Depending on who you talk to in Europe, Elon Musk He is either a brave champion of free speech or a dangerous troublemaker.

“He uses his superpowers to say, ‘I will give a voice to the voiceless.’” It is a human being that happens once in multiple generations. He is my hero. “It’s amazing,” author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam and former Dutch politician, said on the podcast.

According to Ian Hislop, editor of the British satirical newspaper Private Eye, Musk is “a classic social media teenager who has not yet matured – the tantrums, the lack of responsibility.”

He recently told LBC radio in the UK that Musk is “full of contradictions, and at some point, I hope, even his followers will start to notice that from one sentence to the next, it doesn’t make sense.”

Musk, the tech billionaire who owns Company

At one point on X Musk He confirmed“Starmer is evil.”

He has thrown his powers into shaping the narrative behind the UK opposition Conservatives’ campaign to reopen an investigation into what he called a sexual assault cover-up by police and prosecutors.

The attackers in question, called grooming gangs, were British men of Pakistani origin who sexually abused underage white girls in towns across the Midlands in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Following a 2013 investigation by The Times into the scandal – that these organized criminal gangs had been operating for years without significant police intervention – an investigation followed.

Starmer refused to reopen the investigation on the grounds that he is a conservative and a populist repair Political parties only sought to fuel far-right anti-immigrant hysteria, but Musk continued to attack him for “harbouring known terrorists.”

Musk falsely claimed that posting a meme criticizing Starmer “could get you sent to prison in Britain,” and amplified claims by right-wing news outlet GB News by asserting that “UK politicians are selling your daughters for votes.”

Musk shakes German politics

Musk is also busy meddling in German politics, before he gets involved Crucial elections next month Which the ruling Social Democratic Party is expected to lose.

“My advice to the people of Germany is that you must vote for change. Vote for [the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland, or AfD] It’s simply a reasonable and logical step… nothing outrageous has been suggested. “Only common sense…Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk asserted on X.

On January 9, he gave an interview to AfD leader Alice Weidel, in which she recast Adolf Hitler’s Nazis as forerunners not of her party, which emerged from the Neonazi movement, but of Germany’s social democrats.

“The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to describe Hitler as correct and conservative. He was exactly the opposite,” Wedel told Musk. “He was a communist and socialist man… and we are exactly the opposite. We are a liberal conservative party.” “We have been framed wrongly all the time, and we would like to set people free.”

Within a week, the interview had been viewed 16 million times and aroused the envy of the leader of Germany’s Free Democrats.

“The most pathetic figure I’ve seen is Christian Lindner, who writes to Musk saying: ‘Don’t support the AfD, support me because I’m the real libertarian here in Germany,’” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, who heads the Madrid office. , a think tank.

“European leaders are completely lost on short-term issues. Who will vote for Christian Lindner after he asks Musk to interfere in German elections?

Weidel says it will unleash the energies of the German people to innovate and pursue projects, which she sees as being hampered by bureaucracy, over-regulation, over-taxation and immigration — positions similar to those taken by US President-elect Donald Trump, whom Musk also promoted on the X.

Musk’s ability through his social media profile to shape what many people consider to be the truth is causing deep concern on both sides of the Atlantic.

In a farewell address to the American people on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy… I am equally concerned about the potential rise.” Tech-Industrial Complex… Americans are being buried under a torrent of misinformation and disinformation that enables the abuse of power.

There are similar concerns in Europe that the exorbitant sum Musk paid for Twitter — $44 billion — which he renamed to X, will only make sense if it is recouped through leverage.

“Musk is convinced…that the decision to buy Twitter is a turning point in American history, and by doing so, Musk saved American democracy,” Torreblanca said. “If it weren’t for that, the Democrats would be in power forever,” he told Al Jazeera.

“He believes now is the time to advance this agenda globally, to fight progressives wherever they are.”

‘It’s very difficult to respond’

Digital experts estimate X’s reach at somewhere between 50 and 100 million users on the continent of 550 million, but Musk’s reach is amplified by news media and his influence over other platform owners.

Musk’s close alliance with Trump also creates the perception that he speaks on behalf of the president, giving him power over his peers.

On January 7, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and Instagram, posted a video saying: “The recent election also feels like a cultural turning point toward once again prioritizing expression… We will get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community feedback, similar to X.”

This, says Torreblanca, means that “something will only be removed if another reader asks them to do so, which essentially means entrusting users with the safety and quality of the platform, which is unacceptable under European legislation.”

The European Digital Services Act obliges platforms to moderate content as they are responsible for content that is harmful, violent or offensive to different groups.

Torreblanca said the overwhelming support the SDS enjoys from a broad political spectrum – conservatives, socialists and greens – means the EU can impose it in a neutral and fair way, avoiding the dramatic confrontation and ban imposed by Brazil last year.

“In practice, our EU competition authorities have the independence to conduct investigations and impose fines [a] “I think the best way for Europe to do this is in a politically emotional way,” Torreblanca said.

The European Commission may be the only authority in Europe capable of standing up to Musk. The UK and Germany did not individually threaten X with suspension or legal action. Even the Commission could be intimidated, said Giorgos Verdi, who works with the European Council on Foreign Relations in Brussels.

“[Musk’s] Verdi told Al Jazeera that new contacts with Trump make it very difficult to respond. “Trump views American tech champions as very important tools when it comes to the trade war with China. If the EU forces those companies to slow down by following regulations, this could become a national security issue for the United States.”

Musk may be educating those focused on pushing the Kremlin’s narratives, believes Maxim Alyukov, a research fellow in the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Manchester.

“Russian influence operations are actually modeled on the Trump or Musk examples,” Aliukov said.

“They pick certain incidents, like the scandals in the UK… and then they try to present some politicians as a solution to this problem. “This is exactly what Musk does,” he told Al Jazeera.

Musk has promoted the UK’s Reform Party as the solution to what he and the far right often call “uncontrolled” immigration and mass rape.

Both Musk and Moscow realized they needed dedicated ecosystems to normalize and disseminate their views, said Alyukov, who recently co-wrote a study of Moscow-funded outlets in Europe, which represent legitimate news services but publish Russian messages at key moments, such as elections. .

“You’re not outright censoring. You can create an ecosystem to make your voice heard, etc [Musk] “What he did was he got an ecosystem for himself,” Aliukov said.

Governments are in uncharted waters

Musk has merged his corporate interests with those of the state, making himself indispensable.

SpaceX launched NASA payloads, Starlink provided the Pentagon with the world’s largest communications satellite system, and Tesla disrupted the global auto industry that marginalized Detroit automakers, bringing the United States back to the forefront.

X is now the dominant global communications platform, and Musk is using it as a weapon against the news media, telling his followers: “X is the future, it’s citizen journalism… It’s by the people, for the people.”

This helped determine much of the newsgathering agenda, as newspapers rushed to investigate whether a rumor about X was a story or a lie.

“I think he thought… ‘I can say anything I like, and it doesn’t have to be true, and it better not be true, and no one will stop me,'” Hislop said. “We are in an age of complete foolishness.”

“The economy has been politicized at the geopolitical level,” Verdi said. “It’s not just about applying ethical principles equally to technology. It’s also about power.”