Britain's far right is booming on Elon Musk's Twitter

AradFort@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 390 points –
Britain's far right is booming on Elon Musk's Twitter
euronews.com
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That's exactly what Elon Musk wants, and what could be expected from a South African white supremacist raised on the fortunes of an Emerald mine.

I don't think Musk cares one way or another, it's too much to ask that he has principles. He just wants people to look up to him and mysteriously it's that group. So he'll gorgle their balls as long as they gorgle his.

No you are wrong. Musk constantly align himself with the Maga crowd, the anti liberal and anti woke. If he is not an extreme right totalitarian, he sure acts like one. Of course he is also a narcissist and without principles. But being without principles doesn't mean being without opinions.

FWIW the maga crowd is obviously down with being part of a cult of personality. It’s easy to stand in front of them, say edgy shit, and be showered with praise.

But why did he change? He was praised for Tesla for "saving the world" with electric cars. He had no reason from that perspective to change side.

The change of side and pandering to the extreme right is because he is showing his true colors now.

If that's the case, he did keep them well hidden until he started going totally off the rails (and left particularly hasn't liked that). Though there's a possibility he kept them hidden just with money.

When he needed to finance Tesla, he used all the environment arguments to gain public incentives and leverage for electric cars. Which was in line with leftist policies, but for Musk it was for his personal benefit.

Later we have seen that he is not really an environmentalist. Obstructing public transport projects and building rockets.

That he is a Trumpist began to become clear when he held 2 economy advisory postions under Trump, and he refused to leave them, when they were revealed to be nothing but instruments for Trump corruption.

He does everything a fascist would do, he fights unions vigorously, and he is proven racist and anti LGBT. Not a liberal minded person at all, and he believes fascists should be allowed to propagandize on Twitter.

Spot on. Narcissists love right-leaning people because the latter tend to believe in a hierarchical societal structure. On the other hand, with left-leaning people, you need to keep your virtue on on a case-by-case basis.

You have to keep in mind Saudi Arabia are the real owners of Twitter, sure their interests are aligned with Musk generally but you’re missing some important context if you boil it all down to Musk.

I know Musk managed to get someone to foot half the bill for him, why they did that I have no idea. But you are right, they might absolutely have an agenda too.

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Sadly the right is on the rise everywhere and not solely due to twitter, they just give it a more visible voice

Maybe, maybe not. I guess it depends on the country. In Canada, the right is mocked into oblivion and the message is pretty fucking clear that we do not want the shit that is happening in the US to slowly creep it's way here. Really happy with the progress we've done to push these brainwashed fascists away.

Idk man, I’m in the US so my perspective is limited to media, but I do see things like the trucker convoys that make me worried that Canada has its own problems with the far right.

Oh i'm not trying to hide it, we do. But trust me, these people were mocked at, pissed on, laughed at and got humiliated. À l'instar of 40% of our population, it's tiny little 5% that mostly reside in Alberta and no one really care about their existence. Huuuuuuuuge difference with the US but we see it, we watch, we are learning.

Didn't you have a massive blockade of anti-vaxers in a major city the other year?

Have you not noticed how all the polls have put the Conservatives well in the lead for the popular vote ever since Poilievre took over and started pandering to fascists? The right is mocked online, but Poilievre stands a real chance of becoming the next Prime Minister. Canada is suffering a serious lurch to the right.

The 1930s video from America give a lot of perspective. Then we camped the Japanese but let the Germans have children summercamps????

Eh, it's ok. There's not that many of them. They're just louder.

There is a loud crazy minority and many people that like what they say or silently accept it. Some may even be ashamed to mention it.

Fear is often accompanied by shame. People are afraid and altright capitalize these fears

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I have some intelligent and caring friends and it boggles my mind how they still think Musk is a "net positive". Every day we hear some new example of his recklessness, support of extremist regimes, double standards and generally making the lives of people around him worse.

Like the American right.

British politics are becoming a lot like American politics these days

Well, fascists gonna fasc, regardless of which country they're in.

That's a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it. Yes there are people in the Tories or Reform looking to stoke division via culture wars, but they're not picking up as much traction here as we don't have the religious puritism baked into society that the Septics have.

Also, look at the difference in what happened to Trump and Boris. Boris was found guilty of misleading Parliament and ran away with his tail between his legs to return to journalism seeming accepting his days as an MP are done. Trumps been impeached twice and recently arrested for how he dealt with confidential documents, and is still able to run for president again. Not to mention how people react, we didn't have a group of idiots try and storm Parliament when Boris was outed as leader or forced to resign like the January 6th seige. We aren't that far gone yet.

One of my motivations behind leaving.

It used to be a place for discussion of ideas. Now almost every story about has hundreds of comments, mostly hating on one group of people or another.

That and crypto scammers. That's basically all twitter is now.

Here's a comment I saw here a while ago, but when exoduses occur, the site becomes a shithole of far right ideas. Since the far right tends to stay put for whatever reason. I think they used Reddit predcessor as an example but I'm not totally sure

They’ve boomed on Swedish Twitter for like five years now.

Political extremism is on the rise anyway, Elon just gave them a way to spend $12 and beat the algorithm.

Who’s the near right?

In my country the near right are: The Left(Liberal), Christian People's Party(Conservative family values) and The Right(Capitalist). Middle right is The Progress Party(Liberal-Populist). And far right The Alliance(Nationalist-Populist), have no seats.

Far right all over the world is booming on Elon Musk's Twitter.

What are the odds of Elon running for a Republican office in 10 years?

Close to 0%? He's not a native US citizen and can't run. At least with current laws

That's only for president. Naturalized citizens can run for all other public office positions.

Yeah, you're right about that. I'm not sure if he'd be interested in any political office other than the presidency though

Oh yeah, after the last decade of nominees I forgot being president has 2 actual requirements 😂

Imagine how he must feel wanting to take over the world and a few words of text will forever deny him presidency. If I were him I would lobby a good chunk of my money to change that quietly.

If anythimg removing born in the US as a requirement would make Demolition Man more accurate

Elon can't legally run for office

He can’t be president, but he could hold another office. (Like Arnold Schwarzenegger - was governor of CA, but can’t be president.)

Don't know why you were downvoted. Musk was born in South Africa and is not allowed to run for president

*Saudi Arabia’s Twitter. Who knew a far right authoritarian government would support far right propaganda? I am frankly shocked.