The Ballad of Twitter and that Billionaire Bumpkin, Elon Musk

A limited – at best – understanding of the continent of Europe and its component countries has not prevented the world’s richest man from intervening in the domestic politics of several of them, as well as attacking the EU itself.

Here we take a brief look at some of the occasions on which X owner Elon Musk has used his position as proprietor of one of the world’s largest social media platforms to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign democratic states outside the US.

UK
An apparently flourishing relationship with Keir Starmer’s star-struck predecessor Rishi Sunak rapidly descended into something else altogether after the Labour leader became prime minister, triggered by the UK’s far-right summer riots.

Musk has variously claimed Britain was a “tyrannical police state”, called Starmer “two-tier Keir” over allegations of judicial discrimination against rightwingers, and described new farm inheritance tax rules as the UK “going full Stalin”.

He has asked King Charles to dissolve parliament and claimed Starmer should be in jail for his alleged part in the grooming gangs scandal, calling the prime minister “utterly despicable” and “deeply complicit in mass rapes in exchange for votes”.

Musk’s increasingly erratic remarks have also taken aim at the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, and even the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, who he said “doesn’t have what it takes” – apparently because of his refusal to laud far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

Germany
Weeks before a general election, Musk drew fury with a remark on X about the far-right Alternative für Deutschland claiming “only the AfD can save Germany”, then an op-ed for Welt am Sonntag saying it was “clearly false” to call the party extreme.

He has also called the country’s Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, “a fool” and its president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, an “anti-democratic tyrant”. Scholz has responded with the words: “The rule is: don’t feed the troll.”

Last week the X owner hosted a livestream on the platform with Alice Weidel in which he heaped praise on the anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin AfD co-leader, repeated his claim the party was Germany’s only hope, while Weidel said that Adolf Hitler was a communist.

The EU
The bloc’s digital rulebook represents a threat to Musk’s business interests and the billionaire has frequently attacked Brussels and the European Commission, which has already ruled that X violates its Digital Services Act (DSA) and will look closely at the Weidel livestream.

After the outgoing commission vice-president, Věra Jourová, told digital newspaper Politico Musk was “not able to recognise good and evil”, he described her as “the epitome of banal, bureaucratic evil”. He has similarly sparred with former commissioner Thierry Breton. When Breton, a key architect of the DSA, criticised Musk’s support for AfD as “the very definition of foreign interference”, Musk responded: “Bro, American ‘foreign interference’ is the only reason you’re not speaking German or Russian right now”.

In November Musk also called the incoming commission “undemocratic”, adding that the European parliament – which votes on commissioners and co-decides on EU law – “should vote directly on matters, not give up authority to the EU commission”.

Elsewhere
Musk has backed Donald Trump’s plans for Greenland and asked, after Romania’s top court cancelled the presidential election on evidence of foreign interference: “How can a judge cancel an election and not be considered a dictator?”

He has also intervened in Ireland, claiming in a post prompted by an anti-immigration rally in Dublin that “the people of Ireland are standing up for themselves” and promising to use X to fund legal challenges to planned hate speech legislation.

Heartfield published his political photomontages, many of which savagely satirized the Nazi regime, in the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung. In this widely disseminated workers' newspaper (500,000 readers in 1931), the often deceptively realistic montages appeared cheek-by-jowl with straight documentary photographs.

In this montage, Heartfield specifically links Hitler's electoral success with his courting of wealthy industrialists from the Rhineland. More generally, he gives pictorial punch to the commonplace idea that money fuels political power by implying that the Nazi salute is in fact a plea for cash.

As debate swirled online as to the meaning of Musk’s gesture on Monday, Rolling Stone reported that some on the far right had drawn their own conclusions and were celebrating the moment on social media.

The leader the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhaus wrote: “I don’t care if this was a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears over it.” The founder of the far-right social media platform Gab, Andrew Torba, echoed his sentiment. “Incredible things are happening already,” he wrote.

The Australia-based neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell also shared the video of Musk, describing it as a “Donald Trump White Power moment”.

Australia-based neo-Nazi

Did Elon Musk actually toss off a Sieg heil! at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally today?

A lot of people online seem to think he did, based on data from their eyeballs. Freeze-frame images of Musk on social media show the world’s richest man at a podium in Washington, D.C.’s Capital One Arena engaging in what could definitely be construed as a Nazi salute. Video clips of Musk’s speech support this conclusion. Musk stands at the podium, graced with the presidential seal, and thanks the crowd. Then he forcefully slaps his right hand to his chest and rather violently extends his arm outward diagonally to the audience. Multiple historians have backed the idea that Musk’s gesture was indeed a Nazi salute. “Thank you,” Musk says. He makes the gesture to the crowd, turns 180 degrees, and repeats it to the rest of the crowd behind him. “My heart goes out to you,” he adds, placing his hand back on his chest.

What’s left out of much of the discussion is that Musk is supremely, almost cosmically, awkward and stilted. All close observers of Musk—and I am one—know this.

So which one is it? A mask-off full-Nazi moment or just a graceless tech baron not in full control of both his arms and his feelings? (It wouldn’t be the first time he’s embarrassed himself onstage using his limbs.) I would urge you to watch the video for yourself.

Musk has not yet commented publicly on what he did, and he did not respond to my inquiry about what, exactly, he thought he was doing up there. (It’s worth noting that the video Musk posted of his speech did not show Musk performing the gesture head-on—it cut away to the crowd; a C-SPAN clip shows it in full, though.) Eventually, he will almost certainly deny that he Sieg heiled. If history is a guide, he will post on X, scoffing at the accusations. He could make a self-deprecating joke about being so excited that he wasn’t aware of his body. He could act like a troll, like he did when a German magazine likened him to a member of Hitler’s cabinet, and he responded, “I did Nazi that coming.” The most disturbing response might be if he says nothing at all. So far, he has posted several times on X today without addressing the matter.

Musk’s X has given a megaphone to bigots and restored the accounts of banned racists. I’ve argued that Musk has turned X into a white-supremacist website. Musk himself has spent recent weeks enthusiastically endorsing Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD. Members of the party have had documented ties to neo-Nazis; in 2018, the co-leader of the AfD downplayed the significance of the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi regime. Musk has endorsed posts about the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Even those inside the MAGA movement have voiced concerns about Musk. This month, the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called Musk “a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” He used the word racist to describe Musk and others in Trump’s Silicon Valley inner circle who have South African heritage: “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

All of this informs how one might interpret Musk on the stage today. Above all else, Musk is a troll, an edgelord. He delights in “triggering” his ideological enemies, which includes the media. And his gesture—whatever the intent—has done just that. In a way, the uproar online over Musk is reminiscent of an incident in the first months of the first Trump administration, when two pro-Trump influencers were photographed in the White House press room making the “OK” hand gesture. The photo was interpreted by some media members as a white-power symbol. Reporters and organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League traced it back to racist message boards like 4chan’s /pol/ board. Eventually, however, the gestures appeared to be part of an attempt, by 4chan, to trick the mainstream media into overreacting and turning the handiwork of a few trolls into national news. The whole affair was exhausting and difficult to follow. A message board that trafficked in hate speech created a fake hate-speech symbol to try to trick the media into calling something racist. (The ADL, it is worth noting, has extended Musk the benefit of the doubt, issuing a statement that Musk made an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” and encouraged everyone to “give one another a bit of grace.”)

None of that is to suggest that Musk’s salute wasn’t genuine. A practiced troll consistently crosses redlines because they want to offend and trigger. They also swaddle their actions in enough detached irony and cynicism that allow them to relentlessly mock or harass anyone who dares take them seriously. There is every reason to take a right-wing troll at face value, and yet doing so often means giving them what they want: an intense reaction they can use against you.

For now, all anyone has to understand Musk’s motives is a damning video, his past words and actions, and plenty of circumstantial evidence about his beliefs. What is undeniable is that watching Musk do that onstage while thousands stood on their feet cheering was more than ominous. Across the internet, Wired reports, neo-Nazis are thrilled at what they believe is a direct signal from the centibillionaire. In many ways, it is a fitting spectacle to begin the second Trump administration: a bunch of people arguing endlessly over something everyone can see with their own eyes.