Elon Musk, the new Rupert Murdoch
Is Elon Musk grooming Twitter to be the Fox News of the Internet?
I know, we’re all getting tired of hearing about Elon Musk. It gives me no joy to wake up daily to Musk’s latest MAGA-inspired bile. But I think it important to pay attention, not simply because Twitter is a hugely influential messaging platform, but there’s also an element of Musk playing into the larger nouveau-bigotry we’re seeing mainstreamed in the GOP, from antisemitism to homophobia. All together, that means this is an issue we can’t ignore.
It’s difficult to know where to begin, as so much has happened in just the past three days, let alone month. Sadly, following Musk is like following Trump. Every day brings ten new outrages, so that after a while they all just blur together and turn into butter. But in a nutshell, Musk has now openly-thrown his lot in with not only the Republicans — telling his now-120-million Twitter followers to vote for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, and announcing that he’d vote for Trump’s smarter, but just as mean, mini-me Ron DeSantis in 2024. Musk has also gone full-flown Covid denier, openly-attacking Dr. Fauci by sharing Rand Paul’s kooky conspiracy theory that Fauci funded secret research in China that created Covid, and blaming Fauci for one million American deaths.
Musk also tweeted a really creepy image of Fauci as Biden’s Wormtongue: a Lord of the Rings reference to a corrupt and creepy Rasputin-type who whispers in the ear of, and secretly controls, a senile old ruler.
And let’s not forget what helped kick off this virtual version of a psychotic break with mainstream reality: Musk retweeted a conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi’s 82 y.o. husband Paul, who was at the time undergoing surgery for a traumatic brain injury caused by a kidnapper’s hammer. The conspiracy claims that Mr. Pelosi was actually attacked by his gay hooker lover during a secret tryst while Nancy was away. One of the author’s earlier conspiracies was that Hillary Clinton died during the 2016 election, and her body double actually debated Trump at the time.
In recent weeks, Musk welcomed back to Twitter insurrectionist Donald Trump, along with avowed antisemite Kanye West, and a slew of actual neo-Nazis who were banned years ago — but not anymore! And Twitter’s new policies no longer ban hate speech. (I’m now getting repeatedly called a pedophile and a groomer, and Twitter is refusing to take action, saying the slurs against a gay man don’t violate their terms of service.)
Then, this past week, Musk decided to accuse a former top staffer, Yoel Roth, of being a pedophile — Roth is openly-gay and Jewish — simply because Roth quit and offered the mildest of disagreement with Musk during a recent interview with journalist Kara Swisher. (Note below that Roth actually seemed to be questioning the premise of the story, that kids COULD consent. And Musk totally mischaracterizes Roth’s thesis, which talks about finding ways to make kids safe on an adult forum they were already on.)
Roth was in charge of the Twitter department responsible for punishing and/or banning users for violations of the company’s terms of service. Musk is trying to make Roth the scapegoat for Trump’s ban following Trump’s use of Twitter to help fuel the January 6th Insurrection. Musk has been on a tear of late, claiming that Trump was banned for no reason, and in violation of Twitter’s rules. Since Musk’s tweets, the MAGA-sphere, and Fox News, have run with the Roth story, and Roth has now had to flee his home for his own safety. Meanwhile, Twitter is refusing to take down the myriad death threats against Roth’s life.
Which brings us to the question of why Musk is doing all of this. Kara Swisher thinks Musk is trying to building a virtual Fox News, and he needs the MAGA crazies to make that happen. So by attacking his current users — many of whom are Democrats, but many others are from journalism, government, and academia; all roundly hated by MAGA (intellect is their kryptonite) — Musk curries favor with MAGA, and, he hopes, Trump brings more of them to Twitter. Also, note that Musk, early on, reinstated Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Trump has since refused tweet — his last tweet is from January 8, 2021, right before the ban. But why?
It seems to me that Swisher is right. Musk wants to recreate his own Fox-News-type media empire online, and he wants to use Trump as the anchor, at least to steal Trump’s base. If Trump comes back to Twitter, then so do all of Trump’s followers on Truth Social and beyond. But Trump didn’t bite. Probably because Trump figured out that Musk was simply trying to build his own Truth Social+, and wanted Trump’s milk for free.
For those of you who don’t use Twitter for work, it’s difficult to explain how important a voice it has in politics. Trump is, or at least was, a perfect example. While the media was happy to breathlessly cover every candidate-Trump event, I think it was Twitter that kept Trump relevant, even during his presidency. Yes, every president is relevant. But you can go days without hearing about Joe Biden. But when Trump was president, you couldn’t go five minutes. And nearly every outrage was made via Twitter.
One final point that troubles me. Musk isn’t just embracing MAGA, he’s embracing the bigotry that goes along with it. Antisemitism and homophobia are on the rise, not just nationally, but in the national conversation. The MAGA wing of the Republican party, along with the tacit approval of the rest of the GOP, has now openly-embraced Jew-hating, gay-hating and trans-hating. Trump’s recent meeting with antisemite Kanye West, and virulent racist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes — and the ensuing Republican silence in response (few criticized the meeting, and most of those didn’t mention Trump by name) — comes to mind. But there’s also the recent effort by Republicans to demonize drag queens, of all things, as pedophiles (“groomers” is their new favorite term), and by extension all gay men. Add to the mix Elon Musk’s repeated embrace of homophobia over the last month, and it’s a level of open bigotry that I haven’t witnessed in years.