Elon Musk Is the Steve Bannon of 2024

In 2011, governmental provocateur Andrew Breitbart warned a panel of Fox News anchors that if America wasn’t careful, Donald Trump could go President someday. A twelvemonth later, Breitbart died, and his longtime associate, billionaire handmaiden Steve Bannon, took implicit the rightwinger’s cherished website. He would usage the tract to assistance Trump bash conscionable that.

When Bannon took implicit Breitbart successful 2012, Trump was conscionable opening to artifact with moving for President, encouraged by conversations he’d had with David Bossie, the president of Citizens United (the enactment that successfully sued the FEC to unleash acheronian money connected the U.S. governmental system). Bossie was besides a person of Bannon, and Citizens United had received ample financial donations from Bannon’s associate, billionaire Bob Mercer. Indeed, Bannon met Trump for the archetypal time, successful 2011, through Bossie. As Trump readied a statesmanlike tally that would beryllium partially funded by Mercer and coordinated by Bannon, Breitbart (which was besides receiving backing from Mercer) began to churn retired a dependable watercourse of rightwing content, the likes of which, commentators would claim, helped pave the mode for the MAGA movement.

In 2017, a study from the Columbia Journalism Review argued that, successful the years since its emergence to prominence, Breitbart had go the “backbone” of a rightwing media ecosystem that served to “transmit a hyper-partisan position to the world.” That position was decidedly “pro-Trump,” the survey claimed.

Eventually, Breitbart’s ain journalists denounced the site, describing it—as the Los Angeles Times once enactment it—as having sacrificed its “editorial independency and go a mouthpiece for Trump.” Indeed, successful 2016, successful the aftermath of Trump’s electoral victory, Kurt Bardella, a erstwhile Breitbart spokesman, told journalists: “It volition beryllium the propaganda limb of the administration.” He added that the site’s mandate was to “create conflict, contention and divisiveness” and that it would beryllium utilized to prop up Trump. Ben Shapiro, himself present a pro-Trump apologist, erstwhile claimed Bannon had turned Breitbart “into Trump’s idiosyncratic Pravda,” a notation to the Soviet Union’s once-prominent propaganda publication.

Nearly 10 years later, arsenic Bannon emerges from a national prison and Trump readies himself to instrumentality to the White House, it appears that thing precise akin to what transpired successful 2016 has happened again.

In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter. The woody was contentious, dramatic, and, from the outside, mostly inscrutable. Why did the world’s richest man—a antheral who already owned half a twelve companies—want to bargain 1 of the world’s largest societal media platforms? Public speculation ran the gamut but came up with nary existent answers. Not agelong aft the acquisition was finished, Musk fired a majority of the site’s staff and renamed it “X.” Since then, it has grown increasingly much rightwing and, successful the pb up to the statesmanlike election, allowed Musk to algorithmically beforehand a big of unhinged conspiracy theories and misinformation that proved auxiliary to the Trump campaign’s messaging. The occupation for Musk has been that X is not profitable. The tract appears to person nary semipermanent concern strategy but losing metric fucktons of money.

Yet wrong the discourse of the 2024 statesmanlike election, Musk’s Twitter woody yet seems to marque a definite benignant of sense. Indeed, if 1 of the halfway purposes of the acquisition was to person the level into a globally-scaled propaganda megaphone for the Trump campaign, past Musk’s different decisions portion moving the tract (the bulk of which defy each basal concern logic) look much reasonable. The payoff wasn’t the platform’s existent gross (which has plummeted 80 percent since Musk took over) but a Trump governmental victory, which would manus Musk unparalleled entree to the large branches of American government. It besides explains Musk’s increasingly melodramatic antics, arsenic they tin beryllium work arsenic portion and parcel of an wide propagandistic effort. From a concern standpoint, telling your site’s advertisers to “go fuck” themselves makes nary sense. From the standpoint of idiosyncratic who wants to correspond himself arsenic an avatar of “free speech,” however, (and frankincense triumph a important information of the nationalist to your governmental cause) it does marque sense. In the days since Trump won the election, Musk’s idiosyncratic net worthy accrued by $20 billion.

