Is damaging the fabric of our society.

Read a very interesting column in Dutch recently, I’ll push it through translate:

*You thought it couldn’t get any worse than Trump? Think again Donald Trump has no idea who Elon Musk really is, writes Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer.

If Donald Trump wins the American presidential election and Elon Musk joins his government, that will be a playful stepping stone for Musk to a compelling power grab, writes Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer in an essay. Because Musk is a god in the depths of his mind. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer August 24, 2024, 03:00

Last Monday, August 12, a conversation took place between the most dangerous and the second most dangerous man in America. It was broadcast live.

“The world is full of villains,” the second most dangerous man said at one point during that conversation. “If they think the president of the United States is a softie, they will do whatever they want and that is a danger to the world.”

The most dangerous man agreed, but he felt the need to be a bit more specific: “I think it is good to emphasize to the listeners how important it is that the president of the United States inspires fear. Global security depends on it.”

Although both men agreed with each other’s positions throughout the rest of the conversation, the meeting was marked by a fundamental misunderstanding that was not addressed or clarified. The second most dangerous man was under the impression that the whole show revolved around him, because he was running for president. The most dangerous man allowed this misconception to persist and settled into his role as a subservient interviewer, knowing that his time would come. ‘Citizen Kane’

The media magnate who gains disproportionate political influence through his empire is an archetype in modern Western mythology. Charles Foster Kane, the titular hero of Orson Welles’s 1941 film Citizen Kane, is a cross between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Rupert Murdoch can be held at least partly responsible for Brexit, the rise of Trump and many other political developments in the Anglo-Saxon world. Murdoch, his family and his empire have been mythologised by Jesse Armstrong’s HBO series Succession, which aired between June 2018 and May 2023. Silvio Berlusconi had built his political power on the commercial television channels of Mediaset, which he owned. The unforgettable opening scene of the first part of Paolo Sorrentino’s 2018 diptych Loro, in which a sheep freezes to death in a room in Villa Certosa, where the air conditioning is set much too high because it cannot tear its gaze away from a television screen, is a metaphor for Berlusconi’s influence.

Elon Musk could be considered a modern incarnation of this archetype. Instead of investing in presses, printing ink, and television antennas, he bought the social media platform Twitter in 2022, which he renamed X in July 2023. Musk has a fetish for the letter X. He named one of his twelve children, a four-year-old son who is called X Æ A-Xii, by name. But that’s beside the point. The platform X, which Musk now controls, is a powerhouse. It is one of the five most visited websites in the world. I should put the figures next to it about the growing percentage of global citizens, especially young people, who consider social media their primary source of news, but I don’t think that’s necessary. We know that. The situation is that Elon Musk has acquired control over a substantial part of the global news supply.

Musk has shared a meme of a man watching a Javier Milei speech on his laptop in his white satin bed while being ridden by a prototypical hottie: that’s how horny Musk gets from neoliberal extremism.

The main reform Musk has implemented at the former Twitter is the abolition of content moderation. Previously, deliberate disinformation and hate speech were blocked as best he could, but Musk presents himself as a paladin of free speech and allows everything. Instead of top-down moderation, he has implemented a system of so-called ‘Community Notes’, where users can indicate that certain messages are misleading, but research by The New York Times has shown that this seemingly democratic self-regulation is a farce. Apart from the fact that users are so polarized that they can no longer agree on anything, only a mere four percent of all Community Notes make it through the algorithms, and even in this small minority of cases, the warning does not prevent mass distribution.

Anyone with nfar-right agitators and conspirators are taking advantage of the new freedom on the former Twitter, especially since Elon Musk regularly shares their messages on his personal account, which is followed by more than 195 million people. At the same time, there are increasing indications that users with a left-wing, woke signature are systematically disadvantaged in the opaque black box of the almighty algorithms. It has now become clear that Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is part of a pronounced political project. Since his two-hour interview with Donald Trump on August 12, which was broadcast live on X and in which Musk gave his interviewee, whom he also generously supports financially, all the space to profile himself, this is no longer a secret. Horny about extremism

The advantage of Musk’s exhibitionism on his own platform is that his political position leaves nothing to the imagination. He is ultra-liberal in economic terms, opposed to taxes, leveling or any form of state intervention. In that respect, he is a fan of Argentine President Javier Milei. He shared a video of himself watching a speech by Milei on his laptop in his white satin bed, while being ridden by a prototypical hottie: that’s how horny he got from neoliberal extremism. He is a supporter of the White Supremacy Movement, a racist, an anti-Semite and an outspoken anti-woke. He no longer recognizes one of his own sons as his own since she wants to be his daughter.

The fact that Elon Musk is spreading and helping to spread far-right propaganda on one of the most-viewed social media platforms in the world, over which he has complete control, makes him dangerous, but there are other circumstances that make him even more dangerous. He is the owner of Starlink, which provides internet via satellite in parts of the world where there are no fiber optics or other cables. The extent to which this gives him power was demonstrated during an episode in 2022 when he shut down the internet along the Crimean coast to sabotage a Ukrainian surprise attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. While there are different versions of these events, it increasingly seems that Musk was personally involved in the decision to deny Ukraine a decisive advantage. On this basis, Jeet Heer of The Nation concludes that “Musk is now so powerful that he has his own foreign policy.”

When European Commissioner Thierry Breton asked Musk about his responsibility to stop the spread of unfounded hatred, he responded with characteristic diplomatic sophistication: ‘Go fuck your own face’

But the most dangerous quality of Elon Musk is his attitude, which is aptly illustrated by a recent incident. While Britain was being torn by race riots, after three girls were stabbed to death in Southport and after far-right influencers spread fake news that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker and a Muslim, Musk actively contributed to the hatred of Muslims and foreigners, even after the authorities revealed that the arrested suspect was a 17-year-old boy from Lancashire, born in Cardiff, who had no affinity with Islam. He responded approvingly to reports that mass immigration and open borders were the real cause of the unrest, commenting on them by saying that civil war was inevitable. When confronted by European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who reminded him of his responsibility to stop the spread of unfounded hatred, he responded with characteristic diplomatic sophistication: “Go fuck your own face.”

Elon Musk is obsessed with chaos and destruction and he doesn’t care about rules, laws or decency. He also doesn’t care about the truth. In running his own companies, he has a habit of flouting laws and often gets away with it because governments consider his companies too big to chase away. He recognizes no authority in the world other than his own self-proclaimed genius and his whims. He is a god in his deepest thoughts. That makes him dangerous. A gripping power grab

In gratitude to the most dangerous man in America for the pleasant conversation, the second most dangerous man in America yesterday promised him a cabinet position if he is elected president of the United States in November. Musk responded that he is ready to serve his country.

But Trump has no idea who Elon Musk really is. Trump thinks he is rich, popular, smart and powerful, but Musk is many times richer, more influential, more intelligent and more powerful. If the scenario comes true that Trump wins the election and Musk joins his government, then for Musk that is not the crowning achievement of his career, as Trump thinks, but a playful stepping stone to a truly grand and compelling power grab.

We need to realize that our democratic constitutional state is ill-equipped to stop someone like Musk

Who did Musk have in mind when he said that a president should be scary? The archetype of the influential media magnate deceives us. Musk is not the man to impress in the background and manipulate behind the scenes in anticipation of the ruthless film adaptation of his life story. It cannot be ruled out that Musk harbors the ambition to become president himself one day, and it cannot be ruled out either that his ambitions extend beyond the United States and that he is already dreaming of world domination in his white satin bed with his laptop on *

https://www.demorgen.be/meningen/u-dacht-dat-het-niet-erger-kon-dan-trump-think-again~b5cf8e56/