Is Elon Musk left or right? The question would make the multifaceted businessman of South African origin smile. He would have made even Steve Jobs smile, if he was having a good day. Jobs used to say that he spoke to the world with his products which were certainly not conservative.
But what does it matter, especially to Tesla vehicle owners, whether Musk is leftist or rightist? However, it so happens that he bought control of Twitter in an initially hostile and totalitarian offer, although it is not yet clear how he will pay for it. At the moment this idea has cost him 150 billion dollars of capitalization Tesla.
It is well known that Twitter represents, to use Musk's own words, the "de facto public town square", the public square of political debate at the level of individual countries and globally. Indeed it is. Research by the Per Center found that:
“Twitter is where journalists, politicians and elites gather. It also tends to be dominated by very politically engaged people."
The double face of Twitter
The new owner has made no secret of his intention to free the flow of discussion on Twitter from any control and censorship by restoring, consistently with his being a "free speech absolutist", the integrity of freedom of expression sanctioned by the First Amendment of the American Constitution.
Beautiful program, but a bit vague. However, it happens that Twitter is the square where people of high spirits have civil discussions and develop a profitable "battle of ideas", but it is also where the abusers, troublemakers, falsifiers and sowers of hatred love to meet.
It is indeed the Hyde Park corner of the planet, but also the rostrum of the followers of the Nazi hierarch Goebelles. It is like Horkheimer's skyscraper, on the upper floors there is the high society of conversation and as one descends the quality of the conversation degrades to pure impropriety and violent gossip.
At this point, many are wondering how libertarian Elon Musk's Twitter will be different from the other libertarian Jack Dorsey's Twitter. It might even be better if the wisest ones like that of a toll microblogging layer materialize in Musk's stream of ideas.
Which political group will benefit?
The conservatives rejoice, much less the liberals. The controversial Republican Senator for Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Green, told Democrats "to prepare for a full-scale collapse now that @elonmusk is Twitter." "Elon Musk appears to be our last hope," said Tucker Carlson of Fox News, the ultraconservative broadcaster.
On the other side, the Senator for Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren sees a new "Citizen Kane" in Musk, alias William Randolph Hearst. No one in that political arena dares to think Trump will be back tweeting at 3am. But it is likely that it will.
“But what no one seems to be able to say with certainty is what kind of political philosophy the enigmatic billionaire professes,” writes Jeremy W. Peters in the “New York Times”.
In explaining his decision to bid for Twitter, Musk made a statement that couldn't be more bipartisan and which could also appeal to European regulators who have already warned him that in Europe the rules of Europeans and not those of Mr Tesla.
Musk said about taking Twitter: “It's not a way to make money. My strong gut tells me that having a public platform that is supremely trustworthy and broadly inclusive is great importance for the future of civilization”. For now the future of civilization is in Putin's hands.
Equidistance
Even on electoral contributions, Musk remained equidistant from the two major American parties. In any case, his donations are meager in relation to his personal assets and the political donations of other billions such as Charles Koch and Peter Thiel, in the Republican camp, and George Soros, in the opposite one.
In the last elections, reports the “Financial Times”, Musk personally donated $2800 each to three Republican candidates and the same amount to three Democratic candidates.
Same solomonic distribution in gubernatorial elections for Democrat Gavin Newsom in California – the state where Musk resided before the pandemic – and for Republican Greg Abbott in Texas, where he took up residence after the pandemic.
The pandemic measures of the California authorities have put him on a collision course with state administrations to such an extent that he has threatened to sue Alameda County where the Tesla assembly line is located, forced to close its doors during the lockdown ,
The possible "damage" Twitter
There is speculation in some quarters that the Twitter acquisition could hurt Musk's core business at Tesla and Space X. Twitter can be politically radioactive, particularly after the events of January 6, 2020.
It's a bit like what happened to Jeff Bezos with the "Washington Post" when the editorial staff of the newspaper, wholly owned by Bezos, went on a collision course with the Trump administration. At that point Amazon saw the withdrawal of a lucrative contract with the Department of Defense for the provision of cloud services. The contract passed to Microsoft and then returned to Amazon with the change of administration.
In this regard, Nu Wexler, who worked on political communication at Twitter, Facebook and Google, said (always reported by the "Financial Times"): "Social media tend to dominate the political debate in Washington. Musk may find that SpaceX and Tesla meetings and hearings will now be on Twitter."
They will certainly be more difficult than those on space missions and plans to go to the moon and Mars.
Libertarian or what?
Perhaps the political term that best suits Musk is libertarian, even if this label fails to fully account for the erratic nature of his political positions. He certainly has no shortage of opinions on the most crucial and divisive issues of the moment, from the lockdown for Covid-19 (“fascist”, he defined it) to immigration restrictions (“I strongly disagree”, he specified).
He railed against federal subsidies, but his companies benefited from billions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives provided by federal, state and local governments. He strongly opposed union entry into the workplace, criticizing the Biden administration for proposing a tax credit on electric vehicles made in companies with unionized workers.
When the governor of Texas, the Republican Greg Abbot, tried to enlist him for his conservative social policies, Musk abruptly withdrew. When Senator Warren reproached him for paying little taxes, the new owner of Twitter responded irreverently and sarcastically by crippling her name to "Senator Karen."
When Biden did not send his congratulations on the space mission carried out by the Space X vector, Musk's comment was "He is sleeping" borrowing the expression from "Sleepy Joe" coined by Trump for his opponent.
Right and backhand
He stopped working with the Trump administration after the administration withdrew from the Paris climate accord. Recently, however, he has run afoul of environmentalists after that he called for an immediate increase in domestic oil and gas production, although this measure is of no use to its electric car and solar energy businesses.
He claims to be a First Amendment fanatic, but he took a reporter to court in a defamation lawsuit. Often has manifested outsized reactions to criticism. Four years ago, he proposed creating a website to assess the credibility of journalists. He would have liked to call it Pravda, the daily name of the former Soviet Communist Party. He is said to have canceled an order for a new Tesla from an investor who criticized a Tesla-sponsored event.
Citizen Kane?
Musk said he registered as an independent while living in California, the state he clattered out of whelks for Texas due to the hostile entrepreneurial climate that had arisen in the Golden State. He also described himself as a "politically moderate", adding that this "doesn't mean that I am moderate on all issues". About none would be said.
Given his evident non-confessionalism, Musk may have embarked on the bumpy and solitary endeavor of Twitter, of which became sole owner, not so much for political reasons as to help promote himself. A sort of Digital Citizen Kane, in fact. A single man in charge causes a lot of anguish in this historical moment.
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Most of the information is taken from: Jeremy W. Peters, The Elusive Politics of Elon Musk, “The New York Times”, 26 April 2022
