Elon Musk's 'X' marks the spot for Nazis, disinformation. Why?
Why are Silicon Valley titans veering hard into far-right politics?
by Gil Duran | FrameLab
In November 2022, shortly after Elon Musk bought Twitter, I wrote the following:
With American democracy under threat, Musk’s Twitter is giving us a clear glimpse of the world he would like to see.
It’s a world that empowers dictators, fascists, white supremacists, Nazis, disinformation and misinformation. It’s a world in which billionaires enjoy total power over everyone else, and where straight white men hold dominion.
It’s a world where people can no longer distinguish truth from lies because technology has sucked us all into the manipulative babble of Twitter.
Musk seeks to create a dynamic where organized misinformation shares equal billing with respected journalism, and where people can’t tell the difference between the two.
Unfortunately, Musk continues to prove these words correct. From a recent NBC News story headlined “Verified pro-Nazi accounts flourish under Elon Musk” by David Ingram:
Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.
NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust.
NBC’s report is just the latest to confirm that Musk has turned Twitter into a bastion of hate and disinformation, with the purpose of shifting the online discourse toward radical authoritarian politics.
But Musk is not the only super-rich tech figure to embrace extreme right-wing politics. As the wealth of Silicon Valley figures has grown to unprecedented levels, some prominent tech zillionaires are shifting dramatically toward far-right, authoritarian politics. They seem determined to use their immense wealth to undermine democracy.
What explains this shift? How can we best understand its goals and motivations? Why are some of tech’s most well-known figures becoming virulently anti-progressive and pro-authoritarian?
For the past several months, I have been researching and reporting on the development of this new ideology, which goes by different names: techno-authoritarianism, TESCREAL, tech plutocracy…some even call it tech fascism.
It has many things in common with Republican ideology, but it also has some distinctive characteristics. Over the next few weeks, I will categorize the main elements of this this emerging ideology and explain why it (increasingly) matters.
To start, it helps to think of ideology in terms of color. Blue is traditionally associated with the Democratic Party, or progressive-leaning politics. Red is traditionally associated with the Republican Party, or regressive-leaning politics.
The new tech ideology has been labeled as “Gray” by some of its strongest proponents. So, for the purposes of mapping out this moral system, we will start within the frame of Gray.
I want to make this interactive, with feedback from FrameLab readers. (FrameLab’s paid subscribers will be invited to join a private chat and share feedback directly with us.)
In that spirit, I will soon publish a piece that exposes the shocking ideas of one of the main thinkers behind the so-called Gray ideology. I will send this piece to all FrameLab readers, so keep an eye out for it this week.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in being part of the conversation, here are some other readings to get you started:
“The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism,” Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic
“The People of Solano County Versus the Next Tech-Billionaire Dystopia,” Gil Duran, The New Republic
“The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco,” Gil Duran, The New Republic
“Understanding TESCREAL: The Weird Ideologies Behind Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn,” Dave Troy, The Washington Spectator.
Great article. Only issue I take with it as a female veteran of the tech industry (starting in the 90s) is the idea that they are shifting far right vs. having always been there and only pretending to be otherwise when it was politically expedient to do so. Many, many of us have tried to talk about sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry in the leadership in these companies and VCs for a long time - remember what Facebook started out as - and got silenced with the ‘ol “you call everyone [bigots]” or crushed with the PR engine/NDAs. To me, the only silver lining of the whole Trump thing is that he made it fashionable to go full hood off, so now just like in They Live, y’all can see what they’ve been showing us minorities this entire time. It’s bad.
Love to see this, thank you. Looking forward to reading more.
One element central to all this seems to me to be the ability of networked technology to influence and shape society. It is a major reason why the autocrats and tech moguls seem to be converging. See Michael Flynn’s 5G warfare. Or Russia’s hybrid warfare. Same deal.
Online spaces are now legit battlefields for matters of global security. Propaganda has been normalized. The traditional gatekeepers no longer hold much sway.
Musk’s Twitter Files are an excellent demonstration. The Twitter Files bears all the hallmarks of a post-soviet style influence campaign. These follow the same patterns as Clinton’s emails and Hunter’s laptop, supposedly nefarious communications were captured and offloaded to a cutout who would be trusted by the target audience. The content is delivered piecemeal so as to boost its impact while also creating absurd narratives based in conspiracy theory. Upon closer examination in official forums, the narratives delivered fall apart though many of the facts they are built upon are true. The dispelling of the narratives in official forums reaches little of the target audience, so they become entrenched.
While the autocrats and oligarchs team up to capture power over us, the US and Western establishment seems trapped and frozen, unable to counter in this new information environment. It has been a core pillar of liberalism that government are supposed to shy away from censorship and speech restriction. Many like Musk are great at playing the refs using this as a central rallying cry — free speech absolutism! Because that is how you can maximally firehose influence in on-line platforms, by making sure there is no regulation of inauthentic speech and propaganda
Cheers!