Elon Musk Named 2021 Person of the Year by Time Magazine

December 13, 2021

Robert

Billionaire Elon Musk was named Person of the Year 2021 by Time magazine this Monday (13). According to the publication, the chief executive of Tesla and owner of SpaceX “already has a reach that extends beyond Earth” due to plans to build what he himself calls “a futuristic Noah’s Ark”.

Born in South Africa, Musk is the richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. When he took the first position in the ranking of multibillionaires, in January, his fortune was estimated at US$ 188.5 billion, a sum that put him US$ 1.5 billion ahead of Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon. This Monday, its equity is estimated by Bloomberg at $266 billion.

Bolsonaro was chosen after a strong mobilization of supporters on social networks and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram, who asked the president for votes and highlighted the ease of registering the choice, as the Time system did not require registration for voting.

Despite a series of reservations made by the magazine, which explains that the influence of the chosen person can be “for better or for worse”, Bolsonaro and his supporters celebrated the result as a great victory. The president went so far as to say that he hoped that Time would grant him the main title, “respecting the result of the elections”.

In disclosing the popular choice, the magazine highlighted that the Brazilian president is being investigated by the Supreme Court for comments made on October 24, which are not based on the reality that the vaccine against Covid-19 could increase the chance of contracting the AIDS virus. The publication also highlighted that Bolsonaro was the target of a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission in the Senate that accused him of a series of crimes in the fight against the pandemic, which has already killed more than 600,000 people in Brazil.

`The personality of the year tradition began in 1927, when US aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh was named the most influential man. According to the magazine, the choice came about by chance. The covers at the time had just acquired the emblematic red border and prioritized portraits of figures who stood out in the week’s events.

Since the beginning of Time’s publication, in 1923, four Brazilians have been portrayed on the cover of the publication in weekly editions. They are: the lawyer and politician Julio Prestes (1930), the former president of the Republic Juscelino Kubitschek (1956), the also former president of the Republic Jânio Quadros (1961) and the former leader of the military regime Costa e Silva (1967) ).

There are several other Brazilians, however, on Time’s list that chooses the most influential people in the world. This year, businesswoman Luiza Helena Trajano, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Magazine Luiza, was the only representative from Brazil among those chosen. In 2020, the magazine’s selection featured president Jair Bolsonaro and digital influencer Felipe Neto.

Also on the list, in previous editions, were former PT presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, former judge and former justice minister Sérgio Moro, athletes such as soccer player Neymar and surfer Gabriel Medina, among other personalities.