Twitter: Musk’s clear political agenda
Elon Musk has gone down the “right-wing rabbit hole,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. Over the past two weeks, he’s made it clear that the primary reason for his failing $44 billion purchase of Twitter was to use the platform to—in his words—“establish an even playing field” for far-right views, and provide what he calls “a counter-narrative” to “the woke mind virus.” Last week, Musk announced that virtually all banned Twitter accounts would be restored, including those of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and misogynists; traded approving tweets with election deniers like Dinesh D’Souza and anti-immigrant activists; and even tweeted an image of Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the racist alt-right. Musk used his platform to attack advertisers who’ve fled Twitter, and endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president in 2024, calling him a “sensible and centrist” candidate. He even vowed to start a war with Apple for pulling its ads, and claimed the company threatened to pull Twitter from its app store. “Do they [Apple] hate free speech in America?” Musk tweeted.
“I’m in for the Elon Musk revolution,” said Michael Brendan Dougherty in National Review. Under previous ownership, Twitter had become a tool of censorship and control by the “commissars” of the center-left Establishment, and so had Facebook, Google, and virtually all of Silicon Valley. Not surprisingly, “almost everyone in the Establishment is firing back,” and putting pressure on advertisers to abandon Twitter. But the world’s richest man will fight back, and it will be fascinating to watch as he tries to complete Twitter’s “successful exit from the wokerati.”
To understand Musk, you need to read libertarian author Ayn Rand, said Andreas Kluth in Bloomberg. The protagonists of Rand’s sophomoric novels “are cartoons” of what people like Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel all wish to be: visionary, superior beings “who rebel against—and burst—the limits of the humdrum and stultifying mainstream.” When little people get in the way, they crush them. Musk and his billionaire buddies have actually updated Rand, said Derek Robertson in Politico, and see themselves as avatars of “tech libertarianism.” They seek to undermine the “cultural regime” that they believe dominates the media, academia, and corporate governance. Musk’s many critics believe he is destroying Twitter, but in his “aggrieved, hyper-individualistic view,” he is saving it—and the country too.