Radicalized by the right: Elon Musk puts his conspiratorial thinking on display for the world to see
Analysis by Oliver Darcy, CNN
New York (CNN) — Elon Musk is showing the world how radicalized he has become.
The billionaire, one of the most consequential figures to walk the Earth, spent another weekend swimming in the right-wing fever swamps of X — a bad habit that was apparent when his interview with Don Lemon was released Monday morning.
In the contentious interview, Musk equated moderating dangerous and appalling hate speech to “censorship,” bashed the press for legitimate reporting, assailed DEI programs without supporting evidence, skewered advertisers who fled the X platform last year and yet again gave credence to the racist Great Replacement theory, among other things.
To those not fluent in the intricacies of right-wing media, some of what Musk said may have sounded bizarre or even foreign. But in the right-wing fever swamps, where Musk is now deeply entrenched, these are the issues that animate the masses.
Musk’s comments on the premiere episode of Lemon’s new online show added to an unhinged 72-hour posting spree on X, in which the erratic businessman raged against the “woke mind virus” and said its “goal” is “the destruction of America,” agreed with a user who wrote “Fake News is the Enemy of the People,” said the press is “basically the [Joe] Biden cheering squad,” accused the news media of “lying” about Donald Trump’s “blood bath” comments, called NPR a “nice version of Pravda,” alleged Google “manipulate[s] their search results with left wing bias,” said the January 6 insurrection was “not a ‘bloodbath’ by any definition,” and argued that if there is not a “red wave” in November, “America is doomed.”
At this juncture, calling Musk a right-wing shitposter is no longer provocative. It’s simply accurate. And his ugly behavior is even more troubling because of the fact that Musk is enormously influential, casting a large shadow across multiple industries and doing billions of dollars’ worth of national security business with the US government.
In his ownership of X alone, Musk controls one of the world’s most important communications platforms, spitting corrosive venom into the public discourse at a faster speed than his SpaceX rockets hurtle into orbit.
In fact, as users of the platform once called Twitter know all too well, Musk’s posts often find themselves to the very top of the home feed. That is because, according to reporting from Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton, engineers were forced to build “a system designed to ensure” his posts do well on the platform he owns.
To make matters worse, Musk appears to be growing more intolerant of other viewpoints. While elevating right-wing extremists, he simultaneously seeks to destroy trust in credible news sources.
Once upon a time, Musk welcomed having a media personality like Lemon on the X platform. Not so much anymore.
On Monday, after his interview with Lemon was posted online, Musk trashed the former CNN anchor, calling him in various posts a “stupid asshole” and saying he is “just a bad guy, plain and simple.”
“He’s not used to having to answer to anyone,” Lemon said in a Q&A with People’s Jason Sheeler, “especially someone like me who doesn’t share his worldview, who doesn’t look like him.”
In effect, Musk has become self-radicalized on the very website that he was forced to purchase for $44 billion, sliding deeper into the darkest and most unsavory corners of the platform that has served to only reinforce his own worldview with an echo chamber of conspiracy theorists and ego-stoking sycophants that regularly fawn at his every move no matter how outrageous or preposterously false.
All of it dished up by an algorithm designed to regurgitate it right back to him. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, Musk is hell bent on taking everyone else down there with him.
The-CNN-Wire
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