From his obvious “Nazi salute” at United States President Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration to his labelling of the US Company for Worldwide Growth as a “prison organisation” that wants “to die” and the devastating austerity insurance policies he excitedly pursues as the pinnacle of the newly minted “Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE)”, multibillionaire X proprietor Elon Musk has undoubtedly turn out to be a harmful pressure in American politics.
However Musk’s narcissistic political ambitions will not be restricted by the borders of the USA. After serving to Trump and his far-right MAGA motion assume management of the US, he has set his sights on replicating this success internationally.
The South African began his “world tour” of stirring far-right sentiments and trying to put in radical, Musk-friendly figures in positions of energy in the UK.
Musk spent the previous yr periodically elevating British far-right voices, resembling English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson and Reform Celebration chief Nigel Farage. In early January he as soon as once more tweeted “Free Tommy Robinson!” and shared a hyperlink to the UK far-right chief’s controversial documentary titled Silenced.
Within the documentary, reportedly commissioned by US far-right radio host Alex Jones’s InfoWars, Robinson falsely claims that Syrian refugee schoolboy Jamal Hijazi had violently attacked English schoolgirls and threatened to stab a boy in school.
Robinson had made the identical declare a number of years earlier in 2018 in a response to a viral video of Hijazi getting crushed at a faculty in Yorkshire. His response video on Fb was seen by greater than one million folks. Hijazi’s household confronted loss of life threats in consequence.
Subsequently, Robinson – recognized to be funded by right-wing teams within the US – was smacked with a libel case from Hijazi, which he misplaced. He was ordered to pay Hijazi 100,000 kilos ($125,260) in damages, cowl his authorized prices to the tune of 500,000 kilos ($626,300) and was served with an injunction stopping him from publicly repeating his false claims in regards to the Syrian schoolboy.
By making the documentary Silenced, wherein he repeats his false claims about Hijazi, screening it for the general public in London’s Trafalgar Sq. in July and extensively sharing it on-line, Robinson violated the injunction. In consequence, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail in October.
After all, none of this options in Musk’s rants about Robinson.
Slightly, he makes use of Robinson and the Hijazi case to hawk a wider far-right racial trope – specifically that mass immigration from the non-West is a risk to girls and women within the West – and to attempt to affect home politics within the UK.
Musk is aware of properly that this trope has just lately gained foreign money within the UK.
Final summer time, the UK was swept by violent anti-immigration protests and riots after a Welsh man of Rwandan descent stabbed and killed three women at a dance class. Nonetheless, the true set off for the violence was not the crime itself however the misinformation unfold by far-right teams and activists, together with Robinson, that the suspect was a 17-year-old asylum seeker named “Al-Shakati”.
The last decade-old “grooming gang scandal” associated to the widespread abuse of white women in a number of English cities and cities, resembling Rochdale, Rotherham and Oldham, predominantly by British males of Pakistani origin, has additionally supplied Musk and the British far proper with alternatives to push tropes about race and immigration.
For the reason that scandal first grew to become public, native companies and safety forces had been accused of attempting to cowl it as much as keep away from being branded racist and Islamophobic.
A 2022 report into safeguarding measures in Oldham, a city on the centre of the scandal, ultimately discovered that there was no cover-up regardless of “legit issues” that the far proper would capitalise on “the high-profile convictions of predominantly Pakistani offenders throughout the nation”.
The reality and all its nuances, nevertheless, don’t concern Musk. He determined the “cover-up” narrative serves his agenda and turns the broader public in opposition to immigrants, so he has continued to push it.
Not too long ago, he has claimed that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who led the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013, had didn’t successfully cope with these “grooming gangs”. He tweeted: “Starmer was complicit within the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years. Starmer should go and he should face expenses for his complicity within the worst mass crime within the historical past of Britain.” He called Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence In opposition to Girls and Ladies Jess Phillips “a rape genocide apologist”. Musk additionally printed a sequence of posts calling on King Charles III to dissolve the UK Parliament and order new elections.
