“America has indeed had enough,” declares a post retweeting a claim that corporate America’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are a “tumour”.
“Is 24% of Britain on acid,” reads another tweet with the results of a “survey” on United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s apparent approval ratings.
The world’s richest man has spoken. Again. And again.
These are just a few of the many posts by Elon Musk between January 14 and 15.
Musk, the self-proclaimed free speech warrior, has evolved from Silicon Valley’s enfant terrible into a global political disruptor. His tools: an enormous trillion-dollar fortune eclipsing the gross domestic product of small countries, a satellite network hovering the earth, a social media empire and an insatiable appetite for inserting himself into matters far beyond his expertise that he has made it his business to be involved in.
Unelected, he participates in high-level diplomatic calls with US President Donald Trump and other world leaders, shaping policy on issues ranging from trade to the Russia-Ukraine war. He nominates candidates and dictates terms for the United States budget.
He even directs American lawmakers on the selection of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Majority Leader, a role that should have no input from unelected tech moguls. What makes Musk’s rise particularly insidious is the absence of checks and balances.
Musk represents a rising cabal of oligarchs bent on reshaping “The West” into a patchwork of fascist regimes.
Mark Zuckerberg, another peer oligarch, has emulated the Muskian blueprint of “free speech” under the guise of “returning to roots”. Zuckerberg, who heads the sprawling Meta social media empire of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is no doubt inspired by the dystopian transformation of Twitter, rechristened “X” under Musk. X, today is a digital dystopia where misinformation thrives, harassment is rampant, and conspiracy theories flow freely.
But in the end, this is not a test of the power of Musk or Zuckerberg but of democracy’s resilience. After World War II, the institutions of liberal democracies were designed to curb the influence of unchecked, singular power.
Can democracies, divided and distracted by cultural wars, withstand the capriciousness of unelected oligarchs? Or is this the beginning of a new world order where democracy is supplanted by the whims of the ultrarich?
Wannabe kingmaker with a megaphone
With X as his personal megaphone, Musk has blared his vision of free speech – selective at best, hypocritical at worst – while he amplifies far-right voices and dissenters are often silenced. Musk’s social media megaphone is a cudgel to normalise racist rhetoric and chaos.
In the United States, Musk poured $200 million into Trump’s campaign, engineering a drama rather than a democratic exercise. The 2024 US presidential election played out like a soap opera of money, lottery, memes and manufactured outrage.
In Europe, Musk’s meddling takes a darker turn. He mocked Germany’s Olaf Scholz, calling him “Chancellor Oaf Schitz” and regularly disparages other elected leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Musk reportedly held private discussions on ways to oust Starmer. In August, Musk backed far-right anti-immigrant violence across the UK, predicted “an inevitable civil war”, demanded the release of convicted far-right politician Tommy Robinson, and threw his support behind Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform Party.
He called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier an “anti-democratic tyrant” and endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, calling it the “last spark of hope” for the country. He went further, platforming the AfD by inviting Alice Weidel, the party’s candidate for chancellor, for a live chat on X where they both agreed that “Hitler was a communist and the Nazi regime was communism”.
In October 2022, as Ukraine struggled to fend off Russia’s aggression, Musk proposed a “peace plan” via a Twitter poll that suggested Ukraine cede Crimea to Russia. The suggestion, delivered with the casual arrogance of someone accustomed to being taken seriously, caused international uproar. But Musk doubled down, threatening to withdraw Starlink support from Ukraine’s military operations, effectively holding a nation’s survival hostage to his whims.
Elsewhere, Musk has had a cozy relationship with authoritarian leaders like Viktor Orbán – a leader condemned by the European Union for eroding democracy. In Italy, his support for far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni further glues his role as a global provocateur, unchecked by democratic accountability.
Musk’s playbook – disrupt, distract, dominate – is a replication of the model he experimented within the United States and he is exporting it worldwide. In Musk’s world, governance is secondary to spectacle. Policies are replaced by algorithms and diplomacy is a tweetstorm.
Meta’s Musk turn
Days before Trump’s inauguration, Zuckerberg, with an awkward Gen Z aesthetic – oversized T-shirts, a locket dangling conspicuously and hair styled to seem “effortlessly” bubbly – announced that Meta would end its fact-checking programme.
His performative casualness conceals his unsettling agenda. “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he announced.
His “return to roots” is an open embrace of division and dehumanisation. Meta’s updated guidelines, for instance, now permit speech that “calls for exclusion” or uses “insulting language” in political or religious discourse.
As the policy elaborates, it allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation,” under the pretence of fostering dialogue about topics such as “transgenderism” or homosexuality. The very framing – “transgenderism” – is ripped straight from the far-right playbook, implying a pathology or political agenda rather than an inherent identity.
Zuckerberg also installed Trump loyalist Dana White on Meta’s board.
Social media has become a tool for oligarchs to divide, distract, and exploit. The banal slogans of Zuckerberg’s empire to connect people have already been stained by multiple instances of violence and bloodshed driven by fake videos and the refusal to curb the spread of hate speech. The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar stands as one grim evidence to this.
Musk’s antics, and Trump’s sabre-rattling signal the emergence of coordinated cabal of oligarchs. These men of unbounded wealth and unchecked influence are criminalising human decency and democracy with every calculated tweet, policy change and political endorsement. Far-right ideologies, emboldened by their support, creep into mainstream discourse in the name of “free speech” or “cultural preservation.”
As these billionaires ready their private jets and build their bunkers for an apocalypse of their own making, the rest of us are left to wrestle with burning forests, rising seas and the social unrest they have nurtured. Should they succeed in turning the world into a patchwork of “Mars-ready” chaos, who will be left to foot the bill?
The last word
Oligarchs and tech moguls flocked to Trump’s inauguration, with Musk pounding his chest in triumph – his gesture disturbingly reminiscent of a Nazi salute. Yet, remember this: the tools for resistance exist. The structural fragility of democracies, compounded by a citizenry made susceptible to scepticism, misinformation and manipulation can be fixed.
Governments and civil societies must heed the lessons of centralised corporate-controlled platforms, and encourage decentralised digital infrastructures, like the BlueSky initiative or movements such as “Free Our Feeds”, which democratise online spaces. These decentralised systems prioritise transparency, community governance, and resilience against monopolistic control.
As artificial intelligence becomes an omnipresent force, governments must avoid replicating the same centralised mistakes that plagued social media. A decentralised AI framework – open-source, community-driven, and ethically governed – can resist the pitfalls of centralised social media.
Citizens and institutions can reclaim agency and ensure that the digital future remains democratic and equitable. The battle is not against Musk or Zuckerberg but against a systemic erosion of accountability.
Pius Fozan is a photojournalist and public policy graduate from the Willy Brandt School and Central European University.
