Elon Musk and the politics of influence

By Uditha Devapriya

As Donald Trump prepares himself for his second presidency, his most powerful advisor, the world’s richest man, is busy amplifying his voice across and beyond social media. In just three weeks, Elon Musk has commented – brazenly, according to his critics – on European politics, taking potshots at Keir Starmer and calling one Opposition MP in the UK a “snivelling cretin.” The EU appears to be at a loss with what to do with such remarks: while leaders of Britain, France, Spain, and Germany have shot back, the Italian Prime Minister has defended Musk, saying he does not deserve the labelling he has got.

Coupled with Meta’s abrupt cancellation of fact-checking – the platform will replace it with its version of X’s “Community Notes” – this seems to forebode an unholy collusion between billionaire interests, social media, and right-wing politics. While Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not been candid about his political preferences, Musk has been nothing but politically partisan on the internet, and particularly X. He regularly tweets that the “legacy media” has failed, adding that “you” – the people – “are the media.”

While attacking British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for supposedly doing nothing to stop rape gangs in his country, Musk has praised far-right parties, including the Alternative für Deutschland, whose leader Alice Weidel he interviewed on X days ahead of elections in Germany. At the same time, he has attacked right-wing party leaders, including the UK Reform Party’s Nigel Farage, for not being right-wing enough: in Farage’s case, for being reluctant to endorse Tommy Robinson, an anti-Islam campaigner.

It is difficult to say how far Trump shares these sentiments. Judging by his recent remarks, particularly on Canada (which he described as the 51st state), Mexico (he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America), and Greenland (which he says he wants to claim from Denmark), it is clear he sees himself as a disruptor, though what he wants to disrupt remains open to debate. Certainly, the Western political order is at a crossroads: European leaders have not been this upset at a US President’s remarks since Trump 1.0. Given his antipathy to organisations like NATO and his dithering over issues like Ukraine – issues that have unified the European political establishment – Musk’s interventions will most likely make a Trump presidency more polarising and fierier than it already is.

The political interests that Musk supports have all pitted themselves against what they call “the Establishment.” From a right-wing perspective, the establishment, at least in Europe, encompasses all those parties– right, left, and centre – committed to the European Union, and to organisations like NATO. In this regard, Musk’s interventions are reminiscent of the press barons, corporate magnates, commentators, and moneyed interests that called for the US’s withdrawal from the Second World War. Not surprisingly, he has been compared to William Randolph Hearst and Charles Lindbergh, two of the most vociferous “America First” isolationists during that formative period in world history.

Western liberals and military hawks alike have voiced their concerns at these developments. In the US, both Democratic politicians – particularly those positioning themselves on the centre, if not centre-left – and military strategists – the most interventionist, including those allied with the Cheney-Bush wing of the Republican Party – have criticised Musk. In an op-ed to the New York Times last month, for instance, Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré, who retired from the US army in 2008, described him a “national security risk.” Honoré’s article is full of the China- and Russia-baiting that characterises the liberal hawkish wings of both parties, but his accusations resonate with those who feel that Musk, while openly ridiculing Western politicians, has said absolutely nothing about China and Russia.

Of course, Musk has his reasons. His business is thriving in China, even if his prospects have come down somewhat: Tesla, which once dominated the market there, is now facing competition from Beyond Your Dreams (BYD), which in turn has benefitted, rather ironically, from US tariffs on electric vehicles. The latter were imposed by President Joe Biden in response to what his administration framed as “unfair” government subsidies on Electric Vehicles (EVs): a claim which, according to critics in China, does not hold water given how US government subsidies helped finance several of its key industries, including Tesla itself.

The mainstream Western media has also alleged connections between Musk and Vladimir Putin. These allegations, however, remain unsubstantiated and unconfirmed. Musk has defended himself against accusations that he is sitting on the fence, or worse, taking sides against Ukraine: in a tweet months ago, he stated that Starlink was providing essential services to the Ukrainian military. On the other hand, he joined Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. While we may never know what transpired in that conversation, Musk’s subsequent tweets, which ridiculed Zelenskyy’s pleas for military aid from the West, have in his critics’ eyes made him a Putin apologist.

However, to draw a clear line between Musk’s politics and the politics of the Democratic and Republican “establishments” is problematic. Musk and Trump, and the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, share a great many things. Yet they also differ on a many other issues, prime among them China. While the Democratic Party remains hawkish on both China and Russia, the Republican Party under Trump has become more hardline on China than even the Democrats. To what extent this will align with Musk’s interests in China has yet to be seen. On the other hand, despite Trump’s calls for tariffs and measures against Beijing, it would do well to remember that, in the first months of his first presidency, he openly praised and tried to reach a settlement with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Musk regularly tweets about the decline of Western civilisation, even as he shies away from commenting on Chinese and Russian politics. As Donald Trump assumes office, critics wonder whether his support for alt-right politics will put on the back-burner issues that the liberals and war hawks of the West have rallied around for decades: including European unity, NATO, and the rules-based order which provided the Western political establishment with the hegemony it needed to sustain itself for half a century.

Uditha Devapriya is the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy think-tank based in Colombo and accessible via www.factum.lk. He can be reached at uditha@factum.lk.