Elon Musk has plenty to say and just the platform to say it.
With no filter (either online or in real life) stopping him right now, the tech tycoon seems to have some superhuman ability to insult just about every major US ally possible, around the clock, on his social media platform X.
Musk has told anyone who will listen (he has 211m followers and an algorithm allegedly rigged in his favour) that Keir Starmer should be in prison, questioned whether America should “liberate” Britain and reposted claims from Germany’s far-right party that “Hitler was a communist” – and that’s just in the last week.
As the richest man in the world, Donald Trump’s right-hand man and informal advisor, these interventions have understandably grabbed the news agenda.
But just what kind of impact will they actually have, outside of X?
How could Musk realistically influence international politics?
A wonky algorithm
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Labour MP and chair of the foreign affairs committee Emily Thornberry said the biggest issue with Musk was his use of the algorithm.
She said that he could, essentially, say what he likes “within the limits of what is safe” – but he needs to be careful when sharing extreme right-wing content.
Only this week, he live-streamed a conversation with the leader of far-right Alternative for Deutschland party, Alice Weidel to X, after saying in December that “only the AfD can save Germany”.
The pair discussed how Adolf Hitler was actually a “communist” and criticised Germany’s “wokeness”.
So it’s not surprising that MEP Damian Boeselager wrote to the EU Commission this week asking it to look at Musk’s “interference” in European elections, and whether X’s reported promotion of the billionaire’s tweets is legal under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
As reported by The Verge in 2023, Musk supposedly changed X’s algorithm so that his posts were promoted above others so more users saw what he has to say.
The MEP told the Guardian: “I don’t understand why people believe that free speech is not affected by the concentration of opinion-making power in the hands of the few.
“For me, that has rather illiberal, autocratic tendencies, rather than liberal tendencies, when one voice is so much more powerful than all the others.”
There’s also a danger Musk, who stripped X of fact-checkers, may be falling for misinformation on his own platform – and then promoting it to his millions of followers.
Earlier this week, he was bested by other X users on the community notes feature when he shared an open letter from MPs and claimed it was on the grooming gangs scandal. It was actually about Windrush and dated from 2020.
More money than anyone else in the world
The other major problem is what he does with his money, according to Thornberry.
For a brief period, it was thought Musk would donate a whopping $100m to Reform to allegedly send a “fuck you” message to Starmer.
Since then, he seems to have lost interest in Nigel Farage. But there are still fears he could donate to the AfD – currently polling at over 20% ahead of Germany’s election – and turn its fortunes around.
After all, he spent $277m backing Trump and other Republican candidates in the US election – and Trump swept to victory, winning both the electoral and popular vote in a historic win.
Is Musk – and his X feed – a safety concern?
After minister Jess Phillips rejected calls from Oldham council to launch a public inquiry into historic child abuse, Musk called her a “rape genocide apologist who should be in jail”.
She told the media: “Risk is dynamic and I have to take account of the risks in my life and this is one of them currently.”
Some sources also told the Mirror that Musk’s social media posts are being monitored as a possible security risk after his comments to Phillips, although Downing Street later told journalists that this was not an accurate claim.
Still, Green Party leader Carla Denyer wrote in PoliticsHome: “I’m incredibly scared about the impact that Musk might have on not just our politics, but the real lives of people in our communities.”
She added: “We know all too well that what begins as words on a screen rarely stays there.”
Thornberry also told HuffPost UK that she had no problem with people saying what they want online – as long as it does not veer into violence.
Most of what Musk has said online is “wacky” but the problem arises when his words turn into threats, she said.
“Incitement is not something to be laughed at,” Thornberry added, acknowledging how two MPs – Jo Cox and David Amess – were murdered in the last decade.
Might Musk inadvertently bring Europe together?
There’s another side to Musk’s outlandish language, according to figures in the pro-EU group, the European Movement UK.
“This seems to be uniting Europe at a tremendous pace,” chair Dr Mike Galsworthy told HuffPost UK. “The quiet majority across Europe is alarmed at the arrogance, aggression and brazen recourse to obvious disinformation.
“This is exactly what undermines nations – and we need to come together to keep this destabilisation out.”
