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Elon Musk, canonisation of his X, and the far-right politics

The X owner has faced a massive backlash across the globe after his recent Heig Seil salute at President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

Elon Musk has faced a massive backlash across the globe after his recent Heig Seil salute at President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

The tech billionaire replicated the infamous symbolic gesture of Adolf Hitler behind the Presidential Seal of the United States of America.

It shocked a section, encouraged and elated a section, and a section also came forth to defend him from public scrutiny for this abject antisemitic symbolism. Perspectives, political leanings, and understandings aside, this incident has more to it than meets the eye.

Elon Musk bought the social media giant Twitter (which is now known as X) in October 2024 for a whopping $44 Billions. Right after its acquisition, he projected himself as a prophet of free speech and reinstated several key accounts on the platform which were earlier suspended for their racist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist content.

The self-proclaimed free speech absolutist gradually started canonising his platform to propagate far-right ideas to counter the liberal-left and progressive views while demonising and vilifying the legacy media. Initially it all happened at a gradual pace, but once the US Presidential elections neared, he upped his ante.

Throwing his weight behind Donald Trump, Musk helped the President to create a favourable public opinion for him besides funding his campaign in millions of dollars. He went berserk and started questioning the liberal policies like vaccines, immigrations etc.

Musk eventually started encouraging vaccine sceptics and far-right worldview on the platform under the façade of free speech. However, on the flipside, he also ensured complete censorship of liberal-left ideas.

One of the most blatant forms of censorship was unleashed over the voices calling for an end of Israeli occupation of Gaza and Palestine besides seeking an immediate ceasefire in the region on his platform. When the American electorate voted and President Trump reached returned to the Oval Office, Musk presented himself as an important component of support which ensured his victory.

Going beyond the limits of the United States the ambitious expansionist campaign didn’t stop. Elon Musk also trained guns at the labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, and has been calling for his ouster at a time when a conservative campaign sparked against the British Prime Minister.

The episode gained traction when the grooming gangs of British men of Pakistani origins during 1990s’ and 2000s’ became a rallying point for the conservatives and populist reform parties. Although an enquiry had been done in the case, reopening of the enquiry was sought which Starmer declined citing the far-right to become the main beneficiary of such a step.

Elon Musk kept attacking him and under the garb of seeking the reopening of an enquiry emboldening and consolidating a racist, hate campaign against immigrants by going as far as calling them “terrorists.”

In another campaign, Elon Musk is deeply involved in the political happenings in Germany as well. Some days back, the SpaceX owner interacted with the far-right AfD leader Alice Weidel. In the interview, Weidel and Musk smartly tried to normalise the discriminatory far-right viewpoint by trying to pass off Adolf Hitler as a “socialist” and a “communist.”

He also appealed the German people to vote for AfD as he believes that only they can “save” Germany. A cliched and classical hysteria which was also used by Adolf Hitler to gain access to power by using nationalism as a fulcrum for his campaign.

While the organic thought process and voting behaviour of the population of a country doesn’t matter much to them, Musk’s ability to influence the voting behavior of a country through his platform is deeply concerning.

Not only is he interfering with the internal political process of sovereign nations by manipulations and hysteria, he is also creating a Frankesntien’s monster which has the ability to bury this entire globe under a powerful Plutocracy run by Oligarchs with other nations as its colonies and client states.

Elon Musk’s Nazi salute was not a mistake or a gesture of overt enthusiasm. It was rather a belligerent and explicit celebration of a vindictive Plutocracy which has already announced its war on media and the dissenting voices. On the monumental day of President Trump’s inauguration to the White House, he brought Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini back to life from a stage which has claimed to be the flagbearer of liberal democratic values for centuries.

Things are only set to go worse from bad as the world is gripped in a deep crisis from the Middle East to Asia. In the past few years the increasing popularity of far-right politics is not only threatening the world peace but it has also brought the world on a tenterhook of an imminent apocalypse and capitalists like Elon Musk will only expedite this process.

 

(The author, Sheikh Imran, is a freelance columnist from Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir. Can be reached at [email protected])

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