In a recent rally in Wisconsin Tim Waltz, the Democratic nominee for Vice-President, called Elon Musk a ‘dip-shit' and mocked the billionaire's appearance with Donald Trump.
Pictures of Musk manically cavorting on stage oblivious to Trump's apparent side-eye, quickly ‘meme'd' their way around the internet. It's easy to ridicule the awkwardness of the world's richest person, but treating Musk like a clown only distracts from the real danger he poses to freedom and democracy.
Watching Musk hand out million-dollar cheques to encourage people to vote for Trump paints the crudest picture of money's power in skewing democratic outcomes, but it is not the most important.
The real danger posed by Musk is his control over the means of information.
His purchase of Twitter in 2022 seemed a commercial misstep, given that it has declined some $US30 billion in value, but it has given him access to an unbelievable amount of user data and the ability to propagate his worldview on his new platform.
The simplest way he does this is by amplifying stories, both factual and false, that benefit his ideology and Trump's election campaign.
Musk, through his own personal account, has had some 3.3 billion views about election security, and more than half of these posts spread false or misleading information.
Musk's power is more systemic than simply retweeting conspiracy theories; it is in the algorithm that sends content to his users shaping the way they perceive the state of American democracy.
The platform itself does the work. There have been multiple reports that X amplifies right-wing views, spreads Trump-favouring conspiracy theories, and left-wing accounts have been arbitrarily booted off the platform.
This reshaping of how people perceive reality through the lens of X/Twitter has been escalated by the apparent amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories by Musk's AI tool, Grok.
All this shapes the discourse and perception of the US election among citizens. He is making the mood music, he is shaping the vibe.
Billionaires influencing politics is nothing new.
The likes of the Koch brothers and George Soros have been providing money for a long time to both sides of the aisle. However, they have preferred to operate as much out of the public eye as possible.
The older generation of oligarchs understand that influence is best when it is invisible. The new generation is not so circumspect.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, blocked the paper's editorial board from endorsing a presidential candidate.
Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, also vetoed the Washington Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris, which has fuelled speculation about a meeting between Trump and executives from Bezos' Blue Origin shortly thereafter.
Soon-Shiong and Bezos defended their choices as trying to be non-partisan, but these crude attempts to block public endorsements received a significant amount of attention, leading to resignations from the editorial boards of both papers and the significant cancellations of subscriptions.
The story's moral is that when the ultra-wealthy start flexing, everyday people start to get worried.
The American people have been here before.
This happened more than a century ago when the then world's richest man and oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, began his bid to create the Rockefeller Foundation. Congress initially stymied the plan. It wanted the foundation to be controlled by an independent board and have a limited lifespan that could only be renewed once.
Why were these politicians worried about Rockefeller using his money to help his fellow citizens? They were worried that a powerful private entity would subvert the state's role as the primary agent of justice by providing public services, and in doing so Americans would begin to degenerate from free citizens to mere subjects dependent on the caprice of plutocrats.
This concern reflects an older way of thinking about liberty that runs to the founding of The United States when colonists took up arms against the tyranny of King George III.
The idea that motivated them is that you are free only when you are not subjected to arbitrary interference by powerful agents, regardless of whether they are privately wealthy or wield political power.
In this election cycle, many have accused Trump of aspiring to tyranny, Well, it appears that like attracts like. Musk's quid pro quo with Trump is that he be allowed to take a chainsaw to government regulations and spending to the tune of some $2 trillion.
This role aligns with Musk's purported libertarianism: less government means more freedom.
However, this will allow him and his Silicon Valley acolytes to draw even more arbitrary power to themselves to do what they want without regard or consequence for how their actions affect us small folk.
The regulations and spending so reviled by the likes of Musk keep him in check; they hold him to account.
Anyone who supports Trump and Musk should remember that freedom for the shark is death to the minnows. And unless you have ten figures in your bank account, you're a minnow.
(The author is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sydney. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for International Policy Studies, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Fellow of the Ethics Centre. This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info)