It is true that leaders across Europe – including Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Norway’s Jonas Gahr Store have all criticised Musk’s political interventions in the last week.
But the European Movement’s head of policy, Richard Kilpatrick, also emphasised how vulnerable the continent still is.
He said that after the UK’s referendum on EU membership, “private interests have sought to increase their influence” in Britain.
Without naming Musk in particular, he added: “Foreign interference in any election of a sovereign state undermines democratic principles and the rule of law.
“The European Union was formed to defend the democracies of Europe, and there is no doubt that misinformation fueled by social media algorithms is just as big a threat to our democracies as aggressive foreign actors.”
Could Musk’s interventions impact his relationship with Trump?
There’s some speculation Musk’s sudden bromance with Trump could fall apart just as quickly as it came together, particularly with the X tycoon hogging the spotlight right now.
The president-elect found himself slapping down reports that Musk is “taking the presidency” at the end of last year.
“No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you. And I’m safe, you know why? He can’t be — he wasn’t born in this country,” Trump said, bizarrely pointing to the billionaire’s South African heritage rather than the fact that he did not run in the election.
But Trump has not publicly stopped the X billionaire from creating diplomatic havoc online.
Trump’s former ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, told BBC Newsnight Trump is “clearly fine” with Musk’s tweets about the UK.
He added: “If Donald Trump were not fine with it, trust me, he would publicly and vociferously muzzle Elon Musk.”
Still, Trump’s second administration is yet to truly begin.
Only time will tell how well the newly empowered president copes when it comes to sharing his space on the world stage.
Just how many countries has Musk commented on?
In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a look at just a few of the outlandish comments Musk has made about politics outside of the US.
UK
At this point, it’s easier to ask which mainstream political party in the UK Musk has not insulted.
Musk has really honed in on British politics since Labour took over, although he also withdrew his support for Reform UK Nigel Farage last weekend, saying he was not up to the job of leading the far-right party.
Even Lib Dem Ed Davey got a look in and was described as a “snivelling cretin” by the X tycoon over the grooming gangs row.
Ireland
Musk claimed this week: “Irish citizens get longer sentences than illegal immigrants. That’s messed up.”
And last year he weighed in on of the most divisive conflicts of the modern era, and said the Irish Republican Army is now “as scary as a plush toy”, even though it used to be “so hardcore”.
Romania
When the presidential election were cast aside last year amid hybrid attacks from Russia, Musk was not happy. He wrote: “How can a judge cancel an election and not be considered a dictator?”
The X CEO also claimed “the Dutch nation will die out by its own hand” due to its low birth rate when speaking to anti-Islam and anti-migration politician Geert Wilders.
Germany
Musk announced his support for the far-right group AfD party, claiming only they can “save Germany”, a month before Germans head to the polls.
He also interviewed the AfD leader and they discussed how Hitler was actually a communist.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz has since slammed Musk’s idea of free speech, saying it means “you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”
However, Scholz’s spokesperson later seemed to downplay the impact of the X billionaire, saying: “The rule is: don’t feed the troll.”
Ukraine
Musk tried to use a poll on X in October 2022 to ask his followers how viable it was to hold elections in parts of the country occupied by Russia – and later listened in on a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy after the US election.
Venezula
He banned Venezuela’s left-wing president Nicolas Maduro from his platform X in August – for 10 days – and called him a dictator and a clown.
Brazil
Musk fired all of X’s Brazilian staff and shut their office after Brazil temporarily blocked the platform (he had refused to ban accounts spreading misinformation about the 2022 Brazilian election, a move opponents said was politically motivated).
Australia
Musk attacked Australia for plans to ban children from social media platforms and saying the government was “fascist” for trying to regulate misinformation on social media.
Canada
He also went after Canadian PM Justin Trudeau in November, saying he would be gone in the next election and calling him an “insufferable tool” for calling Trump’s victory a setback for women’s rights.
Trudeau has, funnily enough, just announced he will be resigning after more than nine years in office.
The EU
Musk called European Commission Vice president Vera Jourova “the epitome of banal, bureaucratic evil” in October after she called him a “promoter of evil” in a clash over X regulations.