Elon Musk is a fascist
The richest man in the world intends his far-right project to go global
It wasn’t too long ago that favorable comparisons were made between Elon Musk and Henry Ford. Just as Ford had popularized internal-combustion vehicles through the Model T, Musk was doing the same with electric vehicles and setting up a transportation revolution — or so the story went. But there was one qualifier that often had to be added: Musk wasn’t an antisemite or Nazi sympathizer.
These days, the comparison has reversed. Tesla’s ability to make mass-market electric cars looks increasingly dubious, while Musk’s Twitter/X is something of a modern equivalent of Ford’s antisemitic newspapers. Hitler may have had a portrait of Ford at the National Socialist Party headquarters, but today’s far-right flock to Musk for their photo ops and official endorsements to share across social media for the world to see.
Musk’s aggressive Nazi salute on stage at a rally to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump should be an undeniable sign of his embrace of fascist politics. If anyone disputes that, they need only look to Germany, where a projection of Musk’s salute on the side of the Tesla factory in Berlin is being investigated as a breach of the country’s ban on Nazi symbols.
In the United States, Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars to aid Trump’s election, and has since worked closely to shape the president’s agenda to work in his favor. But that isn’t just about protecting his companies or ensuring the tech industry can evade effective regulation or accountability for their rule-breaking actions. It’s also about further gutting government capacity through the Department of Government Efficiency and backing the socially conservative and discriminatory agenda being advocated by groups like the Heritage Foundation.
Musk isn’t trying to stop extreme actions like declaring there are only two genders, ending birthright citizenship, or gearing up for mass deportations — he’s fully on board with all that too. The man is a racist, antisemite, and opponent of trans rights who wants to see a world where the powerful can do as they want, while everyone else just has to put up with it.
A global far-right project
As Trump declared in his inauguration speech that the United States would “consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory,” and would even “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars,” it wasn’t just the nod to Mars that caused me to think of Musk. Trump’s imperialist desire to seize Greenland, Canada, and Panama also brought to mind Musk’s brash comment back in 2020 that “we will coup whoever we want” after Bolivian president Evo Morales was chased from power. There is no humility or compassion in these men; they only see people they can crush to get their way.
But this isn’t just an American story. While there has been a lot of focus recently on Musk and Trump, the wider far-right network Musk is building should not be ignored, especially if other countries want to avoid what’s playing out in the United States. As I wrote last year, Musk has been cultivating alliances with extreme right-wing leaders for quite some time. Most prominent among them is Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who he called “even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside” at an award ceremony in September. They also include Hungary’s illiberal nationalists, Argentine president Javier Milei, and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. That list continues to grow.
In recent months, Musk has stepped up his interventions in British politics aimed at delegitimizing the Labour government under Keir Starmer. Initially, it looked like he was going to back — and even financially support — Reform UK under the leadership of Brexit architect Nigel Farage, but then Musk found an even more extreme figure to put his weight behind: far-right agitator and English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson. Once Farage said he wouldn’t allow Robinson, who is currently in prison for contempt of court, to join Reform UK, Musk called for Farage to be replaced. You can be certain he’s far from done with the UK though.
Around the same time, Musk was also trying to influence the direction of German politics ahead of its February election. On December 20, he tweeted that “only the AfD can save Germany,” a reference to the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party. A week later, he published an opinion piece in Die Welt, declaring AfD was “the last spark of hope for this country,” then invited co-leader Alice Weidel for a live discussion to stream his platform where they both agreed that Hitler was in fact a communist, not a fascist. Meanwhile, European leaders are warning that Musk’s interference is a clear threat to the region’s democratic institutions.
But Europe isn’t the only place in Musk’s crosshairs. As Trump has escalated his rhetoric against Canada, threatening to hit the country with 25% tariffs and musing about absorbing it as the 51st state, Musk has taken to praising Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as the governing Liberals search for a new leader ahead of an expected spring election. Poilievre has cozied up to Canada’s own right-wing tech leaders, particularly those at Shopify, and recently did an interview with Jordan Peterson where he argued that racism is only a problem in Canada because of wokeism and “socialist policies” like universal healthcare need to be cut because they benefit the super wealthy instead of the poor.
Musk poses a serious threat
Those are only three examples, but Musk and his fellow tech oligarchs have made it clear they’re willing to use what tools are available to them — including the power of the US government — to shape the politics and policies of other countries to serve themselves over everyone else. Executives like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook are demanding that the Trump administration challenge governments that try to place regulations on American tech companies, with a specific focus on the European Union.
The progressive nature of Silicon Valley in recent decades was always more illusion than reality. As tech executives saw their wealth and power expand, they acted like many other business leaders and sought to protect it at all costs. Now, countries around the world are feeling the consequences as those billionaires wield their vast influence to further channel widespread frustration with the status quo into an embrace of far-right parties that will serve their own interests.
It should come as no surprise that the richest man in the world is leading the charge and posing a threat not just to democracy, but to the lives and livelihoods of people the world over in the process — all so he can keep playing at building his sci-fi fantasies. It’s time to drop the illusions he’s anything other than what we’re clearly seeing through his tweets and actions, and try to stop him before it’s too late.
The thing to do is GET THE RICH OUT OF POWER WORLDWIDE.
One Person One Vote or it's not a democracy.
You also don't live in a Democracy when you don't pay attention to it. "Oh darnit", yes, you have to go to town meetings [insert Norman Rockwell painting here.]
YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION.
Whether elon musk is antisemitic or not, he is a fascist. He talks, acts and dreams like a fascist, which is much worse.
USA stinks and if their bad relationship with Europe and American countries continues to grow, that will make China get advantageous relationships all over the world. And... Beware! If one day fascism corrupts the USA at the same level it did during the german nazi reich in part of Europe, China (with the help of the rest of the world) will destroy USA the same way the nazi Reich got destroyed at the end of World War 2.