Elon Musk has long been a divisive figure. A visionary pioneer if you ask some. A "tech bro" with increasingly extreme views, if you ask others.
The 54-year-old has long maintained a relatively low political profile. The headlines instead focused on his business successes with Paypal, Tesla, Space X, and more recently, X.
The platform, formerly known as Twitter, is also a divisive force. Critics argue that it is an echo chamber filled with right-wing trolls, crypto scammers, and porn bots. If you ask the faithful, including Musk himself, X is the only platform that truly allows for the entire spectrum of public discourse.
X is an incredibly powerful tool for anyone who wants to get a message out, says Andreas Önnerfors, media researcher at Linnaeus University and project leader for the media institute Fojos Faktajouren.
X still has an enormous impact on the political climate. There is no platform that has managed to replace X as a communication tool yet.
Right-wing shift
Musk's posts on X were previously mostly humorous memes, updates about the companies he was involved in, or nerdy opinions on games and popular culture. However, during the pandemic and afterwards, including the purchase of the platform in 2022, the tone of the posts has changed.
Musk was strongly critical of how the American state handled the coronavirus pandemic, with restrictions that led to production stops in his Tesla factories. But the posts also touched on the virus itself and whether vaccines were really the solution.
In November 2023, Musk wrote what was interpreted as anti-Semitic propaganda. Since then, the posts criticized for being conspiratorial, right-wing populist, or transphobic have become increasingly frequent.
He's spewing out completely extreme stuff on a regular basis, says Andreas Önnerfors.
He exemplifies this by pointing out that Musk, during the riots in British Southport earlier this year, triggered by a knife attack in which a 17-year-old with parents from Rwanda killed three girls, intervened in British domestic politics.
Among other things, Musk wrote that "civil war is inevitable" and that "when cultures clash, conflict arises".
Dismissing authorities
It's like throwing a Molotov cocktail into an already tense social situation. He sees himself on the same level as the British Prime Minister. And makes fun of elected representatives from other states, dismissing their authority and giving a voice to marginal voices and extremists.
Elon Musk has over 197 million followers on X. According to several reports in American media, he has ensured that the platform's algorithms make his posts visible to almost all users.
Two months before the election, he made several posts accusing established media of being financed by Democrats. He also shared a film clip where an AI voice pretends to be Kamala Harris, saying "this is fantastic" with a laughing emoji.
Reinstating Trump
After the storming of the US Congress on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump's account on the then-Twitter was shut down, after the outgoing president spread false information about the election results.
When Elon Musk gained control of the platform, he reversed that decision. In July this year, Musk openly supported Trump as a presidential candidate. The following month, he conducted an "interview" with Trump on X.
Musk has an idea that X is an open forum. But it's a privately owned platform where you can pay for increased visibility. This is a company that makes money, driven by advertising, says Christian Christensen, American professor of journalism at Stockholm University.
Democratic threat?
That Musk is now actively engaging in political influence does not make him unique among wealthy tech entrepreneurs.
We have different actors here, regardless of ideology, with men like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Mark Cuban, and Musk – a circle that owns large companies and is extremely wealthy, using their position to influence, says Christensen, and continues:
I think you should ask yourself if it's good for democracy to have a very small circle of people who have such enormous power over the flow of information.
Exactly where Musk's political engagement is headed is unclear. Donald Trump has offered him the opportunity to lead a commission to cut public spending, if he wins the election.
I think it will end badly. It will be a clash. It's two men with two strong egos who probably won't be able to collaborate. We saw similar events during Trump's time as president, says Andreas Önnerfors.
Marcus Alexandersson/TT
Facts: Elon Musk
TT
Born June 28, 1971, in South Africa. Moved to his mother's home country, Canada, at the age of 18 to study. Musk then switched to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in economics and physics.
In 1995, he moved to California and began his entrepreneurial journey. The first company, started with his brother Kimbal, was bought by Compaq for over 300 million dollars in 1999. The same year, Musk co-founded what would later become Paypal. The service was sold to Ebay at the end of 2002 for 1.5 billion dollars.
He was then involved in the start-up phase of both Space X and Tesla. With the successes from his entrepreneurial ventures, Musk is counted as one of the richest people in the world. Depending on market conditions and stock market fluctuations, often as the richest individual.
Musk has long been an active tweeter, even before buying the platform and rebranding it as X. He has nearly 200 million followers on the platform.
His personal opinions have taken an increasingly prominent place among his posts on X, and Musk has been criticized for being transphobic, anti-Semitic, and for spreading conspiracy theories and right-wing extremist propaganda.
