Troubling interference
We’re now the vassals of domineering right-wing billionaires. Resistance is futile.
The German government has accused Elon Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election campaign with repeated endorsements of the far-right party AfD.
“It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” said the government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann after Musk’s X posts and an opinion piece published at the weekend backing the anti-Muslim, anti-migration Alternative für Deutschland.
People are allowed to express their opinions about elections in other countries, but even so, when the people doing the expressing are billionaires who own popular social media platforms, it becomes more than expressing an opinion.
Musk has often weighed in on German politics, even calling the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a “fool” on his social media platform X last month. However, his more recent open calls for German voters to back the AfD, which federal authorities classify as a suspected extremist party, have sparked outrage and accusations of troubling interference in Europe’s top economy.
The South African-born entrepreneur, who has been named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the US federal government, wrote on X earlier this month: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
Now tell us what can save us all from Elon Musk.
He followed up at the weekend with a guest editorial in the broadsheet Welt am Sonntag arguing that Germany was teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse, defending the AfD against accusations of radicalism and praising the party’s approach to the economy, including regulation and tax policy.
The editor of the centre-right newspaper’s opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, posted on X that she had submitted her resignation in protest at the decision to run the article.
Politicians from across the political spectrum criticised Musk’s attempts to put his thumb on the scales of German democracy, with the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, of Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SPD) calling his intervention “undignified and highly problematic” and Merz saying it was “intrusive and presumptuous”.
Merz told the Funke media group: “I cannot recall in the history of western democracies a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country.”
The Welt am Sonntag wouldn’t have published such an editorial by a random teacher or nurse, I’m guessing, and if I’m right then Musk is parlaying his money and notoriety and ownership of social media into influence on the election campaign of a friendly country. It’s not a good look.
Last week, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, criticised X explicitly and Musk indirectly in a short speech announcing his formal decision to dissolve parliament and call the election on 23 February.
Steinmeier, whose role is largely ceremonial, warned of “outside influence” in the campaign, specifically citing recent “open and blatant” attempts on X to sway the vote. The remarks were widely interpreted as an admonishment of Musk.
None of this is healthy.
As I see it this is indeed healthy and indeed democratic. Musk is giving voice to the 200 million people who choose to follow him on Twitter (they can’t all be hate follows) and to the many others who think similarly.
For over a decade now, the mainstream media (in Europe, UK, Canada, US, Australia, etc) have controlled the narrative and presented only a rather narrow range of viewpoints that they deem acceptable. They are now discovering that large swathes of the electorates are dissatisfied with much of what could be called “BBC” orthodoxy.
As a result, a candidate as bad as Trump won in America, while in Germany, AfD is currently second in the polls and in the UK the upstart Reform party is also second in the polls and gaining. Keir Starmer’s Labour government has an approval rating of minus 40.
A mere guest editorial, from someone who has earned that courtesy owing to his vast achievements and the vast number of people who are interested in hearing him, is seen as a problem, and yet institutions like the BBC, NPR etc have whole channels to continually promote the BBC orthodoxy.
Again Coel proves how easy it is for people to be fooled by the lies they are fed. The mainstream media in the UK, USA, and Australia is not the BBC or its equivalents; it is, and has been for more than just one decade, more like four, dominated by Murdoch and his imitators. It has been dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Alan Jones, Piers Ackerman, et al.
It was Murdoch and his Fox network that enabled Trumpistan and destroyed Clinton’s campaign.
It is the Murdoch networks that have mounted a ceaseless campaign to eliminate all forms of public media, the ABC, BBC, NPR et al. A campaign Coel seems only too keen to join, because alternate points of view are not what he wants to hear.
It is the Murdoch network in Australia that demanded, and then had the government enforce, that social media pay a subsidy to Newscorpse’s Australian businesses.
It is the Murdoch media in Australia that led, and won, a campaign to have age restrictions placed on access to social media to reduce competition for eyeballs.
Try these, Coel, and then get back to us.
“The Men Who Killed The News”, Eric Beecher.
