Elon Musk has never been shy about sharing his opinions to his 211 million followers on X. But for those who follow him—and those who get his posts pushed into their feeds on the app—the past few weeks have been more unusual than most. Musk, the South African–born, United States–based tech CEO, has posted a near-nonstop slew of missives targeting European leaders.
On Monday, Musk posted a poll asking whether “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.” This came hours after he turned against Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s right-wing Reform U.K. party and a former ally of Musk’s. Late last month, Musk also wrote an op-ed for a German newspaper in support of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD); Musk’s piece caused the newspaper’s opinion editor to quit in protest.
For his American audience, the incessant commentary on European matters may be puzzling. For Europeans, it’s annoying—and European leaders are pushing back.
On Monday, U.K. prime minister Sir Keir Starmer singled out Musk’s comments without mentioning him explicitly by name, criticizing people who were “spreading lies and misinformation” about the country’s past response to issues with child grooming gangs. Just days earlier, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview when asked about Musk “Don’t feed the troll.” French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, accused Musk of engaging in “unacceptable interference” in European democracies, and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told public broadcaster NRK that he was worried “a man with enormous access to social media and large financial resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries.”
Part of European politicians’ frustration undoubtedly has to do with Musk’s influence within the Republican Party: Musk has the ear of incoming president Donald Trump, and was named cochair of the new Department of Government Efficiency. “One of the broad political reasons why a lot of European leaders would want to push back against him is because I don’t think any of them particularly like having their political agendas hijacked by an American-based, South African billionaire with far-right views,” says Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester.
Such outspoken attacks also help drum up interest in Musk and keep him in the public eye, which may go some way to explaining why he’s picking a fight with world leaders. Starmer said in a speech that people like Musk “are not interested in victims—they’re interested in themselves.” Musk has certainly propelled himself into the news agenda in the U.K. The national broadcaster, the BBC, published a push notification over the weekend when Musk posted to his followers that he felt Starmer was unfit to govern. (Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment, sent via the X press office.)
Musk’s businesses rely in large part on cozy government relationships, particularly with the U.S. and China, the latter of which issued a $1.4 billion loan related to Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai, China, in 2019. (Tesla paid off the loan two years later.) That’s what makes his recent outbursts against political leadership so baffling to some: Musk’s got a lot to lose by souring relationships with so many American allies. “It could be that Musk genuinely believes these things and wants the hard right in power,” says Theo Bertram, director of the Social Market Foundation, a U.K. think tank, and a former advisor to prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. “Or it could be that he anticipates that X may get banned and one way of trying to prevent that is to make a lot of noise about censorship and freedom of speech, so that regulators and politicians are under more intense media and political pressure, and therefore perhaps less likely to move ahead with something as controversial as an outright ban.” (While that may seem implausible, Musk has previously squabbled with, and seen X banned temporarily in, Brazil in recent months.)
Whatever the case, it’s clear that the international community has decided enough is enough. And given that Donald Trump will soon be sitting in the White House, that could lead to a number of awkward conversations in the political world as global leaders figure out how to handle Musk’s idiosyncrasies.
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