Elon Musk’s X Endgame
NEWS | 22 December 2024
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. After months of negotiation, Congress was close to passing a spending bill on Wednesday to avert a government shutdown. Elon Musk decided he had other ideas. He railed against the bill in more than 150 separate posts on X, complaining about the raises it would have given members of Congress, falsely exaggerating the proposed pay increase, and worrying about billions in government spending that weren’t even in the bill. He told his followers over and over that the bill was “criminal” and “should not pass.” Nothing about Musk’s campaign was subtle: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” he posted. According to X’s stats, the posts accrued tens of millions of views. Elected Republicans listened: By the end of the day, they had scrapped the bill. Last night, another attempt to fund the government, this time supported by Musk, also failed. After spending about $277 million to back Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency, Musk has become something of a shadow vice president. But it’s not just Musk’s political donations that are driving his influence forward. As his successful tirade against the spending bill illustrates, Musk also has outsize power to control how information is disseminated. To quote Shoshana Zuboff, an academic who has written about tech overreach and surveillance, Musk is an “information oligarch.” Since buying Twitter in 2022 and turning it into X, Musk has reportedly used the platform to inflate the reach of his posts (and thereby his own influence on discourse). Since July, his posts on X have received more than 16 times the number of views as all of the accounts of incoming congressional members combined. He also appears to have transformed the platform to boost conservative posts, in accordance with his own political aims. This is how he can start posting about his displeasure over a bill and then have lawmakers capitulate. At least one Republican member of Congress reported that after Musk’s posting spree began, constituents flooded his office with calls telling him to reject the spending bill. “My phone was ringing off the hook,” Representative Andy Barr of Kentucky told CBS News. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.” Some in Congress seem to have no problem with this, and actually enjoy it. Yesterday, Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee as well as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that it might be a good idea to simply make Musk the speaker of the House as a way to shatter the establishment, in Greene’s phrasing. Musk doesn’t have the support of the entire right—his calls to scrap the spending bill frustrated some Republican lawmakers and spurred a round of infighting. But the point is that he has the ear of the person the party listens to: Trump. If you have Trump, Musk probably understands, the rest of the right generally falls in line, however reluctantly. The power that Musk wields through X was clear even before this week, of course. “Our political stability, our ability to know what’s true and what[’s] false, our health and to some degree our sanity, is challenged on a daily basis depending on which decisions Mr. Musk decides to take,” Zuboff said in a 2023 interview with the Financial Times. Musk’s decisions as to what does and doesn’t have a place on X are part of why the platform has become a bastion for white-supremacist content. He has shown that he can now have a disproportionate impact on politics despite the obvious fact that he’s not an elected official. Reportedly, Trump didn’t initially oppose the spending bill; rather, Musk and his posts may have led Trump to eventually come out against it on Wednesday afternoon. Musk may have to tread delicately, though. Trump does not like to be overshadowed. Yesterday, Democrats in Congress repeatedly referred to “President Musk” in protest of how far Musk’s power has gone. (Trump’s incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement to Fox News that “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”) Musk has tried to hide his sway behind a thin veil. After it became clear that the spending bill was going to fail on Wednesday, he posted, “VOX POPULI, VOX DEI,” which is Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of god,” as though the breakdown was not the direct result of his obstinate prodding. For now, Musk has the Republican Party, and thus a large chunk of American democracy, sitting neatly in his pocket. Part of what makes Musk’s influence so concerning is that his views are to the right of even many Republicans. Early this morning, Musk posted on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.” The Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, is one of Germany’s furthest-right parties, whose jingoistic desires don’t just stop at mass deportations. AfD politicians have reportedly discussed “remigration,” the process of deporting nonwhite residents, including naturalized citizens and their descendants. These views are presumably not just finding their way to Trump; they are broadcast to millions of people who log on to X. In many ways, Musk’s decision to purchase Twitter for a staggering $44 billion has not proved to be a shrewd financial move. Advertisers have fled the site, as have users—especially since last month’s election, after which liberals have flocked to Bluesky. A recent estimate suggested that X is now barely worth more than $10 billion. Yesterday, Musk tried to point out the “irony” of how the media have remarked on the influence he wields through X and noted the site’s decline in general relevance. Several things can be true at once, though. X is a large platform that still motivates people to spring into action and put pressure on others, even as its influence slowly erodes. There could come a day when X is too diminished for Musk to exert this kind of power, but that’s not the present. The $44 billion that Musk spent on X has done wonders for Musk’s ambitions. As far and away the wealthiest man in the world, and the owner of one of the most influential platforms for shaping political discourse, Musk has achieved an advantage that outstrips the standards of normal oligarchs. Thanks to X, he has the ability—perhaps second only to Trump’s—to design America’s political reality.
Author: Ali Breland.
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