In 1993, the steelworker-turned-scholar Noel Ignatiev and the cab driver-turned-educator John Garvey began publishing the journal “Race Traitor” — eagerly embracing the once-derogatory label. “If you then say, ‘Well, all politics is war,’ that means everybody who doesn’t agree with me politically is a traitor,” Main said. The decades-old “race traitor” has seen a resurgence, too. Fuentes has also referred to Vice President JD Vance as a “race traitor” for marrying a woman of Indian heritage. When Musk calls someone a “traitor,” he seems to regard the word as the utmost insult.