Musk’s power fantasies take a dark turn. Not so long ago, the tech billionaire seemed mainly an intelligent, successful, but also somewhat immature man who wants a lot of everything: rockets, satellites and cars. Nationalities, women. Children, companies. Lots of money and attention. When he took over Twitter, the world’s virtual schoolyard, in 2022, he had himself filmed with a sink, a sinkand he said:Let that sink in.” Lots of humor – that is clearly something Musk still needs to work on, but his action was effective: at that moment no one could imagine that this would be the starting signal of a radicalization process. All signals are now red, especially now that Musk is praising far-right figures and parties, in the United Kingdom and Germany, among others.
During the American elections, Musk shed a lot of hesitation and supported Trump’s campaign with the staggering amount of $ 277 million. X has now become the standard-bearer of a flat, intolerant definition of freedom of expression, which was also embraced last week by fellow billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. The Meta boss announced that Facebook and Instagram are saying goodbye to moderators and fact checkers, because “the censorship” is said to have gone too far. A clear bow to Trump, who advocates a world in which freedom of expression belongs to the ‘winners’, and ‘losers’ can be spat at and threatened.
In the new Trump administration, Musk will be given a key position as an extraordinary advisor. Without formal political responsibility. Without having to distance himself from his major economic interests in this political adventure. An arrangement that the robber barons from the nineteenth century would make your mouth water. It’s still not enough for Musk. Now it seems that the richest man on earth – he is now worth as much as the Danish GDP – let that sink in – to have his sights set on even more political influence, this time in Europe.
There are more far-too-rich men who confuse their enormous wealth with the possession of extraordinary rights or intelligence. Musk has also undeniably achieved a lot in the field of electric cars and space travel. What makes him different is his open flirtation with populist, far-right parties. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” he recently said about Alternative für Deutschland, the radical right-wing party, which is partly classified as ‘extreme right’ by the German security services. The European Commission rightly announced this week that Musk’s unacceptable political interference will be put under the magnifying glass.
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Musk also rails against the Labor government in the UK. Trump’s most important adviser believes that Keir Starmer, prime minister of a friendly nation, should be destroyed no matter what. Let that sink in. Before Christmas, it seemed that Musk was willing to invest $100 million in Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s right-wing radical party. Then the bromancebecause Musk seems to be too right-wing even for Farage, but the daily prices can also change again.
On Thursday, Musk organized a conversation with AfD party leader Alice Weidel at X. That cannot be wrong, Musk reasoned beforehand, because she is a lesbian. Weidel’s partner has a migration background, with roots in Sri Lanka. “Does that sound like Hitler to you?” It’s nice that humanity seems to have a technological genius in Musk. It is less pleasant that he uses his unprecedented position of power to disrupt, provoke and manipulate. Faced with this, Europe cannot sit still and hope that it will blow over. What Musk, Zuckerberg and Trump have come up with is no longer a wake-up call, but an attack on what the EU stands for: a world based on rules and values, in which it is not the law of the strongest that is leading, but the law itself. A world in which the Putins are fought, not imitated. In which the sovereignty of countries is not compromised, whether it concerns Ukraine, Taiwan or Greenland.
The European Commission will have to show steadfastness, unlike, for example, the Green Deal, which was watered down after fierce farmers’ protests. The Digital Services Act (DSA), with strict rules for online platforms and search engines, must be applied rigorously, no matter how hard it is pushed. The bullies need to be addressed, the power of the contemporary robber barons must be constricted and broken. This is an unprecedented stress test for Europe, perhaps the most important in years. Putin is obviously evil, the US is not, and that makes everything much more complicated.