Elon Musk Assumes New X Identity Linked to White Supremacists

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve can be a disorienting time for many. Including, apparently, the world’s richest man.

In between sharing photos of furry animals, bragging about the size of his rocket and dunking on the very concept of taxation, Elon Musk took a moment to change his username and profile picture on the social media platform X to an alt-right meme beloved by white-supremacist trolls.

Musk’s new moniker, Kekius Maximus, is a meme that combines Pepe the Frog with the Maximus character from the movie Gladiator. The alt-right has embraced Pepe as the “protector god” of a satirical religion dedicated to chaos and anti-political correctness, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center (a group despised by Musk and others.)

By using something as farcical as a frog deity meme, right-wing trolls can spread their ideas without having to address the “vicious core of white male nationalism they embrace,” according to the SPLC.

As with all things Musk, it’s not clear whether his new alter ego is just a way to troll anyone who disagrees with him or whether there’s the potential for self-enrichment.

On Monday, MAGA’s civil war over H-1B visas reignited a debate about whether Musk has a burner account on X that he uses to post fawning interactions with his official account—a practice known as “sock-puppeting.” For the past year, the Adrian Dittmann account has offered such a passionate defense of Musk—and used such a similar rhetorical style—that users have wondered if they are one and the same.

That speculation came to a head during the H-1B visa debate, as internet sleuths dug back into Dittmann’s old posts for clues.

Musk’s new Kekius Maximus identity could just be a way to troll users who are convinced Musk has a burner account, with the added benefit of offending anyone who knows that Pepe is associated with SPLC-designated hate groups.

On the other hand, Kekius Maximus is also the name of a “meme coin,” or a type of cryptocurrency named for internet memes. Meme coins typically aren’t worth as much as their less satirical counterparts, but President-elect Donald Trump’s “First Buddy” is such a fan of meme coins that he named his Department of Government Efficiency—which is really just an advisory panel—after one.

The acronym DOGE is a nod to dogecoin, a cryptocurrency created in 2013 as a joke about the wildly speculative nature of crypto. Named for “doge,” a meme featuring a Japanese shiba inu dog, dogecoin has spawned a whole category of “dog coins.”

Within hours of Musk adopting the new name, the value of the Kekius Maximus meme coin had surged by more than 500 percent.

Last year, investors accused Musk and his company Tesla of insider trading for allegedly using his social media platform to manipulate the value of dogecoin, The Guardian reported.

Before he rebranded the platform as X, he replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with dogecoin’s shiba inu logo, leading the coin’s price to jump by 30 percent, The Guardian reported. Musk then allegedly sold about $124 million of the currency, according to an insider trading suit filed by investors.

The case was dismissed in August because investors can’t make an insider trading case based on tweets that are “aspirational and puffery,” the judge ruled.

So maybe Musk changed his name to a frog in a gladiator costume because—in the great American tradition—he’s had a little too much sugar, butter and spiked eggnog and can’t remember what day it is.

Maybe he’s trying to troll X users and the media.

Or maybe he has some Kekius Maximus currency he’s looking to sell at a good price—in a totally non-insider trading kind of way, of course.