Elon is specified a dumbass. He spent $44 cardinal connected Twitter and each helium got was power of each 3 branches of the national government.

— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) November 6, 2024

In some 2016 and 2024, the play by the rightwing governmental question looks markedly similar. From this writer’s perspective, the play is this: organized money, backed by rightwing billionaires, hijack a media platform, the likes of which past proceeds to churn retired a deluge of hard-right content. In galore cases, the contented seems designed to rile up peculiar segments of the electorate, frankincense compelling them to enactment a preferred governmental campaigner (in some cases, Donald Trump). In Breitbart’s case, the tract inactive ostensibly produced news. In the lawsuit of X, Musk dispensed with adjacent the trappings of morganatic quality contented and proceeded to unleash a veritable firehose of propagandistic dogshit into what had erstwhile been considered America’s digital “public commons.”

While determination isn’t immoderate factual impervious that Musk’s information for the Twitter acquisition was to assistance Donald Trump get elected, there’s small disputing that that’s what Musk did with the level erstwhile helium was moving it.

Much similar successful 2016, the 2024 Trump run turned connected its quality to rile up its basal with a substance of anger, resentment, and paranoia. To that end, Musk’s X helped promulgate a adjacent incessant deluge of cartoonishly racist conspiracy theories related to migration and the existent administration. Trump besides leaned heavy into the alternate media ecosystem of podcasts and societal media that are heavy weighted towards young males—a core constituency that helped him win. Many of those podcasts adjacent received a shoutout successful the contiguous aftermath of Trump’s triumph earlier this week.

There is truly lone 1 decision that tin beryllium drawn from the preceding, which is that the governmental rightwing is incredibly adept astatine leveraging media and exertion towards its electoral advantage. Indeed, galore of the media strategies pioneered by Bannon during Trump’s 2016 run consciousness arsenic if they were refined oregon drastically amplified by Musk during this predetermination cycle.

It should beryllium remembered that, successful 2016, Bannon’s Trump-related efforts besides utilized his ties to Cambridge Analytica, a institution formed by the SCL Group, a longstanding defence contractor (with ties to the U.S. State Department) that specialized successful intelligence warfare.

One could reason that Twitter, arsenic a platform, offered Musk the combined powers of what Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica had antecedently offered Bannon: It functioned arsenic some a media megaphone and a mode to cod and centralize information connected the American public, some of which could past beryllium utilized to augment an wide electoral strategy. (There’s nary mode to accidental whether immoderate of that information was utile oregon not, of course.) In 2016, Facebook was cardinal to Bannon’s effort. Cambridge Analytica collected information connected segments of the American population from Facebook for the purposes of political advertising, successful a notorious lawsuit that ended successful Congressional hearings. In Musk’s case, helium bought a level that’s akin to Facebook and took it private, frankincense avoiding immoderate benignant of extracurricular scrutiny.

Late past year, I argued that Twitter wasn’t markedly different nether Musk than it had been nether Jack Dorsey. Of course, that was a agelong clip ago, and things are precise antithetic now. I inactive support that Twitter was ne'er a peculiarly bully website—and that the archetypal mentation of it should not beryllium glorified arsenic immoderate perfect nationalist platform. At the aforesaid time, its wide that Musk took a tract that had meaningful guardrails, dispensed with them, and proceeded to mould the tract successful his ain representation (that image, apparently, is simply a mean-spirited douche bag).

The existent question is what Musk volition bash next. Bannon left Breitbart successful 2018, soon aft Trump had ascended to the White House, and ne'er looked back. It remains to beryllium seen whether Musk continues his tenure astatine X, oregon whether helium volition portion ways with the platform. As a means of distributing scaled messaging, X would intelligibly proceed to beryllium utile to Musk and different Trump acolytes during the upcoming administration. That said, however bash you proceed to prop up a media cognition that is hemorrhaging money? The financials of the tract are what volition person to beryllium dealt with successful the coming years, if the propaganda is to continue.