Elon Musk, Keir Starmer, and the American alt-right
‘Man criticises politician in Twitter rant’ is not often a newsworthy headline. Yet as I write, a quick glance at any leading news site shows that very story, in the form of the American billionaire Elon Musk’s attacks on Keir Starmer, dominating coverage. The weight given to Mr Musk’s opinion rests on no discernible form of expertise or experience. What seems to count, rather, is that he has a lot of money, a lot of spare time to tweet, and a predilection for courting attention by smugly throwing his support behind the most outrageous views of the alt-right. His sense of self-importance, already substantial, has only increased since ingratiating himself with the new American president through a sycophantic charm offensive. A South African immigrant to the US, known until a few years ago for nothing more than entrepreneurial ventures, utopian techno-futurism, and a cameo in Iron Man 2, now seems able to enjoy an influence over the British news cycle that few others can lay claim to.
Musk, along with the alt-right X/Twittersphere he has come to dominate, has developed a surprisingly intense interest in British politics. The reason for this lies in how the UK can be made to fit unproblematically, and in fact very usefully, within a pro-Trump, American conception of the political universe. A brief overview of Musk’s comments reveals how he casually brushes aside the realities of British political debate and replaces them with a highly polarised, apocalyptic caricature, in a manner that seems absurd on this side of the Atlantic but is largely typical of American discourse. His current pinned tweet, suggesting that the ‘tyrannical’ British government ought to hold fresh elections or be violently overthrown, reflects an alien political lexicon that comes naturally to the pro-Trump movement in the US, but has little parallel here.
For Musk, a genuine grounding in British political, historical, and social reality is unimportant. To fit into his overarching metanarrative, Keir Starmer and the Labour government must be nothing more than an offshoot of radical, far-left Democrats in America, pushing a white Anglo-Christian West towards moral decay and ultimate destruction by barbarian immigrants. Giving this credibility requires the combined efforts of an army of so-called ‘alternative media’ outlets. These consist of anyone with a social media account, disdain for the usual standards of journalistic integrity, and a penchant for appealing to the prejudices of those with alt-right sympathies. These accounts eagerly provide sensational stories of tyrannical oppression, anti-white two-tiered policing, and fodder for dog whistles like the Great Replacement theory. Musk’s dutiful retweets of these posts – accompanied by a comment of ‘concerning!’ – represent the final step of their rhetorical curation for a domestic American audience. ‘Had this election not been won by @realDonaldTrump,’ Musk claims with characteristic Manichaean simplicity, ‘civilisation would have been lost’; and so it is proved in Britain.
The British (read ‘white British’) people, their guns having been confiscated, are powerless to resist as their rights to free speech are annulled and immigrants murder and pillage with impunity. No matter that Musk probably has no real knowledge of the history of UK gun laws, has almost certainly never heard of Dunblane, and assumes nothing but the most simplistic and straightforward link between firearm ownership and freedom. No matter that his knowledge of British society is nothing more than that of an intellectually unexceptional, chronically online American, who has happened to fall, along with many millions of his compatriots, down an alt-right rabbit hole. Quite simply, Britain used to be, wants to be, should be, white, Christian, and patriarchal; and if Americans do not hold on to their guns, do not conserve and defend those aspects of their national character, they will follow down the exact same path, “invaded” and “overrun”.
A certain strain of American exceptionalism underpins everything Musk says, perhaps adopted all the more vehemently because of his own non-American, immigrant background. The arrogant willingness to throw himself into foreign political debates of which he knows little and thinks even less. The unthinking conceptual imposition of American political assumptions and norms, of the ‘why is everyone driving on the wrong side of the road?’ type. The ever-present rhetorical contrast between American freedom and European leftist tyranny, constantly hammered home without an ounce of subtlety. This type of rhetoric is not confined to certain corners of social media, but is rather an essential feature of the new American right. Figures possessing genuine institutional power, including Vice President JD Vance and Senator Ted Cruz, have been quick to echo Musk’s talking points.
Of course, none of this is to reify what Musk and others are doing as particularly innovative or unique. Drawing contrasts with other countries as a domestic political tool is a common and potentially benign rhetorical device. There is a whole field of academia based on international comparison, leading practitioners of which were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics. As with any type of analysis or argument, inevitably, not all uses of it will be intellectually rigorous or conducted in good faith. Britain happens to be in the firing line in this instance because, from a distance and with a bit of malicious squinting, its politics can be easily re-interpreted to fit a desirable narrative, while its assumed cultural and racial similarity to America also lends itself to lazy comparisons.
Just as significantly, Musk has the luxury of putting little at stake personally by jumping into the fray; conversely, notice how he never criticises the genuinely tyrannical Chinese government, where a large number of Tesla factories are based. Russia, currently prosecuting a chauvinistic and vicious war against Ukraine, also gets off lightly, given its credentials as a bastion of white, patriarchal traditionalism in the eyes of the American alt-right.
However, it would be wrong to dismiss Musk’s views on Britain as rhetoric without consequence. The second Trump administration faces a number of big decisions around NATO, the war in Ukraine, and America’s role in the world more broadly. With figures like Musk and Vance having the ear of the president, the notion that America might withdraw from its European commitments, or even seek to meddle in British domestic politics and demand internal policy changes as the price for continued support, is not unthinkable.
More broadly, social media platforms tend to break down national discursive barriers, making them a tool for global influence in the hands of owners with a political agenda like Musk. The ugly riots of last summer were driven in large part by online misinformation, actively promoted by Musk and Twitter’s content algorithms. Essentially free from accountability, we are left to count on social media owners’ sense of personal responsibility and integrity in limiting the excesses of hateful speech and incitement to violence on their platforms. With X/Twitter, this is sorely lacking; and as other Silicon Valley executives now seek to win the favour of President Trump, more platforms may soon follow Twitter’s lead in easing off on the moderation of alt-right content.
Musk’s ability to influence the news cycle, set the terms of debate and algorithmically manipulate content, all from the smug security of another country, has few precedents. Enthralled by the idea of himself as a major political force, he may look to make his influence yet more concrete; in recent days, he has demanded Nigel Farage’s resignation as leader of the Reform Party whilst floating the prospect of a massive campaign donation. More than ever, Britain finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics. If the only consequence is a few angry rants from Elon Musk, we may count ourselves lucky.