Over at The Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, has a take on Elon Musk's incitement or racist nationalist in the that is worrying. Specifically, she believes that his actions were a rehearsal for inciting American MAGAts after the November Elections.
Gee, who could imagine an anti-Semitic and racist Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ with a God complex planning a coup.
Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.
Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation.………
The streets are – for now – quiet. The violence has been crushed. But this is Britain, where extremist political violence is someone carrying a brick and throwing a chair leg. In America, there aren’t just automatic weapons and rights to openly carry firearms, there are actual militias. Regardless of how well Harris is doing in the polls, America is facing a singularly dangerous moment, whoever wins the election.
Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.
In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.
Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.
He got away with it. And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences, you should be. If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.
What he did is a crime in the UK, so perhaps an extradition request would be in order.
Who am I kidding. Keir Starmer would never approve the prosecution of a billionaire.
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