Tech billionaire Elon Musk is facing massive backlash in European capitals as he attempts to extend his recent political successes across the Atlantic.
Leaders of four European countries – France, Germany, Norway and the UK – denounced his influence in separate statements Monday, saying Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Space He warned that he should not get involved.
Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, has gone on a social media rampage against various world leaders and is obsessed with his social media app X. in an effort to recreate the influence it had on American politics. last year. Musk has repeatedly endorsed far-right candidates in European countries in social media posts.
Musk’s message has proven to be divisive, with anger apparently boiling over Monday among leaders of some of Europe’s largest and most powerful countries.
French President Emmanuel Macron did not mention Musk by name, but he slammed him in a speech in Paris on foreign policy.
“Who could have imagined 10 years ago that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would directly intervene in elections, including in Germany?” He said this while hinting that he supports it.
In Germany, Prime Minister Olaf Scholz’s government criticized Musk by name and predicted that his social media posts would not be popular with the public.
“Ordinary people, good people, decent people are by far the majority in this country,” a government spokesperson said, according to state broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
“We are acting as if what Mr. Musk says is a lie, a half-truth, or an expression of opinion that can impact a country of 84 million people. This is simply not true.” he said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was asked about Musk at a press conference about the child sexual abuse scandal. Mr. Musk accused Mr. Starmer of not doing enough to stop abuse during his time as prosecutor, but Mr. Starmer dismissed the accusations as a self-promotional lie without naming Mr. Musk.
“Those who are spreading lies and misinformation as far as possible are not interested in the victims. They are interested in themselves,” he said, according to Sky News. Mr Starmer said these people were getting “thrills at the cost of street violence”.
And although Norway has been a crucial testing ground for Tesla for a decade, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store denounced Mr. Musk’s political influence in an interview on Monday.
“It is alarming that someone with enormous access to social media and enormous economic resources would be so directly involved in the internal affairs of another country,” he told public broadcaster NRK, according to Reuters. spoke.
“This is not the way things should be between democracies and allies,” he said.
It is not clear whether the four governments coordinated their statements, but their timing within hours of each other signaled a united front against Mr. Musk.
Musk did not respond to requests for comment on the statement. In a post to X on Monday, he at least reveled in the influence he was having on online debates. He asked for responses to a poll asking, “Should America liberate the British people from tyranny?” He promoted a possible internet services deal between SpaceX and the Italian government, led by far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. And he celebrated the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, another target of Musk’s online ire in recent weeks. He also speculated about the possibility of Greenland becoming part of the United States.
Musk, a naturalized US citizen who was born and raised in South Africa, has a long habit of making political commentary on X, including a series of posts over the past two years predicting civil war in Europe, comments that have puzzled experts. be.
Musk spent more than $250 million last year boosting the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates in the US, turning X into an echo chamber for pro-Trump views and accounts.
Since the election, Mr. Musk has taken on a variety of roles on Mr. Trump’s behalf, including as a traveling international special envoy. According to the New York Times, he traveled to Paris with President Trump last month to reopen Notre Dame Cathedral, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in November, and also held a phone call with President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Participated for a short time.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk is in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin and in 2023 had dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other tech CEOs in San Francisco. did.
Musk is also co-director of President Trump’s commission called the Department of Government Efficiency. The commission is an advisory body expected to make broad recommendations on spending cuts and deregulation.
Anna Grzymarawa Busse, director of Stanford University’s Europe Center, said Musk’s hostility is a concern for European leaders, and that they are concerned about what Trump will do to Europe when he returns to the White House later this month. He said that there is a possibility that he will indicate whether he will take action.
“This is another step in transforming the United States from a reliable ally to an unpredictable agent,” she said in an email. He said that in Europe, Musk is “widely seen as an ignorant but very pernicious force and an agent of Trump.”
Liana Fix, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the controversy comes as the European Union considers Musk’s X as a possible violation of the European Digital Services Act. This law sets out various regulatory requirements for social media platforms.
“The EU sees Elon Musk’s comments as an attempt to bully Europeans into taking a more flexible approach to platform regulation while threatening domestic chaos,” he said in an email. ” he said.
