What do you think of when you hear the name Elon Musk? Electric cars and money? AI and politics? Probably not politics. At least, not prior to 2024. So, why has Musk been in all the headlines recently for precisely that?
- ‘Trump addresses Elon Musk’s growing political influence.’
- ‘Trump downplays talk of Elon Musk’s increasing influence in Republican politics.’
- ‘Elon Musk among billionaires set to donate to Reform UK.’
Power.
Corruption.
The makings of a dictator.
This is what I think of when I hear the name Elon Musk. This and…
Fear.
Elon Musk, the 53-year-old South African-born businessman (pictured above, on the right), is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $343 billion.
As the CEO of Tesla Inc., the first auto manufacturer to produce one million electric cars, and the founder of Space X, the first rocket company to successfully launch a privately developed, fully liquid-fuelled rocket into orbit, something that all Musk’s entrepreneurial escapades have in common? The futuristic, almost sci-fi-like quality they have about them.
All of Musk’s ventures are seemingly undertaken with the aim of breaking records in some way, like X (formerly Twitter). Musk said that he wanted to ‘create a common digital town square for civilization’ and told the media that he was not buying Twitter (now X) to make more money, but to ‘help humanity.’
Who gets to define what ‘help’ actually is, though?…
As Lisa Jennings Young, the former head of content design at X said in a BBC interview, ‘I feel like we’re all living through a vast social experiment [on humanity], and no one really knows what the final result could be.’
The prime example of capitalism at its worst, in our pursuit for more we forget how much we already have. We forget that we don’t need artificial intelligence when we have human intelligence, as we don’t need driverless cars when we have people who can drive. And nor do we need to find a way to live on Mars when we can live on Earth (at least, for now, we can anyway)…
What we do need, however, is an answer to the question, ‘What are Musk’s intentions?’
Despite co-founding OpenAI, the company responsible for creating chat GPT, Musk stepped down in 2018 and went on to found his own AI company, xAI, in 2023. Why? Because he wanted majority equity.
‘The most promising option I can think of would be for OpenAI to attach to Tesla. It could significantly help to accelerate the building of a fully functioning self-driving solution’, Musk said.
Alas, ‘we couldn’t agree to terms with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control* over OpenAI’, Ilya Sutskever, another founder of the tech company said in response to Musk’s suggestion.
And this is precisely the concern… ‘Absolute control.’
When one post from Musk about his dislike of a bill to fund the US government led to the sudden collapse of said bill, despite it having previously had bipartisan support, are you seeing the scarily similar parallels between Musk and a dictator yet?…
With hundreds of billions of dollars in his back pocket, the risk of bribery taking place is high, particularly when it comes to politics, within which Musk now has his foot in the door, having even been offered an official government position in the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which is tasked with restructuring the federal government of the United States.
It isn’t just US politics that Musk has been getting involved with, either, but also British politics…
Musk has expressed his support for far-right parties across the world, such as in Germany. A comment within which he claimed that only AfD could ‘save’ Germany, (AFD being the far-right, anti-immigrant party that has been classed as extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence services), sparked outrage.
Elmar Brok, former chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, dismissed Musk’s comments as ‘world domination fantasies.’
It is very disturbing, the way in which X, which I use very intensively myself, is increasingly being used to spread the political positions and goals of Mr. Musk.
Another far-right politician to whom Musk has shown his support is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Meloni, pictured below, is reportedly planning to shift power from MPs to her own hands, in a reform called the “premierato”. She has also targeted minority groups such as the LGBTQ+ community that is, in her words, ‘attempting to impose its gender ideology’ on her country.
Musk’s capacity to wield political influence evidently stretches beyond U.S. borders…
Musk has become a prominent critic of Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and has backed Reform UK to form the next government, ‘We only have one more chance left to save the West and we can do great things together.’ Media reports suggest that Musk is set to make a large donation to Reform UK.
(Description of the above photo: Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK stands with his arms folded beside billionaire Elon Musk and Reform UK treasurer, Nick Candy. Behind them hangs a large portrait of President-elect Donald Trump, and in front of them, the prospect of a political revolution looms).
The worry is, what influence will such a wealthy individual wield over British politics, and, perhaps more worryingly, why does Elon want to wield such influence?
Estranged from his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson (pictured above), Elon Musk has a personal vendetta against so-called ‘wokism.’
Musk claimed that he had been “tricked” into letting his daughter Vivian receive gender-affirming care (or to use Musk’s words, ‘child mutilation’) when she was 16. ‘So, my son … is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.’
Wilson, on the other hand, said that her father, Musk, is a ‘narcissist’ who ‘relentlessly harassed her for her femininity and queerness.’
Is this why Musk has pledged to support Reform UK, the party that promised to ban what it called “transgender ideology” in schools within the first 100 days of government, and promised to replace the Equality Act while scrapping diversity, equality, and inclusion rules? Because Musk is hellbent on making, not just the US be governed by the right, but the whole world. Musk wants the whole world to subscribe to his archaic thinking, whatever the cost.
A threat to democracy?
Musk has made no secret of the fact that he is a Trump supporter, hence why he donated roughly $75m to the political action committee (PAC), an organisation he founded to support Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and not for the first time…
Musk has been posting on X for several months with messages of support for the 45th, and soon-to-be 47th US President. This alone is problematic given that Musk is the CEO of X, and there will inevitably be bias in favour of Trump in terms of propaganda.
(NB: If Musk were to offer the same level of support and funding to Kamala Harris as he is offering to Trump, then the concerns would persist, for it’s not about Trump, it’s about democracy and the potential for it to get taken away. When the world’s richest man, a man who has a proven tendency to want to be in control, has formed such a close relationship with our soon-to-be president, alarm bells must surely start to ring)…
A threat to democracy is a concern that American Author Stephen King echoes, too…
Stephen King (pictured below, on the left), delivered a warning to his fans about the influence that Musk has over Trump. One person wrote in response to him, ‘This real life is eminently scarier than any of the books of yours that I’ve read.’
As Musk’s words amass millions of views and thousands of shares, they illustrate the ability of one of the world’s most influential people to spread fear, hate, and misinformation around the world, something which Musk manages to do quite well to his over 200 million followers.
Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has directed engineers to improve the visibility of his tweets, therefore meaning that the algorithm now boosts his tweets beyond that of other users. What’s more, Musk has also dismantled the Trust and Safety advisory group on X and stopped enforcing content moderation rules. Consequently, policies relating to issues such as the spreading of uncensored misinformation have been scrapped, thus contributing to, what the European Union is describing as, ‘a haven for disinformation and illegal content.’
In an interview for a BBC Panorama investigation that aired in 2023, Twitter insiders said that, in their view, X was going to ‘struggle to protect users from trolling, state-coordinated disinformation, and child sexual exploitation as a result.’
Musk’s response? ‘Sorry for turning Twitter from a nurturing paradise into a place that has trolls but… Trolls are kinda fun.’
What an arse hole.
A very rich and powerful arsehole, but an arsehole, all the same…
Power.
Corruption.
The makings of a dictator.
(A.K.A. Elon Musk)…
ANARKISS 