Voting for Elon Musk next week is equivalent to voting for Donald Trump. Even more powerful than the US presidency, the tech boss will have a launching pad.
The Awadh Times Global News: When successive US governments do not address inequality, this is what occurs. A small number of people become unthinkably wealthy while millions of others live in poverty. They gain political influence in proportion to their wealth. One of them, who is currently the richest guy on the planet, was bound to make what appears to be an attempt to take over the entire world.
Next week’s vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Elon Musk. Musk may be using Trump as a launching pad to even more power than the US president has, much like Trump is using Musk. Musk’s relationships with other radical world leaders and his covert talks with Vladimir Putin, which were revealed by the Wall Street Journal last week, point to a history of power-seeking that may be much more alarming than the possibility of another Trump administration.
If Trump is elected, he will e-Muskulate the US, much as Musk did with Twitter. This implies the release of individuals who possess the ability to swarm, harass, and crush anyone who do not share their repugnant philosophy.
According to Elon Musk, he is a “free speech absolutist.” However, it appears that only his allies are subject to his absolutism. Since he acquired Twitter and changed its identity to X, the website has agreed with 83% of government requests for account monitoring or restriction.
The platform complied with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s demand that his opponents be censored prior to the most recent general election. X complied with Indian government authorities’ request to remove a negative BBC documentary and subsequently removed the accounts of several prime minister Narendra Modi detractors.
X terminated the account of the journalist who leaked a dossier regarding Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and blocked links to the report last month. Musk has filed lawsuits against groups that criticize him. Millions of other users have been forced off the platform, and their own freedom of speech has been curtailed, as a result of the reinstatement and frequent augmentation of the most vile and antisocial individuals, including racists, antisemites, misogynists, homophobes, and even outright Nazis.
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Trump advisors acknowledge that the results are completely unknown.
According to reports, a bespoke algorithm magnifies Musk’s own posts a thousandfold. Absolutism in free speech? My left foot.
Now, in a desperate attempt to elect Trump, he has twisted his enormous riches, influence, and obvious double standards. Some of his strategies, such as offering monetary rewards and prizes, seem to me like attempts to sway elections and buy votes. Another perk of riches, his attorneys were able to keep him from going to court this week for a hearing contesting these strategies.
He has given Trump millions of dollars in advertising by using his X account to disseminate a lot of false stuff on his behalf. He has invested $118 million in his political action committee, or super PAC, which supports Trump.
What would the wealthiest man in the world stand to gain from the e-Muskulation of American politics, and possibly those of the world? He would obtain the truncation of democracy, which capital has desired ever since workers gained the right to vote.
The issue that capital keeps attempting to resolve is democracy. Why? because it guarantees that workers have rights and fair compensation, that there are some (but never enough) safeguards for the living world, and that we cannot be plundered, poisoned, or torn away without restriction.
Fascism and neoliberalism are two potent instruments that capitalism has employed in an attempt to address its issues. However, it now returns to an older and more primitive mode: oligarchy, while still referencing both of those ideas.
The billionaires may question why they should use middlemen to exercise political power. After all, the world submits to them rather than its concierges in every other field. I believe Musk and some of his fellow tech authoritarians have been moving in this direction.
Musk would be able to avoid the regulators he frequently clashes with if Trump were elected. In fact, Musk becomes his own regulator if he accepts Trump’s invitation to lead a government efficiency committee. He will have the authority to remove the laws that separate civilization from barbarism.
However, Trump’s election may potentially open up even more possibilities. Musk is in charge of important military and strategic resources, including the Starlink internet system and SpaceX satellite launchers. He can turn them off whenever he wants, as Ukraine learned to its detriment last year. The decision-making process used by powerful states has been privatized.
According to reports, he was asked by the Kremlin to deny Taiwan access to Starlink as a favor to the Chinese government. Starlink may disrupt and harm their own systems, according to terrestrial broadband providers. This has been denied by Starlink. It is easy to understand how his influence could increase to the point where countries feel compelled to comply with his requests.
Perhaps he doesn’t look the part. Villains out to rule the world are supposed to be slick, simple, and self-assured. Musk acts and dressed like an attention-seeking teenager. However, he has the resources to increase his influence beyond anything a plutocrat has ever had in the democratic era.
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How can the most-voted candidate lose? The US electoral college clarified.
The centrist-capitalist pact has operated for decades in this way: we may make a pathetic effort to ameliorate the lot of those at the bottom, but we will do virtually nothing to keep those at the top down. Rupert Murdoch and other members of the plutocrats’ trade union made an uncomfortable truce with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and others, and it succeeded as a short-term strategy.
However, in the long run, the ultra-rich grew so rich that they could directly threaten sovereign nations, including the most powerful one. Some of us have warned for decades that this is what was likely to happen: appeasement increases the power of your opponents.
However, our administrations asserted that they were only acting “pragmatically,” saying that as long as the situation of the impoverished improved, it didn’t matter how wealthy certain people got.
The absurdity of this is demonstrated by decades of research, some of which were compiled by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson in The Spirit Level fifteen years ago. Regardless of the absolute levels of income and poverty, a highly unequal society has disastrous effects on social results, wellbeing, unity, and democracy.
However, “pragmatism” won out and proved to be anything but. The transition from democracy to oligarchy shouldn’t come as a surprise.
As a result, we are currently confronted with a generalized e-Muskulation: of public life, of trust, of kindness, of mutual aid, and of a world where everyone may strive for a healthy planet and the impoverished can strive for something better.
What should have been done long ago—making the poor richer and the very affluent poorer—must be done by governments that haven’t completely given in yet.
