Among the nonsense exchanged between close friends Elon Musk and Donald Trump in a glitch-delayed audio conversation on the X talk show on Monday night, one comment stood out as particularly worrying as a key indicator of Musk’s far-right worldview.
“I think it’s worth highlighting to our listeners. [the] “It matters enormously whether the president of the United States is coercive and how important that is to global security,” Musk said in response to Trump’s comments about the supposedly “green” Keystone XL pipeline. “There are some really tough people out there, and if they think the president of the United States isn’t tough, then they’re going to do what they want, and that puts the whole world at risk.”
Predictably, the former president responded by launching into a bonkers tirade about how he would never “forgive” attacks on Israel or Ukraine, before going on at length about how “nuclear warming” is a bigger threat than climate change, ultimately deflecting attention from Musk’s comments. But it’s worth assessing Musk’s sentiments on their own, and in the context of his behavior on the international stage over the past few weeks.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is not wrong when he says that any CEO of the United States should be tough and resilient, especially when confronting enemies who seek to harm ordinary Americans. But the “tough” and “threatening” stance that Musk deems appropriate actually has darker and more troubling implications for “global security” that go far beyond support for Trump. There is good reason for the European Commission to have formally expressed concerns about Trump and Musk’s space program.
The person Musk finds “tough” and “intimidating” and who has forced his way into tense international situations is… well, Musk himself. As the self-promoting overseer of X, he wields outsized influence over countries where political and electoral discussions are centered, for lack of a better alternative, on the text-based platform formerly known as Twitter.
The UK is one such country, where racist riots and migrant terrorism erupted in ugly fashion earlier this month after three girls were horrifically stabbed to death during a summer school day in Southport in late July. The ensuing street violence was instigated and fanned by British social media users who falsely posted on X that the killer (actually a 17-year-old Welsh-born boy) was a Muslim asylum seeker. They further stoked hysteria and even attempted to incriminate random innocent people by sharing their names online. In the days that followed, Islamophobes, neo-Nazis and countless other bigots attacked mosques, migrant shelters, libraries and migrant-run businesses across England and Northern Ireland, continuing their aggressive riots until protesters fought back bravely and police were able to crack down on the unrest.
These hate crime prosecutions have used “speedy sentencing” to quickly arrest and hand down (often short) prison sentences to violent protesters, but social media users have also been targeted. A woman in Chester was arrested after claiming that the perpetrator of a stabbing was someone other than the named suspect, as was a Facebook user who called for a mob attack on a Leeds hotel housing migrants. A man from User X was also sentenced to three years and two months in prison for tweets “calling for mass deportations and the arson of asylum-seeker detention centres,” according to The Guardian.
But celebrities convicted of similar behaviour, including Tommy Robinson, Douglas Murray and Andrew Tait, have avoided such prosecution. That list also includes Elon Musk, who quote-tweeted a fake “news” graphic from the fascist party Britain First, falsely claiming that Prime Minister Keir Starmer was planning to build a “detention centre” in the Falkland Islands to hold arrested rioters. Musk later deleted the post without admitting he was wrong, but the post, which has been viewed nearly a million times, hasn’t stopped him from sticking his nose into the issue.
In response to a right-wing commentator tweeting the blatant lie that “mass immigration and open borders” were causing the violence, Musk declared that “civil war is inevitable.” He did not delete the tweet after the fact, nor did he delete a false quote tweet about “groups of armed, masked Muslim men rampaging through the streets,” adding only a feeble reiteration that X’s Community Notes feature is good at combating misinformation (it clearly isn’t). Meanwhile, his racist memes continued, eliciting indignant responses from media commentators and even Starmer himself, who has joined London’s Muslim mayor in calling for tougher reforms of the UK’s existing digital regulations.
“I can’t say this enough: Elon Musk’s threat to democracy is intolerable. He is using the largest and most influential platform in the democratic world to stoke racial tensions and social breakdown through his posts and the content promoted by X. Democracy can no longer ignore this.
