Musk ‘upset’ Farage didn’t endorse his support for Tommy Robinson

We spoke to Marc Owen Jones, who’s an Associate Professor of Media Analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar and an expert on disinformation.

We asked him, with Musk turning his fire on Nigel Farage after days of attacking Keir Starmer, what’s going on?

Marc Owen Jones: You might argue it’s the snake eating its tail. I think Elon Musk is slightly upset, perhaps, that Farage didn’t completely endorse Musk’s support for Tommy Robinson, who as everyone knows is a far-right, anti-Islam activist. Elon Musk seems to support Tommy Robinson quite a lot, and Farage has been sort of more reluctant to embrace Tommy Robinson. It seems that Musk really wants to sort of encourage the kind of far-right politics in Europe that is very potently not just anti-migrant and anti-immigrant, but anti-Muslim, and I think Tommy Robinson embodies that. And so while Farage is probably seething deep down, I’m sure he knows that if he engages in a feud with Musk, that might sort of burn bridges with Musk, might prevent the possibility of getting a lot of money to Reform and ultimately burn an important bridge with Donald Trump. Let’s not forget that Farage is trying to position himself as a link between the UK and the US and talking about how he can perhaps facilitate a trade deal.

Ayshah Tull: Why do you think that Musk is going about this in this way? Why do you think he’s posting more, getting more stridently involved in other countries’ politics?

Marc Owen Jones: I think there’s a number of things at play. I think one, Musk is himself an ambitious person, not just in terms of his commercial and economic projects, but I think his taste of notoriety, especially through social media and then his subsequent buying of X, has given him a taste for political power. And if you look at Musk’s tweets over the lifetime, you can see that increasingly he’s tweeting more. His tweets are getting more neurotic, more political. So I think increasingly Musk is showing himself to have been, I argue, radicalised by his own platform and by his own fame.

Ayshah Tull: He would call himself a free speech absolutist. I do wonder what his endgame is, what his strategy is, to fire off all of these different tweets?

Marc Owen Jones: There’s a number of things that I think are at stake here. You could argue that his backing of Trump was to hopefully win power, and that was a bet that would basically allow Musk to essentially get rid of all the legal cases against his companies. I think there’s a lot to be said for power and impunity. Let’s not forget that he’s endorsed Trump and Tommy Robinson, both of whom are, well, Trump’s a felon, a convicted felon, Tommy Robinson is in prison. And I think for someone like Musk, he sees his influence and the access to power as a form of impunity, which for him means that as long as he’s in power, attached to power, or has the ability to influence politics, he’s essentially untouchable.

Ayshah Tull: But will he have that power if he falls out with president-elect Trump?

Marc Owen Jones: The question is, if he does fall out with Trump, yes  Trump is the president and arguably more powerful. But I think Musk has the ego and the level of narcissism that he might start to eventually see himself as the sort of person who could even rival Trump. Think of Icarus, Icarus was ambitious and flew too close to the sun. That could be Musk. He could play with fire, incur Trump’s wrath and then lose grace. Or, the way Musk sees it, he might be able to actually position himself in a way that he might make Trump look bad.

Ayshah Tull: And just finally, I wanted to ask you about Musk’s influence on the world in general. Should there be stronger sanctions against someone like Musk being able to post what he’s posting?

Marc Owen Jones: As Musk demonstrates himself to be someone engaged in often what we criticise other countries of, like Russia, foreign interference, which is essentially what he’s doing, the governments might have no choice but to take more punitive measures. We have to take the platform from under him. And I also think as a society, yes, governments need to take measures. We have to wonder now as news organisations and politicians, to what extent now should we be using X or endorsing X, if that’s a platform owned by someone who is essentially trying to undermine British democracy. I think that’s another question we have to ask ourselves.