Elon Musk Shows Us He’s a Problem, Not a Solution, When It Comes to Right-Wing Extremism

By David Corn  November 1, 2022

A photo illustration of the Twitter logo and Elon Musk, who purchased the social media site last week. Davide Bonaldo/Sipa/AP

Two serious threats—Republican extremism and the takeover of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk—intersected in one 16-word tweet this weekend.

When Hillary Clinton on Twitter cited a Los Angeles Times article that reported the would-be assassin of Nancy Pelosi, who assaulted Pelosi’s husband Paul, was a QAnon fanboy who espoused right wing conspiracy theories and extreme MAGA rhetoric, Musk replied with a tweet promoting a false story disseminated by a known disinformation site that claimed that the assailant was a man Pelosi had met in a gay bar late that night. Flogging this baseless assertion to counter Clinton’s tweet and the Los Angeles Times article, Musk observed, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye.” Reasonable folks on Twitter howled, but before Musk deleted this post hours later, it had been retweeted at least 24,000 times. The new owner of Twitter had helped spread a conspiracy theory designed to undermine the fact that a fellow propelled by right-wing extremism had apparently tried to kill Pelosi, who has long been demonized by the GOP and conservative media.

There is so much that is wrong with this picture. This episode suggested that Musk, the guy now in charge of Twitter, is unable—or unwilling—to discern disinformation from legitimate material. (The source of the bogus article Musk boosted is well-known as a publisher of false information and once claimed Hillary Clinton was replaced by a body double for a debate with Donald Trump in 2016.) This was a stark demonstration of Musk’s severe lack of judgment and a cavalier attitude toward the importance of truth in the public square.

There’s more: This tweet also illustrated how Musk was eager to push back against bad news for the Trumpian right. The brutal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, which sent him to a hospital for surgeries related to head and arm injuries, cast a bright light on Republican extremism. Trump has embraced QAnon conspiracism, which has repeatedly led to violence, and the GOP has accepted the merger of QAnon and MAGAism. As I reported recently, three prominent Republican secretary of state candidates, each QAnon-aligned, participated in a Florida conference that featured a white nationalist, assorted conspiracy nutters, and fellow 2020 election denialists. According to the Los Angeles Times, Pelosi’s assailant was a denizen of the dark and demented world of QAnon, Holocaust denialism, anti-vaxxism, and other far-right conspiracies, many of which are encouraged, amplified, or winked at by Trump, other Republicans, Fox News, and various conservative outlets. The right’s efforts to dismiss the meaning and significance of the Pelosi attack—Donald Trump Jr., Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin, and other Republicans even joked about it—was a move to deflect attention from the GOP’s connection to far-right fanaticism.

The Pelosi assault comes at a time when far-right extremism appears to be on the rise. Trump has embraced QAnon and vowed that he would pardon January 6 rioters were he to be elected again to the White House. A recent poll shows that 52 percent of Trump voters in 2020 and  49 percent of Republicans said they believed Democrats were involved in child sex-trafficking operations—a foundation of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Hundreds of 2020 election denialists are on the ballot in the midterm elections. The Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, has openly associated with a prominent antisemite and Christian nationalists. Earlier this year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at a conference organized by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Hitler cheerleader. Two weeks ago, Trump zapped out an antisemitic social media post. No prominent Republican complained. After Kanye West tweeted an antisemitic post, the Republicans of the House Judiciary Committee kept up a tweet declaring, “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”

How does Musk enjoy being in that company? (Two antisemites and a billionaire from South Africa walk into a bar...) As I noted in June, Musk legitimized Trump’s Big Lie and even the nutty QAnon conspiracy theory when he declared that he had voted for Republican Mayra Flores, an adherent of all that swill, who won a special House election in south Texas. Musk has amplified other baseless far-right conspiratorial notions, while complaining about “woke” progressives and claiming it is the Democratic Party that has been “hijacked by extremists.” He has been sleep-walking through the past few years.

Musk’s tweet-retort to Clinton indicates that he still resides in the bizarro universe where Democrats—not the party of the Big Lie and January 6—are the extremists and that he’s a sap for far-right disinformation. This raises questions about what will happen to Twitter on his watch—and whether it will indeed become a hellscape of right-wing propaganda and extremism. In the past few days, the anecdotal evidence has not been encouraging. Fuentes apparently spoke in in a Twitter Space the other night, ranting about Jewish people and calling for action against the US "regime." A social media research group found that after Musk’s absorption of Twitter, the use of the n-word jumped five-fold on the site. In response to that LeBron James tweeted, “I don’t know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech.”

It’s too soon to tell whether Musk’s takeover of Twitter will lead to a greater spread of extremism and disinformation. Perhaps his financial partners—including a Saudi fund—will prevent him from turning the site into a kingdom of hate, bigotry, and ignorance, for that will likely drive away users and alienate advertisers. It’s possible, though, Musk will reshape Twitter into a Fox-like entity. Rupert Murdoch’s disinformation shop does make a ton of money.