— Edward GLuce (@EdwardGLuce) August 5, 2024
It’s an understandable impulse, especially as Elon Musk has reinstated the accounts of egregious offenders who violated Twitter’s rules, while other social media giants like Facebook and Instagram have thoughtlessly relaxed their content moderation standards.
But Musk and his hateful cohorts are right about one thing: there are legitimate concerns about the way the UK regulates free speech, especially when it comes to journalism and protests of any ideology. (Just ask the environmental activists who received longer prison sentences for organizing nonviolent road rallies.) The line between social media posts that incite actual violence and those that are abhorrent but do not clearly call for or provoke action is fine, and there are good reasons why US policy on hate speech requires a high bar for punitive measures. (Just ask all the UK politicians who have been investigated and reprimanded for disingenuously conflating sympathy for Palestinians with anti-Semitism.)
Still, Starmer and other British commentators have good reason to be vocally concerned about Musk’s influence across the Atlantic. They correctly point out that the far-right tech titan and now owner of a social media network has too much influence over world affairs, to the serious damage of the law and order and “global security” that Musk believes are so important.
Unfortunately, there are many other countries out there who must pay attention to Musk’s erratic online rants, given his extensive control over critical tech infrastructure and his inextricable ties to the U.S. government. Last year, a shocking article by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker detailed the alarming extent to which Biden administration officials must indulge Musk, given SpaceX’s multiple federal contracts, the most urgent of which include Starlink satellite internet service needed by Ukrainian soldiers fighting off Russian invaders. Musk’s erratic comments on the Russia-Ukraine war, given his best friend relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have never given any confidence that he will continue to support this infrastructure in the Eastern European country, or even for the suffering civilians in Gaza.
Alex Kirshner
Donald Trump seems poised to completely destroy Truth Social Investors
read more
Musk has also done his utmost to ensure that the racist and anti-Semitic “Great Replacement Theory” takes hold internationally. Late last year, he made a fear-mongering visit to the US southern border, fueling the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment that has led federal and local governments in both the US and Mexico to implement policies that place migrants and asylum seekers, including children, in inhumane conditions and waste public resources on ineffective cruelty.
Musk’s casual comments about countries with which he has little connection can also incite harm. He is just one of many far-right bullies who baselessly called Algerian Olympic athlete Imane Khelif a transgender man trying to infiltrate women’s boxing, leading to Khelif filing a lawsuit naming Musk in Paris. Two months ago, he claimed that the policies of the German far-right Alternative for Germany party “do not sound radical enough,” but its members have literally repeated Nazi rhetoric and even been accused of spying for a government hostile to Germany. In 2022, Musk also supported a small group of Canadian truck drivers who surrounded Ottawa in protest against the Canadian government’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, but the striking truckers allegedly beat up and harmed Ottawa residents.
It was the procedure men feared more than any other. Why has it almost disappeared? We all know the truth about sports bras. It may not be happening anytime soon. Donald Trump seems ready to destroy the truth altogether. Has the Social Investor uncovered how a gang of corrupt gamblers predicts elections?
Earlier this year, after judicial authorities ordered the government to block several X accounts for spreading misinformation about the election, culminating in an attempted coup by supporters of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, Musk launched a Twitter attack on Brazilian Supreme Court justices. Again, legitimate concerns about Judge Alexandre de Moraes’s actions led to something darker and more disturbing, as Musk jumped on the bandwagon of conspiracy theorist Michael Shellenberger and claimed that de Moraes had interfered in the Brazilian election that ousted Bolsonaro. Shellenberger was found to have blatantly lied about Moraes’ actions in Brazil and was forced to apologize. (Musk continues to speak out for the Bolsonaro family as they undermine democracy.)
It’s easy to see where this is leading. Elon Musk believes that to operate as a “strong” and “threatening” leader on the international stage he must thwart far-right disruptors in other countries and legitimize blatant, unapologetic lies. If he’s causing this much trouble now, imagine how much of a threat he’ll pose to “global security” as an ally of Donald Trump if he wins in November.