“The Republican Noise Machine”, David Brock
“The Death of Truth”, Michiko Kakutani
Also, Musk blathering is not “giving voice to” the people who follow him, any more than popular movies “give voice to” the people who pay to see them or popular songs “give voice to” the people who dance to them. Consumption is not creation.
I’m actually pretty cool with age restrictions on social media use… But Cole doesn’t believe in the Alpha Cuck’s lies; he’s just here to sane wash them in the vain hope that anyone reading this blog is convinced. Doesn’t seem like a good time investment.
It’s wholly unsurprising that Musk should declare his support for the AfD and Farage & Tice’s lot when he gives his support to what our resident Musk fanboy calls “a candidate as bad as Trump” — though I suspect that what he in fact thinks of Trump is wholly at odds with what he declares he thinks of him. I have no faith at all in our fanboy’s honesty in argument.
I must yet again refer to Eugyppius, who has a neutral breakdown of this drama. I can’t add much, but I will offer this quote:
Other than his somewhat-childish and distasteful name-calling, he lays out a compelling case that Musk’s remarks themselves are not very controversial observations (even a goverment-aligned critic admits that his “diagnosis” is “correct”), and that the hysteria over the AfD in Germany is driven by a lot of innuendo and conspiracy-theory thinking which ignores any contrary evidence (such as the leader of the party being a lesbian married to a Sri Lankan woman, or, you know, the actual content of their policy proposals and the public statements of their officers).
Keep in mind, this is the same government and the same media that is making it a suspected offense against the constitutional order to “misgender” people, even in one’s own mind. It is the same government and the same media that has convinced a decisive minority of Germans that shutting off nuclear power plants and replacing them with wind and solar energy would be a win-win-win-win, when in actuality it has led to the highest electricity prices in the industrialised world, frequent brown-outs, and an economics minister who thinks it’s his job to convince industry leaders to only run their factories when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
Germany *is* in danger, from global economic forces, from a war two borders away from it, and from the long-evaded consequences of a decade of trying to save millions of people without really seriously thinking about the long-term consequences. The AfD may well not be “the only thing that can save” Germany, but at some point, a major political party in Germany has to actually reflect the will of the majority on enough issues, and not just plug its ears and insist that its policies will work, in the face of all evidence. That has worked for a long time, now…surprisingly long.
But the time for such childish things is rapidly drawing to a close.
Well destroying NATO and the EU is the goal therefore handing Europe to the Neo-Sovs sooner or later. Germany can hang as far as I’m concerned given their reluctance to panzer-up and defend Europe as they should have.
We’re staring WW3 in the face within the next couple of decades and while I’m fine with throwing the blame on Merkel for a fair bit of that ultimately the players currently involved are the ones with anything approaching agency (which as a determinist I don’t actually believe in).
This may be of interest.
Book review in the latest issue of Technology Review:
How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracy
Two books explore the price we’ve paid in handing over unprecedented power to Big Tech—and explain why it’s imperative we start taking it back.
By Bryan Gardiner
The two books he reviews:
The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, by Rob Lalka
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, by Marietje Schaake
go to the Technology Review website
select “topics” at top
then “culture on left
then scroll down
(I’m having trouble posting the link, and haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong.)
I added the link.
Oh Karen the Chemist, that review was quite excellent!
May just track down the audiobooks; thanks for the recommendation.
Thank you very much, Karen. The review is indeed of interest.
This, from Meidas Touch is very good and relevant – an interview with David Cay Johnston:
https://www.youtube.com/live/SF4gCFbiTx0?si=xig7Kn1dj6vAFPmW
Rev#2. Well said – though I do not think our Musk fan boy is fooled by the lies he is fed. He knows very well what it is that he guzzles so hungrily down, and he is one of those people whose sole interest in life seems to lie in trying to persuade others, particularly those whose weakness lies in a resentful self-pity, to adopt the same unsavoury diet that he delights in
One of the biggest problems with Musk is that he doesn’t understand how government works; he is like millions of other people who believe democracy means they get their own way. If someone other than their preferred candidate wins, it must be a stolen election. If someone else reaps any benefits from the government, they want to tear down the entire infrastructure, which will, of course, destroy them too.
