As a business proposition, Elon Musk’s ownership of X, formerly known as Twitter, has so far been a disaster: Since acquiring lost almost 80% of its value.
As a political proposition, however, Musk’s purchase may prove to be one of the shrewdest investments of all time. Each week, the platform seems to boost a news topic that comes to dominate conservative discourse – and often mainstream discourse as well – with real political repercussions.
Sometimes these topics are inflammatory conspiracy theories, such as a false rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats, which became a topic of conversation in the final days of the US presidential election. US and led to bomb threats and harassment against Springfield residents. .
Other times, speech on social media – which the mainstream media is perceived to have ignored or downplayed.
This week, pakistani ancestry that they are known to have sexually abused hundreds of young people in the north of England in the 1990s and 2000, while local authorities often did not act.
In He was followed by American billionaire Bill Ackman, who joined the choir to sing demand for the United States to impose sanctions on the United Kingdom.
Musk, who has designed The X algorithm to boost its own tweets often drives change in the public conversation. With a single retweet, often accompanied by a few words (“This is interesting”) or an emoji, Musk can put a post from an anonymous or relatively obscure right-wing account X in front of his 210 million followers, more than five times more than population of Canada.
In recent months, you have often suggested that X is the real press. “Now you are the media,” he likes to tell platform users.
As many as 2.7 million people have left X since the US presidential election, and many prominent journalists, experts and left-leaning social media users, angered by Musk’s politics, joined alternative platforms like Bluesky. But If anything, he seems more powerful than ever.
Musk’s position in the incoming Trump administration – as co-chairman, with Vivek Ramaswamy, of a new “department of government efficiency,” or Doge – began Like a Twitter joke. But now he has used X as a platform to make aggressive interventions not only in American politics but also in those of other countries. He has supported the far-right AfD party in Germany and has repeatedly criticized the British Labor Party. During the anti-immigrant riots in the United Kingdom last year, he disparaged the prime minister as a “two-tier Keir” who protects the interests of immigrants in Britain over those of native-born citizens. Musk is also friends with far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Musk’s ideological closeness to right-wing populist parties all over the world may prove beneficial to their business interests as those movements continue to gain political power.
One of the most interesting aspects of X as an emerging front page of the conservative Internet is its ability to turn stories that aren’t strictly news into news. A British Home Office minister recent negative Opening a national investigation into recruiting gangs was the apparent news hook for the sudden topicality of that story, but a topic doesn’t really need topicality for X to jump to the headlines.
In any case, the fact that the grooming story is not “new” is not as important as the fact that is This is new to many of the people hearing about it, and American X users and some British users were shocked not only by the scale of child abuse that occurred and the perceived lack of public accountability, but also by the fact who had never heard of it. that before.
“Yes, it’s true: people have gone to jail, people have lost their jobs and recommendations for change have been published, and to some extent even implemented,” said British conservative writer Ben Sixsmith. noted in a short essay on grooming bands. “There has not been a conspiracy of silence. Instead, there has been a conspiracy of murmur. The establishment…has addressed the scandal in the most minimal terms,” making it an ongoing and charged issue.
Musk has used the momentum to suggest that Britons support Nigel Farage’s far-right reform party. He has also called for the release of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, currently jailed for contempt of court and from whom even Farage has tried to distance himself.
Sara Rowbotham, a whistleblower who was one of the first to draw attention to the grooming gang crisis, has questioned Musk’s “motivation for interfering.” His interest “seems very political,” he recently told The Guardian. “The person you are trying to go after is Keir Starmer – it is a political coup that has nothing to do with the women and girls who have been abused time and time again.”
Sometimes the power of . To a large extent, however, Musk’s bet on X appears to be paying off.
“Once (people) realize that legacy media lies, they never forget it,” Musk has said. saying.