Elon Musk, love him or hate him, is undoubtedly one of the most prominent figures in the technological, political and social world today and now takes a controversial step into the mouth of the ideologically swallowing hell hole that is American politics. His calling is for the position as the ‘efficiency advisor’ under one of the most polarised, scrutinised and controversial White House’s in America’s history.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock with noise cancelling headphones for the last two years, you will be aware that Musk purchased what was then known as Twitter (now X) in October 2022. Ultimately, Musk has complete control of what happens on X, what is taken down, what stays up, and in a bid to show his ‘support for free speech’, apparently his personal viewpoints on every widely debated issue in global politics.
He promotes and values free speech, yet deletes accounts that poke fun at him
Elon Musk is a difficult character to assess, on the one hand he is clearly an exciting business and technological genius, bringing electricity to our highways and space shuttles to the galaxies that surround the little planet we reside in. However, on the other side, he is arguably an egotistical, unhinged and controversial figure. He promotes and values free speech, yet deletes accounts that poke fun at him, removes the ability to fully block a user so his posts are still visible and unfurls around 50 untrue or misinformed tweets to his 205 million followers a year and 368 million visitors a month.
My point is that just because someone is skilled in certain areas of society does not prohibit them and definitely does not endorse them as being good for public policy.
Now while Musk is a genius in the tech and business world, his political rhetoric is notoriously reckless. Of course, like any other person in the free world, he bears the right to express his opinions, theories and political persuasions. However, there is no doubt that Musk’s past of online slander to those who he does not agree with is dangerous. Calling the man who saved a boys football team of 12 from a cave a ‘pedo’, likening Justin Trudeau to Hitler, posting AI images of Kamala Harris as a communist are all things Musk has pumped out online and the list goes on. My point is that just because someone is skilled in certain areas of society does not prohibit them and definitely does not endorse them as being good for public policy.
What makes Elon Musk’s presence on X and in Trump’s white house more worrying is that Musk’s online rhetoric and views aren’t just biassed, aren’t just reckless yet in fact dangerous to democracy as we know it. An online world is already heavily uncensored, but Musk’s fails to use fact checkers leading up to the US election, and gives equal authority to state owned Russian news sources and far-right extremist pages as to prominent and respected media agencies.
