ANALYSIS || After helping to elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk turns to the Old Continent, where he is already accused of interference. What can Europe do?
“I prefer to stay away from politics,” Elon Musk told his followers in 2021, on the platform then known as Twitter. A lot has changed since then.
Musk is now the owner of the social media giant, renamed X and repurposed with his personal vision. He welcomed back the far-right agitators banned by the previous leadership. Musk spent about $250 million to help re-elect Donald Trump as president of the United States and stood just feet away as Trump took the oath of office on Monday.
Now, with that task complete, the world’s richest man appears to have a new goal: to take down Europe, one government at a time.
The tycoon assumed himself as king of the populist wave that is submerging several centrist European leaders. “From MAGA to MEGA: Make Europe Great Again!”, he published on Saturday, rejoicing in the discomfort he is causing on the continent.
Several European Union leaders have accused him of interfering in their affairs and promoting dangerous figures; Musk has led a brutal and personal campaign against the British government, campaigned for a far-right activist to be released from prison, and supported a far-right party in Germany with a strongly nationalist platform and a series of opinion-related scandals. of some of its members about the Nazi era.
At the same time, a torrent of misinformation about Musk’s platform — much of it born of anger over high levels of migration — has unnerved governments across Europe. Some Britons accuse him of having contributed to a wave of far-right riots last summer.
“I’m impressed by his lack of inhibition to think that he can intervene in several countries where the issues are complex,” Eric Nelson, a diplomat who served as Trump’s ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina during his first term, tells CNN. “Claiming that he knows what is best is highly arrogant.”
But X’s reach, Musk’s extreme wealth and his role as Trump’s efficiency adviser make it a difficult problem to deal with. Political figures in Europe are wrestling with two questions: why does Musk care about us and what can we do?
None of them are easy to answer. “Europeans are locked in,” says Bill Echikson, senior technology policy fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and former director of European communications at Google.
The continent’s leaders “are certainly concerned”, he adds. “They blame disinformation, trolling and automated bots for causing problems in the European elections and for fueling the rise of its extremes.
“But they don’t have any plan. They still don’t really know how to respond.”
An effort to cancel it
Musk’s politics have been evolving at supersonic speed since the SpaceX and Tesla mogul carried out a hostile takeover of Twitter in 2022. “For Twitter to deserve the public’s trust, it must be politically neutral,” he insisted at the time, when he described politics as a “generator of sadness” and even said that “politics is war and the truth is the first victim”.
Currently, Musk is on the front line. The platform owner enjoys levels of disruptive influence around the world that few unelected figures have ever had, without facing voter scrutiny. He welcomes and shares the views of radical figures and has supported fiercely anti-establishment populists across Europe. It is not yet clear what influence it will have on Trump’s foreign policy – which is precisely why, for now, European governments are so uncertain about how to handle his interventions.
But his comments are in line with the new administration’s broader, interventionist tone toward Europe, and could place Musk in an interlocutor role. Trump and Musk have already established close ties with figures whose policies overlap, at least partially, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a hardliner on immigration who attended the inauguration, breaking with precedents.
Some who previously defended Trump’s interests in Europe now see Musk as an unrestrained and even less polished version of the president; a firebrand whose style and ambition have come to reflect Trump’s. As with Trump, opinion polls suggest Musk is unpopular across Europe.
“It’s interesting to see the similarities between him and [Trump]; its ability to try to steer public opinion, especially, unfortunately, through the dissemination of misinformation. Creating a lot of chaos, being disruptive”, adds Nelson.
This chaos intensified after Musk made a gesture with his right arm on stage during a post-inauguration rally, which for some in Europe had uncomfortable similarities to the Nazi or Roman salute used by fascist leaders in Germany and Italy. Musk presented the reaction as a misinterpretation, writing on X that “the ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is very tired.”
Italian daily Corriere Della Sera dubbed the salute “RoMusk” and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — a frequent target of Musk’s criticism — told a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland: “Everyone is free to express their your opinion in Germany and Europe, including billionaires… but we do not accept support for far-right positions.” Musk responded on X: “Shame on Oaf Schitz!”
There is disagreement as to exactly why Musk is targeting Europe.
It could be a personal issue. “When Elon took control of Twitter, there was a concerted effort to get companies to stop advertising on his platform, to alienate him, to cancel him,” recalls Trevor Traina, Trump’s former ambassador to Austria, where a far-right party is on the brink of power. “So Elon got a taste of the same bitter medicine that Donald Trump and others were forcibly given, and I think what we see today is his response.”
Or it could be a financial issue; an older story that pits the innovator against the regulators. “I think your goal is to always think about your own business interests,” Nelson points out.
Musk has rebelled against the bureaucracy that surrounds the technology sector in Europe; runs a huge Tesla factory in Germany, a country where it has focused a lot of attention, and is planning a controversial expansion there.
CNN contacted X for comment on criticism of Musk’s interventions in Europe, but did not receive a response.
Can Europe fight back?
When it comes to European politics, Musk has his favorites. He writes frequently about Reform UK, the British populist party, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). But it does not publish anything about Marine Le Pen, the French antagonist of Emmanuel Macron’s government, nor does it seem interested in Austria.
British and German politics are flexible terrain; The main parties in both countries are singularly unpopular, tarnished by periods in power marked by inflation or scandal, or seen by much of the public as unimaginative, unambitious or technocratic. Germany will hold elections next month, in which the AfD could come second. Just last year, the AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since the Nazi era.
And they have something else in common: Each country has failed to adequately address public anger over immigration, which is threatening to become the continent’s defining political dynamic.
Still, Musk will have to build lasting alliances to have serious influence. He has already publicly fallen out with Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, who refused to support the defense of far-right figure Tommy Robinson, who is in prison. Reform UK continues to hope for a large financial donation from Musk, but the dispute has dampened the party’s optimism.
It will also have to face regulatory hurdles. A fine, which could reach 6% of X’s annual global turnover, is imminent when the EU completes an investigation into whether X broke rules set out in the Digital Services Act, which regulates how the technology industry deals with disinformation and illegal content on social media, as well as illegal goods and services on online markets.
In Britain, Musk was asked to testify before the Parliamentary Committee on Science, Innovation and Technology about his company’s algorithm, after it was accused of promoting misinformation about a tragic stabbing of children last summer that resulted in clashes. between rioters and police and in the burning of hotels housing asylum seekers.
“Freedom of expression is part of a conversation,” says Chi Onwurah, a Labor MP who chairs the parliamentary committee, to CNN. “Instead of shouting at the UK from across the Atlantic, will he engage in the legitimate democratic processes that represent the British people and have a conversation with us?”
For now, Musk’s closeness to Trump may shield him from such scrutiny. “I don’t expect (Europe) to do much; they don’t want to start a war with Donald Trump,” adds Echikson.
But the more the tech mogul becomes involved in European affairs, the more fraught this approach becomes. “If he is, as it appears he is, entering politics,” concludes Onwurah, “then as part of that you need to listen and talk.”
CNN’s Barbie Latza Nadeau contributed to this report
