Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has increasingly embraced far-right sentiments, raising concerns about his political beliefs and the potential impact of his power. This article explores Musk's recent activities, including his attacks on Democratic institutions and his appointment of loyalists to key government positions. It also examines Musk's history of political support and his views on various social and economic issues.
The man given free rein by Trump to crusade against the federal government supported Democrats until 2022. But some of Musk’s longstanding positions lead a straight line to his far-right sympathies. Musk’s embrace of the far right has raised urgent questions about what Musk’s political beliefs and how he intends to use his newfound power.
He is not a people person, as millions around the world will be able to attest after the planet’s richest man cut off food supplies, healthcare and probably even more. Musk sees himself as a data man, wielding numbers like a machete to slash and burn his way through government waste and corruption as he leads the rightwing charge to capture the US state. Within days of Musk dispatching his minions to kick down the doors of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and rifle through its finances, the agency was in effect out of business. Musk claimed USAid was “a criminal organisation” and full of Marxists – an assertion called “laughable” by the agency’s former administrator under George W Bush, Andrew Natsios, who describes himself as a conservative Republican. Since Trump’s inauguration, the head of the new “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has created an extensive power base in Washington of a kind not seen before. Trump has given free rein to Musk to send his operatives into more than a dozen federal agencies to look for evidence of mismanagement and subversion, and generally create chaos, outside of the usual bounds of oversight and regulation. Crucially, Musk now in effect controls the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which oversees federal employment. He immediately encouraged more than 2 million government workers to resign with the stated aim of forcing a few hundred thousand out the door. It’s clear who Musk thinks should be running the country instead, from his recruitment to Doge of “special government employees” from his own companies and the wider tech industry to storm the federal citadels. They include a significant proportion of young male software engineers of the kind who tend to worship tech billionaires like Musk, including a teenager who has gone by “Few, if any, have undergone the security clearances other government workers need to access sensitive and personal information. If they had, Doge might have been discouraged from hiring another recruit from Silicon Valley, Marko Elez, who was sent into the US treasury department, where he had access to taxpayer records. Elez resigned on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal” and sack “rogue bureaucrats”. But his embrace of the far right, including an unrestrained endorsement of the German nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), and what looked to much of the world like a salute at Trump’s inauguration celebrations, has raised urgent questions about Musk’s political beliefs and how he intends to use his newfound power. As it happens, much of what Musk is doing is also good for his businesses, including scrapping regulatory bodies and curtailing the power of unions and workers. The labor board, which upholds workers’ rights, has been paralysed and agencies that regulated the financial industry have either been scrapped or told to abandon key parts of their work. Musk’s politics have been eclectic. In the past he has backed universal basic income and a tax on carbon emissions. At the same time he has a deep dislike of trade unions and public transport because it means being around “too many people”, one of whom might be a serial killer”. He espouses a visceral hostility to diversity programmes and appears to regard those who believe in helping the less fortunate as subversive. He has done his bit to create a family worthy of a tech mogul, for which he has done his bit by fathering 12 children, and his hope that one day his rocket company, SpaceX, will help them colonise Mars. Under apartheid, Musk is clearly suspicious of democracy and the leaders it produces. His grandfather headed a fringe political movement in Canada in the 1930s, Technocracy Incorporated, which sought to abolish democracy in favour of government by elite technicians, but its overtones of fascism saw it banned during the second world war. Billionaires unhappy with the messiness of elected government. He has spoken in support of direct democracy, where policies and other issues are decided by popular referendums rather than elected representatives. But in the meantime, Musk appears happy to embrace the US version of the “strongman” ruler through the Republican right’s “America First” movement, which regards the authority of the president as paramount and Congress as an impediment to the implementation of his or her will. Over the years, Musk has described himself as “not a conservative” and “politically moderate”. He backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election going back to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 until he soured on the party in the past few years.“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party
ELON MUSK FAR-RIGHT DEMOCRACY REPUBLICAN PARTY Usaid GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY TECHNOCRACY DIRECT DEMOCRACY STRONGMAN RULER
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