebrating. The film, directed by a man frequently described as the world\u2019s worst director and starring disgraced actor Armie Hammer, blew up after Elon Musk began promoting it on X. It currently has a 94 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has officially acquired distribution.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s quest for untrammeled power just got a big boost<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cCitizen Vigilante has now SURPASSED the \u2018Michael\u2019 movie,\u201d posted online provocateur Libs of TikTok joyfully on Friday. (It\u2019s not clear what metric she is using when comparing the two.) Conservative media personality Patrick Bet-David described the film as tapping into \u201cthe rage millions of people feel when their own government won\u2019t protect them or their kids.\u201d Turning Point USA contributor Jack Posobiec mused darkly that while \u201cSinners <\/em>is a movie about killing white people and has the all-time record for Oscar nominations of any film in history,\u201d the righteous Citizen Vigilante<\/em> \u201cwas banned.\u201d (Citizen Vigilante<\/em> was denied a rating in Germany, effectively barring it from wide release there.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conservatives are excited about Citizen Vigilante<\/em> because they see it as a corrective to mainstream liberal pop culture. They think its success shows that people are hungry for the story they\u2019re telling about the world. But it\u2019s not clear if Citizen Vigilante<\/em>\u2019s success proves that there has always been a large and dormant audience hungry for racist propaganda, or if it\u2019s mostly proof of how effectively Elon Musk has used the platform he bought to mainstream xenophobic hatred.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Citizen Vigilante<\/em> centers on Hammer\u2019s character Sanders, an American landlord living in an unnamed European nation. Over the course of the film, Sanders acts out bloody vengeance on the migrants who have overrun the country and now rob, rape, and stab the natives with impunity. And not that a tragic backstory or lost love would make his rage okay, but the movie doesn\u2019t even bother with that; Sanders\u2019s rampage is simply motivated by the belief that he is facing an \u201cunfriendly takeover by the Islamist extremists and the blindsided woke left.\u201d In the world of Citizen Vigilante<\/em>, violence is the honest white man\u2019s only option.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Is any of this stuff true? No. Studies demonstrate no link between immigration and crime rates in either the US or Europe. But there\u2019s one place it\u2019s totally exploding, and that is the mind of Elon Musk. The South African-born trillionaire has been on a crusade against \u201cwoke\u201d politics for years, and lately has been pivoting harder into racist \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d fear-mongering. On his X account, Musk regularly reposts false claims that migrants of color plan to kill white people, and that \u201cwhite solidarity\u201d is the only rational response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, Musk is directing people to Citizen Vigilante<\/em>. Over the weekend, he posted the full film to X, where it was available for 48 hours. Since then, he\u2019s been boosting memes and positive reactions to the film all over his X account. \u201cThis is what people want to see,\u201d Musk wrote on Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe audience wants real films again \u2014 bold and with impact and about reality,\u201d crowed director Uwe Boll in an interview with Newsweek. \u201cThe times of SUPERGIRL and all that c*** are over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The bizarre Supergirl<\/em> namecheck feels like it comes out of nowhere, but Boll is invoking a longstanding sense of right-wing resentment toward mainstream pop culture, which conservatives hold to be too left-wing for comfort. The online right has been treating Supergirl<\/em> as a symbol of Hollywood\u2019s illegitimate \u201cwokeness\u201d in action, with the same outrage that powered the review-bombing of Captain Marvel<\/em> in 2019 and a vicious hate campaign on the all-female Ghostbusters<\/em> in 2016. The belief here is that the right is both deprived of and owed movies where tall white dudes kick ass, beautiful women serve as eye candy, and the American flag waves in the background.<\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court\u2019s trans sports ruling is a cautionary tale for all left-leaning lawyers<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That the movie stars Armie Hammer, a man accused of sexual violence, only adds to the meta revenge fantasy it embodies. Meanwhile, the de facto German banning becomes a titillating suggestion that this movie speaks a truth so powerful that the establishment is trying to keep it from the waiting public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For the same reason, conservatives love rallying around independent films that are too far right for Hollywood studios to distribute. We saw a similar narrative in 2023, when the \u201cprotect the children\u201d film Sound of Freedom<\/em>, which flirted with Q-Anon conspiracy, outearned an Indiana Jones movie on opening weekend. Musk even offered Sound of Freedom<\/em> what now looks like a rehearsal for his Citizen Vigilante<\/em> opening strategy, suggesting they put it on X to stream for free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When a movie like Sound of Freedom<\/em> or Citizen Vigilante<\/em> is successful, it feeds into another, deeper conservative theory of the world: that not only are conservatives owed those films, but in fact, everyone secretly wants them, and they\u2019re lying to themselves when they say otherwise. That\u2019s the context within which Musk declared Citizen Vigilante<\/em> \u201cwhat people want to see,\u201d and it\u2019s why conservatives are so excited by its financial success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But it\u2019s not actually clear that the success of Citizen Vigilante<\/em> after Musk\u2019s PR blitz proves anything except that when the man who owns X posts there, his ideas spread far. After all, why else did Musk pay $44 billion to acquire what was then Twitter in 2022, if not to put his thumb on the scale of cultural conversation? He wanted to be cool and found he didn\u2019t have the skills for it. So he bought Twitter, a platform he thought was cool, and remade it into X, a place he could socially dominate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, Musk still isn\u2019t cool, and X isn\u2019t either. But it retains a large and influential enough user base that Musk\u2019s opinion carries a weight it would not otherwise have. A recent study shows that X\u2019s algorithm drives users measurably to the right. After Musk posted in support of anti-migrant riots in Northern Ireland, researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate concluded that his continued reposting of anti-migrant narratives was \u201cinstrumental\u201d to an \u201cexplosion in calls for violence\u201d surrounding the Belfast riots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If Citizen Vigilante<\/em> found an unexpected audience, it\u2019s there because Musk built it, post by post.<\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court just came one vote away from a constitutional catastrophe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

See More:<\/span><\/p>\n
    \n
  • Culture<\/li>\n
  • Elon Musk<\/li>\n
  • Immigration<\/li>\n
  • Influence<\/li>\n
  • Movies<\/li>\n
  • Policy<\/li>\n
  • Technology<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Armie Hammer film became a surprise hit after Musk\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Elon Musk is so obsessed with this violently xenophobic Armie Hammer movie - American Living Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=544\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Elon Musk is so obsessed with this violently xenophobic Armie Hammer movie - American Living Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Armie Hammer film became a surprise hit after Musk\u2019s intervention.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=544\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Living Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-30T21:38:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/7b970e3bc484fe2e26860a4380d70de8\"},\"headline\":\"Why Elon Musk is so obsessed with this violently xenophobic Armie Hammer movie\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-30T21:38:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544\"},\"wordCount\":1124,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/5869110212a5f1b726cd86c65af3ab65.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=544\",\"name\":\"Why Elon Musk is so obsessed with this violently xenophobic Armie Hammer movie - 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