Depending on who you talk to in Europe, Elon Musk is either a brave defender of free speech or a hot-tempered and dangerous troublemaker.
“He used his psychic powers to say, ‘Let’s give a voice to the voiceless.’ He’s a once-in-a-generation guy. He’s my hero. He’s an amazing person.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a writer and critic of Islam and former Dutch politician, spoke on the podcast Honest.
Ian Hislop, editor of the British satirical newspaper Private Eye, said Musk was “a typical social media youth who hasn’t grown up, with his temper and lack of responsibility.”
He recently told Britain’s LBC radio that Musk is “so full of contradictions that I hope that at some point even his followers will start to realize that every sentence doesn’t make sense.”
Musk, a tech billionaire who owns has become the center of several debates in Europe.
At one point, X-Mask claimed that “Starmer is evil.”
He has thrown his power to shape the narrative behind Britain’s opposition Conservative party’s campaign to reopen an investigation into what he called a cover-up of sexual abuse by police and prosecutors.
The abusers in question, known as the Grooming Gang, were British men of Pakistani descent who sexually assaulted underage white girls in towns across the Midlands in the late 1990s and 2000s.
In 2013, the Times investigated this scandal, in which these organized crime syndicates had been operating for years without major police intervention, and investigations ensued.
Mr Starmer refused to reopen the inquiry on the grounds that the Conservative Party and the Populist Reform Party were only trying to stir up far-right, anti-immigration hysteria, while Mr Starmer said Mr Musk was “harboring a known terrorist”. continued to attack.
Musk falsely claimed that posting a meme criticizing Starmer “could land you in jail in the UK,” while right-wing news outlet GB News said, “British politicians are using your daughter for votes. He amplified his claims by saying,
Musk shakes up German politics
Musk is also busy meddling in German politics ahead of next month’s crucial elections, in which the ruling Social Democratic Party is certain to be defeated.
“What I want to encourage the German people is that they need to vote for change. Voting for the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) is simply a wise and common sense move. Nothing outlandish is being proposed. It’s common sense… Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk argued in X.
On January 9, he gave an interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel in which she referred to Adolf Hitler’s Nazis as Germany’s Social Democratic Party, rather than her party’s forerunners born from the neo-Nazi movement. Reimagined as a pioneer.
“The greatest success after that terrible period in our history was to give Hitler the correct, conservative label. He was just the opposite,” Weidell told Musk. “He was a communist, a socialist…We are quite the opposite. We are a liberal-conservative party. We want to liberate people because we have been wrongly framed for so long. ”
The interview was viewed 16 million times within a week, making it the envy of Germany’s Liberal Democratic Party leaders.
“The most pathetic person I’ve ever seen was Christian Lindner, who wrote to Musk, “Don’t support AfD, support me, because I’m the true liberal here in Germany.” ” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the Madrid office. the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank;
“European leaders are completely lost on short-term issues. Who will vote for Christian Lindner after he asks Musk to intervene in Germany’s elections?”
Weidel says she wants to free up the energy of the German people to pursue innovation and enterprise, but in her view that is hampered by bureaucracy, over-regulation, over-taxation and immigration, a position that is similar to that of incoming Donald Trump. This is the same position as the US president. Musk also received a promotion for “X.”
Mr. Musk’s power to shape what many people perceive to be truth through his social media sites is causing deep concern on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Today, an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is taking shape in the United States, literally threatening our entire democracy,” US President Joe Biden said in his farewell address to the American people on Wednesday. “I am equally concerned about the possibility of its rise.” The effects of the high-tech industrial complex…Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation that enables the abuse of power. ”
There are similar concerns in Europe, where the exorbitant amount of money Mr. Musk paid for Twitter ($44 billion), which he renamed to X, only makes sense if he recoups it through influence.
“Mr. Musk believes that his decision to buy Twitter was a turning point in American history, and with that decision he saved American democracy,” Torreblanca said. “Otherwise, the Democratic Party would have been in power forever,” he told Al Jazeera.
“He believes now is the time to push this agenda globally and fight progressives everywhere.”
“It’s very difficult to answer.”
Digital experts estimate X’s penetration rate to be between 50 million and 100 million users on a continent of 550 million people, but Musk’s reach is likely through his influence with news outlets and other platform owners. It is expanding further.
Mr. Musk’s close collaboration with Mr. Trump also creates the perception that Mr. Musk speaks for the president, giving him power over his colleagues.
On January 7th, Facebook and Instagram CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a video saying: Similar to X. ”
According to Torreblanca, this means that “something will only be removed if another reader asks for it to be removed. This is essentially a violation of the integrity of the platform, which is unacceptable under European law.” “It means delegating quality to the user.”
European Digital Services Law requires platforms to moderate content, making them responsible for content that is harmful, violent, or offensive to various groups.
The DSA’s overwhelming support from a wide range of political groups, including conservatives, socialists and the Greens, means the EU can enforce it in a neutral and even-handed manner, much less dramatically than Brazil imposed last year. Torreblanca said this could avoid major conflicts and bans.
“In practice, EU competition authorities independently carry out investigations and impose fines on companies,” Torreblanca said, adding that “the best way for Europe to do this is in a politically calm way. I think that’s what we should do,” he said.
The European Commission may be the only authority in Europe that can stand up to Mr. Musk. Britain and Germany did not individually threaten X with suspension or legal action. But Giorgos Verdi, who works with the ECFR in Brussels, said even the European Commission could be threatened.
“The new relationship between[Musk]and Trump makes it very difficult to respond,” Verdi told Al Jazeera. “Trump sees US tech companies as a very important lever when it comes to the trade war with China. If the EU forces these companies to slow down in accordance with regulations, this could be a national security threat for the US. This could be a warranty issue.”
Maxim Alyukov, a researcher at the School of Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Manchester, believes Mr. Musk may even be educating those focused on furthering the Kremlin’s cause.
“Russia’s influence operations are actually modeled on the example of Trump and Musk,” Alyukov said.
“They pick a particular incident, such as the British scandal, and try to present a solution to this problem to a particular politician. That’s exactly what Musk is doing,” he told Al Jazeera.
Mr. Musk promoted the British Reform Party as a solution to what he and the hard-right right often call “unchecked” immigration and mass rape.
Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Moscow recognized that they needed a dedicated ecosystem to normalize and disseminate their views, said the co-authors of a recent study on Moscow-funded news outlets in Europe. said Mr. Alyukov. These media outlets pose as legitimate news services but broadcast Russian messages at key moments, such as elections.
“We’re not doing overt censorship. We’re building ecosystems that help us make our voices heard, and what[Musk]has done is basically gotten himself an ecosystem. ”Alyukov said.
Government in uncharted territory
Mr. Musk has fused his company’s interests with those of the nation, making himself indispensable.
SpaceX launches payloads for NASA, Starlink provides the Pentagon with the world’s largest communications satellite system, and Tesla disrupts the global auto industry that had alienated Detroit automakers and brings the U.S. back to the forefront. Ta.
X is now the dominant communication platform globally, and Musk has used it as a weapon against the news media, telling his followers that “X is the future and it’s citizen journalism…it’s about the people. , it’s for the people.”
This sets much of the news-gathering agenda, with newspapers rushing to investigate whether rumors about X are fabrications or hoaxes.
“I think he thought… ‘I can say whatever I want, it doesn’t have to be true, it better not be true, and no one is going to stop me,'” Hislop said. “We are in a completely unlucky time.”
“The economy is becoming geopolitical,” Verdi said. “It’s not just about applying ethical principles equally to technology. It’s also a question of power.”