Musk’s tweets and overt assist for figures like Robinson could not set off quick change within the UK, however he’s clearly setting the stage for the rise of the far proper within the nation – politically and economically.
Musk has additionally made a go to to Germany as a part of his world tour of far-right agitation and assist.
The tech mogul and DOGE chief has thrown his weight behind the nation’s far-right Different for Germany (AfD) social gathering.
In an opinion piece printed within the conservative newspaper Welt am Sonntag in late December, Musk made his assist for the far-right social gathering public, calling the AfD the “final spark of hope” for Germany. He prompt the social gathering’s dedication to limiting immigration would allow it to maintain Germans protected and shield German tradition. He wrote: “A nation should protect its core values and cultural heritage so as to stay sturdy and united.”
In early January, Musk hosted a live conversation with AfD chief Alice Weidel on X. On it he warned “solely AfD can save Germany” from what he mentioned was a migration-induced rise in crime and “wokeish liberal training system”, together with “gender research”, that supposedly plagues the nation. For her half in the course of the dialog, Weidel claimed Adolf Hitler was not a conservative or libertarian, moderately, “he was this communist, socialist man.” She additionally thanked Musk for the mainstream publicity, saying, “Elon, it’s a totally new scenario for me that I can simply have a traditional dialog, and I’m not interrupted or negatively framed.”
In late January, Musk went on to address an AfD rally in Halle, Germany, by way of videolink. Chatting with the 1000’s in attendance, he as soon as once more declared that the far-right social gathering was “the perfect hope for the way forward for Germany”. He added that the German folks had been “an historical nation which fits again 1000’s of years” and AfD supporters wanted to “struggle, struggle, struggle” for the nation’s future. In seeming reference to the AfD’s neo-Nazi links, Musk additionally said Germany must “transfer past” feeling responsible for the Nazi crimes of the previous and Germans should “be pleased with German tradition, German values”.
By publicly supporting the social gathering and offering its chief with a platform to advertise her extremist agenda with out problem, Musk is probably going attempting to assist the AfD safe a Trump-style victory in Germany’s February 23 elections.
Trump is working to raise the far proper in a number of different international locations.
He, for instance, has struck up a close bond with the right-wing prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. They share a mutual love of Lord of the Rings and xenophobia. He has known as Meloni “much more lovely on the within than she is on the skin”. Meloni has known as Musk “a genius” who has been unfairly portrayed as “a monster”. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that Musk had a hand in facilitating Meloni’s rising relationship with Trump.
Past Europe, Musk has been public about his admiration for Argentinian President Javier Milei. Milei’s “chainsaw” austerity measures had been an inspiration for DOGE. Milei was additionally current at Trump’s inauguration.
In September, Musk met with El Salvador’s “cool dictator” Nayib Bukele, who has made world information for his extremely controversial “mano dura”, or “iron fist”, insurance policies in opposition to gang violence and his mega-prisons. Now the Trump administration is reportedly considering housing its criminals “together with these of US citizenship and authorized residents” in Bukele’s lock-ups. Bukele has said he’s prepared to assist “outsource a part of [the US] jail system” by housing convicted US criminals in his mega-prisons in “change for a price”. He added: “The price can be comparatively low for the US however vital for us, making our total jail system sustainable.”
In the meantime, Musk’s far-right affect has taken on a lifetime of its personal and began to have an effect even in international locations he has not but visited or mentioned something about.
He, for instance, has mentioned little or no if something in any respect about Polish politics. However a current poll exhibits that near 45 p.c of Poles would vote for a candidate endorsed by the billionaire.
It’s, in fact, early days in Musk’s tried world far-right revolution. A few of his strikes may match, and others could not have the extent of political impression he’s hoping for. Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless a fear that Musk has been in a position to get so far as he has by way of meddling within the inner politics of a number of international locations. One can solely hope that there’ll quickly be a concerted pushback to Musk’s world strikes.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance
