Elon Musk: Right-Wing Oligarch

Understanding Musk's Speed-Run to Main Villain Status

It’s entirely possible that we look back on the past week as the moment the tide began to turn against the oligarchs driving the wave of right-wing authoritarianism around the globe.

In the US, a majority of voters blocked the Trump-led Republican effort to cement minority rule. In Kherson, Vladimir Putin’s occupying force was repelled, dealing another blow to his invasion of Ukraine. Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapsed, and the industry could go with it. And, on Twitter, the richest man in the world had a very public melt-down that destroyed his reputation and much of his fortune. 

On the surface, there isn’t much linking these events, or these individuals. But, in their own way, each of these oligarchs represented a challenge to the liberal, democratic order, and their failure may reflect a resilience of people-power to the threat of creeping fascism that wasn’t readily apparent even one week ago. Each of these billionaires had a cult of voracious supporters cheering them on in their efforts to undermine the legal and political limits to their power, but they overreached and were met with popular opposition. Trump, Putin, and Musk all want a government of, by and for the bosses. Their aim is to insulate the economy and the government from democratic control, so their corrupt friends can loot working people. 

It may surprise some Musk fanboys (and even some liberals) to see him on a list of right-wing, pro-authoritarian billionaires alongside Putin and Trump. But, in the course of the past year, he has increasingly telegraphed his alignment with their shared project of undermining democracy and making the world safe for oligarchy. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter -- and the horrific failures of his leadership of the company -- can only be understood if they are seen as part of his entrance into the populist right. 

Musk’s descent into semi-fascism is as unintentional and incoherent as Donald Trump’s, but no less dangerous, or recognizable. Like most capitalists who support right-wing authoritarianism, Musk arrived through a combination of economic interest and cultural resentment. Musk has a history of union busting, retaliation, sexual abuse and racism at his companies. In the past two years, he has come under closer scrutiny for those practices, and also publicly chafed at government regulations and taxes that hit him directly. Musk is often compared to Henry Ford, who also detested unions, taxes and regulations. Ford received the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle,” the highest award available to a foreigner, from Hitler’s government in 1938. Ford owned a virulently antisemitic, anti-New Deal media outlet named The Dearborn Advocate which published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Musk’s journey to the populist right seems to have followed a similar path. 

Musk claims he has previously voted for Democrats, but has shifted towards the Republican Party in the past few years, as they embraced election denialism, threats of violence against the press, and retaliation against their political opponents. Musk encouraged people to vote for Republicans in the midterm elections, even though experts warned that to do so could threaten the future of free and fair elections. Musk said he was a Ron Desantis supporter, even though DeSantis is a public admirer of Victor Orban’s authoritarianism and suggested it was a model for the United States. 

Musk’s embrace of the far-right is immediately apparent by observing the last 6 months of his Twitter activity. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was cheered on by far-right Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Trump advisors and operatives like Steve Bannon. Since his acquisition, he has frequently responded to the most dangerous and deranged far-right complaints -- including amplifying an insane conspiracy theory that downplayed the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi, and an antisemitic conspiracy theory apparently sourced from 8chan. 

He encouraged and retweeted threats by high-level Republican operatives to haul advertisers into a hostile Congressional hearing for the crime of abandoning their Twitter ads under his leadership. While it’s unclear whether he actually spoke to Putin prior, Musk publicly floated a plan for Ukrainian surrender which eerily mimicked the conditions Putin demanded before negotiations could begin. Musk posted - and then quickly deleted - a meme which showed him, Kanye and Trump as the three musketeers. His engagements with far-right figures on Twitter has been uniformly positive, while he publicly trolled progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ed Markey. Unfortunately, this is only a partial list of Musk’s recent public support for the far-right. 

Musk has said he "didn't care about the economics" of buying Twitter, but is now under pressure to turn a profit due to the debt service payments he owes. While his stated motivation to “protect free speech” and “love of humanity” are transparently ridiculous, I would argue that Musk has distinguishable political and economic motivations for his purchase. First, Musk wants to make Twitter more right-wing. Prior to his purchase, he claimed that Twitter’s algorithm was “biased against half the country” and “had a strong left-wing bias” although Twitter’s own research shows the algorithm favors conservatives. Upon taking control of the company, his immediate steps to dismantle content moderation were cheered by the right, and caused an exponential spike in hate speech on the platform. 

Musk’s second goal is to make Twitter more profitable. In Musk’s mind, these two goals are mutually reinforcing: he can make Twitter more profitable by making it more right wing. This makes sense if you believe Twitter works the way it does because a decadent, out-of-touch, upper-middle class educated elite of Blue Checks and Twitter Lawyers enforce their woke dictates through legal and administrative coercion -- and what the red-blooded masses want is Freedom of (Hate) Speech. This kind of right-wing populism enables billionaires like Musk to rail against “the elite” and “Senator Karen” who insist upon making them follow the rules. 

But, in fact, Musk’s efforts to turn Twitter into a right-wing messaging machine came directly into conflict with his desire for Twitter to make money and become more profitable. Within weeks, Musk managed to antagonize users, workers, and advertisers and, reportedly, brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy. 

Musk’s governance style at Twitter could rightly be described as a kind of coup. Upon taking control of the company, Musk immediately fired the CEO and COO, and shortly thereafter dissolved the board and became “the sole director of Twitter.” Within a week, Musk had fired or lost the Chiefs of Trust & Safety, Sales, Information Security, Compliance, and Privacy, Marketing, Accounting and the VP of Advertising and the General Council. He immediately picked a fight with the Blue Check elite, in an effort to convince non-credentialed users to sign up for his $8/month Twitter Blue service. Musk claimed this move was about shifting “Power to the People” and that allowing anyone to purchase a “verified” account would help “fight the bots.” 

Much like Liz Truss was sanctioned by the market for moving so far right, the response from advertisers has been nothing short of catastrophic. On a call with employees, Musk said last week that Twitter had suffered a “massive drop in revenue.” He held a call with advertisers to reassure them things wouldn’t change at Twitter, but the executives who joined the calls with have since resigned. Major ad agencies like Omnicon who represent hundreds of blue-chip companies have suggested their clients pause advertising on the platform. 

Like any two-bit dictator who antagonizes his people while claiming it is for their benefit, the users of Twitter rewarded Musk with an absolute blaze of mockery, derision and parody that destroyed whatever credibility he had left as leader of the company. Musk’s verification scheme devolved into a festival of derision that featured thousands of “verified” accounts claiming to be Musk, and other corporations. The popular rebellion that trashed Musk’s leadership of Twitter doesn’t compare to the bravery that stymied Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or the dedication that stopped Trump’s slow-motion coup, but it did have better memes. 

Twitter’s role in toppling dictators is oft-overstated, but the trope exists for a reason. For all its many flaws, Twitter is a place where anyone can yell directly at rich and powerful people. Democracy ultimately depends upon more than our ability to tell the most powerful people in our society to go to hell, but there is no way democracy exists without it. Musk may fashion himself a philosopher-king beneficently handing freedom and truth down to the people, but in getting his ass handed to him, he showed where the power truly lies.