It might be easy for some to dismiss concerns about the future of Twitter. As an avid tweeter who has used the site to promote my journalism, to meet sources, to make dear friends, and to gather subscribers to this newsletter (people like you!), I am worried. But the fate of Twitter is intertwined with the larger issue of the state of our national discourse. Musk calls himself a free-speech absolutist and says he acquired Twitter so we would have “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” That sounds good—but it’s tough to achieve. The key word here is “healthy.” A healthy debate does not include people running through the square chanting the n-word, inflaming antisemitism, or purposefully spewing false information and conspiracy theories to skew the debate or incite violence. It does not appear that Musk realizes that. With his tweet this weekend, Musk showed us that he’s part of the problem, not the solution. And it’s a problem that extends far beyond Twitter.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Barack Obama Gets It Right

In a recent issue, I excoriated recent Democratic messaging leading up to the midterm elections. I pointed out that it lacked punch and verve and often did not present a clear case advocating the direct benefits of voting for Democrats. In that article, I cited two examples of Democratic outreach that used Barack Obama and did not seem to make a gut-connection. Well, to be fair, I am now noting that in recent days Obama has produced the most punch and verve of any Democrat promoting the party. Take a gander:

As I said in my tweet, for the Democrats to have a shot, they all need to be making an argument like this—and doing it over and over…and over. Obama is a singularly talented politician with potent communications skills, which is why it’s too bad for Democrats he has not done much campaigning until now. But this message he is pitching can easily be delivered by his party comrades. As always, I remain befuddled why the Democrats are not better at this, especially when the stakes are as high as they are.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD, Jason Kander. A few months ago, Jason Kander, the onetime secretary of state in Missouri and the first American millennial elected to statewide office, sent me his memoir and asked me to help get the word out about it. At the time, I was too busy finishing up my own book and didn’t have the chance to read his, and I usually don’t promote books I haven’t read. But I zapped out a few tweets noting the publication of Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD. Now that I finally found the time to read it, I’m quite glad I helped promote it. Kander, who served several months in Afghanistan as an intelligence officer, has produced a chilling and important account of his struggle with PTSD. To the outside world, he was a political wunderkind. Elected as a state representative at the age of 28 in 2008, then secretary of state four years later, Kander, even though he narrowly lost a US Senate race in 2016, was still widely discussed as a possible presidential candidate—and even encouraged by Barack Obama to consider running in 2020. Yet throughout that stretch he was wracked with unrelenting PTSD that made his non-public life a ceaseless nightmare. He couldn’t sleep. He was hyper-vigilant—that is, crazed—about personal security. His accomplishments were undermined by tortuous insecurity, depression, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide. He was a mess who hid it well from the rest of us—and his PTSD created severe trauma for his wife Diana.

Kander candidly chronicles how this mental disease subsumed him and eventually caused him to withdraw from electoral politics. The book includes an engaging and effective device: brief commentaries from Diana, who provides her perspective on the psychological turmoil that enveloped both of them. Kander also presents a valuable insider’s view on politics. For instance, he records the shock he felt when he entered the Missouri state legislature and saw that politics was “all about money.” He writes, “If I could stamp out corruption in Missouri, maybe I could feel redeemed for not having done enough for my country in Afghanistan.” Kander dropped out of the mayoral contest. But even after he passed an ethics bill, he ended up despondent: “What had I really won? Not much. The establishment went to work on eviscerating the bill in court before the governor had even signed it.”

Kander’s PTSD placed him in a nonstop frenzy to control every situation he was in and to score the next win, as he hoped a new political accomplishment would finally end his pain. Of course, that never came. When he lost his Senate race, he notes, “all I could feel, once again, was terror: I was going to die.” He eventually eschewed the 2020 presidential race to run for Kansas City mayor in 2018. Then one day in the middle of that campaign, he walked into the Kansas City Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He told the triage nurse he had been having suicidal thoughts for 10 years. He was checked in immediately. In describing himself to a young psychiatrist, Kander said, “Well, I almost ran for president, but then decided on calling that off.” President of what? The doctor asked, adding “who told you that you could run for president?” Kander replied he had spent 90 minutes discussing the option with Obama. “So how often would you say you hear voices?” the shrink asked.

Kander’s tale is upsetting and cautionary. He unveils one of the most painful hidden costs of going to war: what war does to the people we ask to wage it. With courage and no self-pity, he writes elegantly about his own troubles and torment. These days Kander hosts the Majority 54 podcast, which calls itself “A weekly primer for progressives interested in knowing where the party is headed and persuading others to join our majority.” I hope he continues his career as a writer, and he certainly could consider a return to electoral politics. This book reveals that Kander possesses guts and empathy, two crucial traits displayed by the best Democratic politicians.

Robert Gordon, RIP. The death of Jerry Lee Lewis justifiably received much attention last week, but I was also sad to hear of the recent passing of Robert Gordon, the rockabilly revivalist who emerged from the NYC punk scene of the 1970s. I saw him multiple times in small clubs—with and without fuzz-guitar genius Link Wray— and cherished his rockin’ swing. The New York Times obit is a good account of his life and influence. I did not know he grew up nearby in Bethesda, Maryland. He wasn’t a nostalgia act. Instead, with respect and discipline, he applied the naked fierceness of punk to the raw rock of the 1950s, refreshing a noble tradition. (He also did a good cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire.”) Here’s one of my favorite numbers of his:

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October 22, 2022: Attack ads—why they work (then and now); Tulsi Gabbard’s short, strange trip; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Marjorie Taylor Greene); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.