“Olaf is an idiot. » On Thursday, American billionaire Elon Musk wrote it in German (“Olaf ist ein Narr”) on his social network X (formerly Twitter), reacting to the prospect of new elections in Germany. The day before, he had been invited by Donald Trump, just elected, to participate in a telephone interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he seems to have regular contact, his group having provided Starlink satellites to help the Ukrainian forces communicate despite the network outages. These two recent facts, among many others because Elon Musk bombards his platform with messages and likes to make people talk about him, clearly demonstrate the role he intends to play not only in his country but on a global scale.
“His power, more than his power, seems unequaled in the history of humanity. He has economic, financial, media and geopolitical resources since he dialogues with Benyamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin… His industrial empire covers areas as different and crucial as automobiles, space, artificial intelligence, digital technology. . Through [300 millions d’abonnés, NDLR]he has control over the platform that journalists and political leaders assiduously frequent,” analyzes Olivier Alexandre, sociologist, author of “La Tech, when Silicon Valley remakes the world,” published in Le Seuil.
“He easily projects himself, in his reflections, to 50 or 150 years old”
“Physical transformation”
The man is credited with such power that a person contacted for this article, who knows him a little, preferred not to be quoted. This is what he tells us about the tycoon [magnat, NDLR ] : “I met him several times between the 1990s and the mid-2010s. What struck me was his physical transformation. I remember a rather frail being, almost bald. He went unnoticed. We feel that he has built up a charisma, undoubtedly through intensive bodybuilding practice. At the beginning, the star of the Musk family was rather his brother Kimbal… The other striking thing is his relationship with time. He easily projects himself, in his reflections, to 50 or 150 years from now. »
Elon Musk became a business star when he took control of Tesla, an American electric car manufacturer, in 2008. Since then, his success, his fortune, his eccentricities, his excess, his links with Hollywood, in particular his tumultuous romance with the actress Amber Heard, have fueled countless portraits, so much so that the plots of his existence are known. The lonely and unhappy childhood in South Africa, the difficult relationships with an engineer and promoter father, the early passion for video games and computers, the exile, at 17, penniless, in Canada, brilliant studies in economics and physics, the first coup with the success of PayPal, a pioneering company in secure payment on the Internet, which he resold for 200 million dollars, the founding in 2002 of Space X to develop space vehicles even conquer Mars, Tesla, the takeover of Twitter in 2022… The private man also fascinates the media. His erratic love life, his twelve children, sometimes nicknamed “X” or “Y”…
« Virus woke »
Known for brutal management, Elon Musk, now 53 years old, has become the champion of the libertarians, a movement that hates the State and advocates maximum freedom for individuals. More recently, he has also positioned himself, with a bang, on social issues, going on a crusade against “wokism”.
A very personal episode seems to be at the origin of this cause which he has made a priority: the sex change, at the age of 18, of his daughter Vivian Jenna. “My son is dead, killed by the woke virus. I swore to destroy this virus after this…” he confided in an interview with the conservative media “The Daily Wire”.
“He transformed X into a propaganda weapon for the far right, by allowing people banned for hate speech to return to it”
Little by little, the former progressive, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 then Joe Biden in 2020, moved closer to the radical right. He is not the only Silicon Valley boss to have experienced this evolution. Some have given Donald Trump public support, such as Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, of which future vice-president JD Vance was an employee. Others, like Jeff Bezos, have maintained a cautious silence.
“For a long time, from the 1990s to the end of the 2010s, the development of the “Valley” was aligned with the Democratic agenda,” notes Olivier Alexandre. Bill Clinton and Al Gore promoted the idea that the United States needed to play the leading roles in the new digital and globalized world of the Internet. But from 2020, the Biden administration toughened its tone against the digital giants, wanted to introduce regulations against monopolies, appointed a strong personality, Lina Khan, at the head of the American anti-trust agency… To that Added to this were economic difficulties linked to covid, then inflation. We have seen Big Tech bosses rally around Trump. They don't necessarily like it. But they believe it is the least worst for their interests. »
Active campaign
In recent weeks, the all-powerful Elon Musk has very actively used “his” X platform to campaign for Donald Trump. “He transformed massively the means allocated to moderation”, analyzes Jen Schradie, digital sociologist, author of “The Illusion of digital democracy. Is the Internet right-wing? » (Quanto).
What will be the political role, in the coming months, of the man whom the American media have called “the other vice-president of the United States”? We are talking about him leading a radical reform of the federal administration. Some doubt the sustainability of his alliance with Donald Trump. For now, it's the honeymoon. The two men willingly showcase their closeness. Will two such megalomaniacal and unpredictable personalities manage to work together over time? Until a few months ago, they barely knew each other…
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