Musk is like a child with a hammer. He doesn’t care what he hits with it, and it doesn’t bother him if it breaks. His only interest is increasing his own wealth and power, in which he is much like (exactly like?) Trump. Our only salvation may be that his ego is also as big as Trump’s, and pretty soon he will get sick of Trump being in charge and there will be fireworks.
What Musk is offering is not democracy or giving a voice to the people; as laid out by the Rev, the voices Musk is channeling have had control of the media for a long time. Their problem is similar to the problem seen in gaining sexual equality: just as men will often see the introduction of a couple of women in their male-dominated world as ‘taking over’, so the right-wing sees the introduction of a couple of left-leaning voices as ‘taking over’. The woke left has a similar propensity, and it makes the nation difficult, if not impossible, to govern. Everyone shouts, but nothing is said that is not word salad, and everyone goes away satisfied that they won.
While there is no doubt a lot to dispute about the way Germany is being governed, it is unlikely that the solution lies in Musk’s solutions. He is not a genius; he has enough tech savvy, coupled with an upbringing that landed him a starting position on third base, to become extremely wealthy. That’s all he sees, and everything he comes up with is based on his limited understanding of how most things work in this world. He is a technocrat, and an oligarch who dreams of having ultimate power. He, and a lot of his ilk, are similar to the woke left in being self-absorbed narcissists who believe themselves to be the only voice that makes sense.
Ophelia Benson @9:
Thank you!
@iknklast:
A big part of why the Democrats lost the election is that they fail to understand why so many find them unattractive and so look for an alternative. And that’s because, for a decade or more, the left has made little effort to understand anyone who disagrees with them, and instead just derides them as bad people.
Your comment #14 is a good example. It would be a better and more perceptive comment of one added a “not” to every sentence.
I mean, you do realise that, overall Musk is a pretty moderate, centerist-minded sort of person, someone who, until recently, was not that political, someone who voted Obama then Obama then Clinton then Biden?
That’s until the by-then-senile Biden got sidelined by young, woke staffers (and a medicore DEI hire), who jumped sharply left and implemented batshit-insane policies that are hugely harmful for America. And they started repeatedly picking fights with Musk, as if they were deliberately trying to alienate him. Well, they succeeded in alienating him and politicizing him. How’s that working out for you?
One of these days I think maybe I’ll embark on a study of name calling in politics. I’m sure I’ll discover that this is, and has been a feature of the left, and that the right is always nice about their opponents. I seem to remember dozens…maybe hundreds…of times when right-wing commentators called on their supporters to understand the other side, to realize they have valid points and that they have concerns and are angry. They have urged moderation in language and have conceded debate points to the radicals who make up the bulk of the Democratic Party, and are in charge of everything, always and forever. I expect the study will show that the left has elevated candidates who call for locking up their political enemies, and make up nasty nicknames for them. It should be fascinating.
Now there is a statement where I will indeed add NOT!
As someone with degrees in Political Science, I have been paying attention for a long time. I’ve seen the Overton window shift to the point that someone like Hillary Clinton and Obama can be called radical leftists, instead of being seen as the centrists they are. As for why people find Democrats unattractive, it’s really mostly because they talk policy, and people don’t like that. People routinely tell me they don’t want to vote for someone smarter than they are…WTF? They want to vote for someone they’d like to have a beer with.
As for the trans issue…yeah, that was a stupid move. They were basing it on polls that showed most people support trans rights, and they weren’t questioning whether that support held when the ‘rights’ were spelled out. I really don’t think it lost them the election; I suspect if all the votes were added that left on that issue, they would still have lost. Why? Because Trump hates…because he calls names…because he derides his opponents…because he says he will lock up those who disagree…because he fits where the bulk of the people are.
One ‘basket of deplorables’ comment vs. two full campaigns of deriding opponents and calling them bad people. I’m calling bullshit.
