Musk's politics is hard to fathom

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Barely 72 hours after his tortured acquisition of the social media giant Twitter last week, Elon Musk, to milk a birdy cliche, set a cat among pigeons. He retweeted a dodgy story from a right-wing media outlet that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul Pelosi, brutally assaulted with a hammer at their home by an intruder resulting in a skull fracture, was attacked by a disgruntled gay lover. The police subsequently clarified that the two men were not acquainted with each other, and the intruder was intent on hurting, and possibly kidnapping Nancy Pelosi herself. But the damage was done even as Musk deleted his tweet -- without explanation.

The right-wing echo chamber picked up the story tweeted to Musk's 112 million followers, and in the spirit of a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its shoes on, amplified it a week before the mid-term polls that is on track for a dead-heat. To be sure, there are a lot of unanswered questions -- posed mainly in the right wing media -- in the Pelosi episode. How did the intruder gain entry to a heavily secured home? How did Pelosi call the police when the intruder was still inside the home? Why did Pelosi, according to the police dispatcher, refer to the intruder as a "friend"? And why did the police stand-by as the two men wrestled over a hammer in their presence? But most of the questions were premised on speculative accounts and hearsay. Why would Musk give credence to such vile rumors?

If Musk's first days at the helm of Twitter was being scrutinized to see if he demonstrated a sense of responsibility that he promised when he said that the platform would not become a free-for-all hellscape, then he himself failed in the first instance. But then he is also a self-declared free speech absolutist, a position that does not square with his no-hellscape pledge. Within hours of taking over Twitter, he fired its CEO and legal head who were accused by the right wing of censoring their posts, even if such posts ignited racial tensions. Can a free speech absolutist also promise a no-hellscape platform?

It is one of many contradictions in the life of this enigmatic entrepreneur, including his embrace of energy-intensive cryptos for someone who feels so intensely about climate change and the future of Planet Earth. Days after he inflamed the political landscape, he echoed the promise of Twitter's Head of Safety & Integrity that the platform is "staying vigilant against attempts to manipulate conversations about the 2022 US midterms." But then the owner of Twitter itself is a self-confessed Democrat opponent who has dissed the ruling party!

Musk's politics has always been hard to fathom. A registered independent at the start of his career, he has contributed to both Democrats and Republicans in the past. He voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but endorsed the outlier Democrat Andrew Yang -- and not establishmentarian Joe Biden -- in 2020. Earlier this year he said that he could "no longer support" Democrats because they are the "party of division & hate" -- an epithet that the liberal media in the US reserve for Republicans. Now with a single tweet, he has now put the finger on the scale that could help Republicans ahead of what could be an epochal mid-term election.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that election results in the US -- and indeed in many countries -- will be based not so much on facts on the ground, but on the 'perception' of facts. And that perception can be altered by the personal bias and agenda of powerful individuals. Musk is powerful; he is not only the world’s wealthiest man, he also has one of the largest social media following. Even without him getting into the act, truth and facts have increasingly become fungible, malleable, and ductile. If enough people are made to believe the rumors, gossip, hearsay, and innuendo about Paul Pelosi, the 82-year old husband of the 82-year old House Speaker, then a few thousand votes could turn the election results – just like it happened in 2016.

Pivoting the election in the world’s most consequential nation is a powerful position to be in. But with power comes responsibility. Elon Musk, so far at least, has not demonstrated that he is ready to wield such power responsibly. It is almost as if he is welcoming, if not initiating, the Age of Dystopia on Planet Earth, an outlook that probably fits well with his view that humankind needs to become a “multiplanetary species” that should look to colonize Mars. It is wildly unrealistic proposition for a species that is making a meal of what it has.

Some of his Twitter feed is worthy of a college sophomore. “Comedy is now legal on Twitter,” he posted in the hours after he took charge of Twitter. But there was nothing funny about his takedown of an 82-year man who had his skull broken with a hammer. Like Donald Trump, he has also brought a wrecking ball to American politics.

- The writer is a senior journalist based in Washington