Musky Elon

I will be honest: I admired Elon Musk for a number of years. Not only because of the innovation Tesla brought to the EV game, or Starlink’s futuristic promise, or SpaceX, arguably the only viable space shuttle provider today… More than any of these ventures, what was remarkable about the man was that he went through all of them simultaneously. Before him, the prevalent model was Steve Jobs, admittedly co-founder of both Apple and Pixar, but not at the same time. Jobs came with the notion of obsessive focus on one key project, no matter how big it was. Then Musk came over running several such key projects, all at once, seemingly with ease… Groundbreaking.

That was, however, before the man turned ideological.

Granted, Musk always had this so-called libertarian ideology in the back of his mind, but it was historically mitigated by progressive positions that made his worldview overwhelmingly appealing. Then came Covid and his first conspiracy theories around vaccines, his transgender daughter distancing herself from her father… On Twitter, Musk started writing and sharing questionable content, which didn’t raise too many eyebrows: billionaires are eccentric, and his views were essentially harmless. After all, he was not in power…

Then came the acquisition and quasi-ransacking of Twitter, now X. Beyond the business reasoning behind the deal — a trove of data to feed his AI models, a massive platform to promote any of his projects, a new revenue model… — you could quickly see that Musk had also taken over Twitter to promote a more politically inclined agenda. Which was still largely intertwined with his business interests: if his new champion, Trump, got reelected, he stood to win big time…

During the last stretch of the 2024 US presidential campaign, Musk not only supported Trump in all possible ways, including literally buying out voters through makeshift lotteries, but he went up a notch in his conspiracy theory and populist tendencies. He started promoting claims that were directly anti-immigration, anti-(trans)gender inclusion, downplaying the risk of climate change… the list is long. Although it did feed into the Trumpian ethos and therefore contributed to the campaign effort, it also largely reflected his new (but not improved) mindset as a whole. At it wasn’t pretty.

As we all know, Trump did go on to win and will soon be sworn in as President of the United States — again. What will come in the next four years is fairly clear: more of the same, and then some. Attacks on abortion rights were the beginning of a reactionary movement that Trump, Musk et al. are poised to lead. All the while ensuring that US fiscal policies favor their various business interests, of course. And then?

History teaches us that such cycles always reach a bottom when society finally realizes the error of its ways, no matter how late in the process. Then comes a correction that usually steers everything quite far in the opposite direction. We will see how things pan out — and when. In the meantime, we should brace ourselves for a bumpy ride to that aforementioned bottom.

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was suspending its moderation protocols, in an obvious nod to Musk’s approach, thus confirming the direction the immediate future is taking. See you on the flip side…