@iknklast:
First, I agree that the American right has lots of faults; please go ahead and criticise them!
Second, I’m sticking to my claim that the right generally (and this is indeed a generalisation) understands the left better than the left understands the right.
For example there’s studies by Jonathan Haidt:
“We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right. Who was best able to pretend to be the other? The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” “
Third, let’s take an example:
I presume you would accept that a lot of the American left are pushing gender ideology, whereas most people here are gender critical. Agreed?
Would you say that the rhetoric and commentary from left-wing gender-ideology is mostly fair to the gender critical, showing a decent understanding of their views and the reasons for those views, while still disagreeing and arguing against them? And being open to a reasonable discussion of these issues?
Or would you say that they so utterly misunderstand and misrepresent the gender-critical stance (whether deliberately or not) to the point of being utterly demented?
Because the latter is how much of the American left (and about half the people here) sound to me on a wide range of issues.
The only mediocre DEI hire around here is a Musk fanboy who has hired himself and screams accordingly..
Then why exactly are you here? What utility is there in posting these walls of text? Elon posts all day everyday but at least millions of people see his ravings whereas here it’s a handful of randos in a fairly obscure corner of the Internet. Is it just some sperglord compulsion?
He’s here because he likes to suppose he’s bravely ‘owning the libs’ with his juvenile rants. Despite being British, he appears not to have heard of the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, or the Sun. Nor does he appear to have heard of the immense influence of Murdoch’s media in Australia, not to mention the USA. Instead we are given weak whinings about the BBC, which is hardly a corporation that stands up for very much these days. He dislikes the BBC because it is publicly owned, just as he dislikes anything that is publicly owned. He tries to insist that everybody should respond to his little ‘Gotcha’ posts, while cravenly not responding to the Rev Brindley’s points about the Murdoch Empire. When challenged seriously, his recourse is to run away and change the subject in the puerile hope that he can score a point or two with something different.
@Blood Knight:
Partly because, while I remarked on how half the people here sound to me, plenty of comments by the other half are well worth reading (#6 up-thread for example).
And partly because it’s not good to read and interact only with people one already agrees with. It’s good to be aware of and try to understand other perspectives.
“It’s good to be aware of and try to understand other perspectives.”
But our thin-skinned fanboy doesn’t seem to be very good at either of those things as he spouts tired and dishonest clichés picked up on right-wing fever sites about DEI hires, ‘young woke staffers’, and the ‘implementation of ‘batshit-insane policies that are hugely harmful for America’, does he?
I feel should add that I doubt that anyone here is much concerned about how they ‘sound’ to a person who rehearses contemptible tropes about ‘DEI hires’ and who defends the weakness of character that is evident in his narcissistic, thin-skinned hero, who is now advancing in so retrograde a way the cause of ‘free speech’ on Twitter. What is clear is that Musk does not, in fact, care for ‘free speech’, particularly when it touches him, and neither, despite his protestations, does his fanboy. The defence mounted by our fanboy for Musk’s decision – that it was all due to those nasty “woke liberals” – is pathetic in its grovelling abasement. If his hero had any genuine principles and any sense of honour – I might even say “genuine manhood” – he would not have behaved in the way he is behaving now.
Hey now hey now what’s this about “here it’s a handful of randos in a fairly obscure corner of the Internet”??? HOW VERY DARE YOU????
It’s like the Times Square-Portland Place-K Street beating heart of the WORLD here.
What an amazing take, a true marvel of fantasy.
Ophelia #27: !!! Right on! But I’m proud to be one of them randos.
Holms #28: Yes, and those pathetic and disgusting tropes, which may be found all over the the fever-swamp where our fanboy wallows night and day, lie at the heart of what our fanboy would like to pretend is his ’thought’. He likes to wear pretty disguises and pretend to be reasonable, to be ‘just asking questions’ like Tucker Carlson, particularly when he thinks he might be able to manipulate things in order to score a point; but, no, beneath all the pretty pretence there is that morass of unexamined, petty resentment, to which he returns like a dog to its vomit.