Elon Musk sees Twitter as a political weapon
Beneath the chaos, there's method to his Twitter madness.
By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
Twitter CEO Elon Musk over the weekend reactivated Donald Trump’s previously banned Twitter account, triggering big questions about how the move might reshape Trump's 2024 appeal and how it could affect extremist activity on the platform. But one thing it immediately clarified is the kind of political actor Musk is evolving into and how he envisions Twitter's future.
When Musk first expressed interest in buying Twitter, there were many theories on what motivated him. In light of the fact that he already owned two other influential companies focused on engineering solutions, it was unclear if he was looking to sincerely improve a site he viewed as a video game, or seeking to accumulate social power and boost his businesses' bottom line, or if he was simply an excessively bored, excessively rich man having a laugh. These explanations may still illuminate part of why he acted the way he did. But it's now impossible to ignore the emerging reality that Musk values owning Twitter as a powerful weapon for right-wing activism.
On Friday Musk sent out a 24-hour "poll" to his followers on whether they wanted Trump's account to be reinstated. After a narrow majority of users who responded to the poll in his tweet responded affirmatively, he reactivated Trump's account, and tweeted, “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox populi, Vox dei," using the Latin for “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
It's important to not only observe the outcome of Trump's reactivation, but also how Musk framed it. Remember, in the wake of Jan. 6, Twitter had decided to permanently ban Trump because it believed “the risk of further incitement of violence,” in violation of its policies, was too high. Musk didn't address this criterion of incitement to violence in his public comments about reinstating Trump. Nor was the reinstatement a stand against all permanent bans in the name of free speech — just a couple weeks prior, Musk promised to permanently ban impersonators on Twitter without warning. (Notably, the impersonator ban popped up only after people began impersonating Musk en masse.)
What Musk did was sweep the question of violence under the rug by framing this as a matter of democracy through a "poll." Of course, no scientific survey or referendum can be administered through a spontaneous tweet to one's own followers. Only a small fraction of Twitter's user base voted, and most very well may not have known about its existence. Musk also knew that because of his rapidly growing right-wing fan base — and the slow trickle of liberal-leaning users off of Twitter altogether — it was probable that his poll would get traction on the right and skew toward a “yes” response. So when he said "the people have spoken," what he really meant was "my legions of right-wing fans have swarmed this online poll that I lobbed to them to deliver me a false mandate."
In his presentation of his faux referendum as a win for "the people," Musk appears to be trying on right-wing populism for size. And it's only the latest sign that he views Twitter as a platform for advancing his political agenda as he develops increasingly pronounced far-right views.
Musk's brief tenure at Twitter so far has been marked by extreme chaos: mass firings, ad hoc policies that are often suspended or inconsistently applied, and contradictory messaging about what Twitter does and doesn't stand for. But his behavior looks more intelligible if it is understood as crafting a political project.
more:
http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-trump-twitter-account-republican-rcna57861?cid=eml_mda_20221122&user_email=d60e03639eee858a9d1f722503050fb5c4c275d9e0d473a7e1f6182e26eccb3c
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