Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

The Guardian
Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

The presidential election is three months away. What if the billionaire contests the result? What if he decides democracy is over-rated?



Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.

Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation.

But still, vast swathes of the American population became convinced the vote had been stolen and a violent mob almost pulled off a coup. Fast forward four years, and we’re now in a very different – and significantly worse – place.

Because while Kamala Harris is enjoying her hot girl summer and liberal America is sighing with relief, it’s to Britain that the US needs to look. To rioters in the streets and burning cars and contagious, uncontained racism spreading like wildfire across multiple platforms. To lies amplified and spread by algorithms long before the facts have been reported, laundered and whitewashed by politicians and professional media grifters.

/snip

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Deport Musk.

[Linda ladeewolf]

2. Deport Musk!

I couldn’t agree more, and Theil and Murdoch.

[GB_RN]

5. There Was An Article About Thiel, Yesterday.

The walking contradiction (a gay immigrant who supports the Reichwingers) that is that fascist, announced he is contemplating leaving the US.
My thoughts: Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out; you can’t leave fast enough; and good fucking riddance.

[orthoclad]

3. Deport! He was an illegal immigrant,

violating the terms of his student visa.

Oh, I forgot - the law only applies to poor people. Bond villains make their own laws.

[erronis]

4. This is a very important post and article in The Observer (Guardian)

The streets are – for now – quiet. The violence has been crushed. But this is Britain, where extremist political violence is someone carrying a brick and throwing a chair leg. In America, there aren’t just automatic weapons and rights to openly carry firearms, there are actual militias. Regardless of how well Harris is doing in the polls, America is facing a singularly dangerous moment, whoever wins the election.

Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.

In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.

He got away with it. And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences, you should be. If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.

It still surprises me that so many people continue to use his platform without understanding the dangers.

[orthoclad]

6. Old habits are hard to break,

as the song goes.

But we ABSOLUTELY need to break the hold that MuX has on us.

[orthoclad]

7. "extraordinary supranational power"

of money.

The global oligarchy has no country, only their chattel fiefdoms. They have occasional gang fights, but they'll circle the wagons against attacks from the serfs.

[NoMoreRepugs]

8. Why do I have to read this in the Guardian? Where are u U.S. MSM?

[orthoclad]

14. Guess who owns them?

A few billionaires who are thirsty for tax breaks.

All these decades since Reagan we've gone to sleep and let the oileygarchs buy up the press. "Social" media was one of their tools. Who needs a local paper when twitter gives us instant news?

[AllaN01Bear]

9. deport musk

[erronis]

10. If interested, see this thread on EmptyWheel about who funded Musk's take-over of the shitter

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/08/17/2024-remains-an-unpredictable-race-six-things-predictable-things-that-could-still-upend-it/#comment-1066423

The rest of Marcy's post on what might go wrong in this upcoming election is a great read also.

[orthoclad]

18. the oileygarchy, in other words

Musk's schtick with e-cars is to collect federal energy credits to sell to makers of fossil bloatmobiles, and then double-dip by collecting the 30% tax break by overcharging for his shoddy cars.

Tesla is a federal subsidy business, not a car biz, which explains his poor QAQC.

[Clouds Passing]

11. Why has Britain not indicted this criminal?

[dalton99a]

12. POS is a traitor who should be denaturalized and deported

[GiqueCee]

13. I've said this before...

... but it bears repeating: These men have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes, but too much is never enough; they want all of yours, too.
I remember someone asking Mick Jagger why he only dates gorgeous fashion models. His response: "Because I can."
If you were to ask Musk, or any of the other greedy sociopaths with nine or more zeroes in their net worth, why they interfere in politics, and by extension, the lives of ordinary people, they would give you the same answer: "Because I can."
These men – and they are mostly men – have diseased minds consumed with greed, pathological selfishness, and a horrifically distorted view of their own self-importance.
They would destroy the world just so they could rule over the ashes, and that is exactly what they are doing. If they are not brought under control, their actions will result in the end of life on Earth. That is not hyperbole for effect, a mass extinction event is already underway.
One unspeakable act of corporate evil illustrates the stark reality of our plight: Honey bees are, indisputably, the most important creatures in the natural world. The vast majority of human agriculture is dependent on them to pollinate the foods we eat, and the foods all animals eat.
Bayer, and its wholly owned subsidiary, Monsanto, manufactures neonicotinoids, commonly used, in this country, anyway, to control pests. Europe has banned its use. But, with the help of irredeemably corrupt Republicans in Congress, Bayer has thwarted efforts to ban it here in the US.
Why ban it, you ask? Because it kills honey bees... by the billions. Many of the companies that have, for decades, traveled the world's breadbasket, the American Midwest, with their hives of honey bees during the growing season have been bankrupted by the ruthless disregard of Bayer, whose motto should be, Our Profits Are More important Than Your Lives.
During the days when marauding hordes of Monsanto's litigious lawyers descended on farmers who didn't even use their products, but had them wafted over their crops from neighboring farms, Monsanto's CEO at the time, Hugh Grant (not the actor), reportedly said, "No food will be grown that we do not own." Such is the magnitude of their greed. Sauron would envy their malice.
So, do you see where this is going? No bees, no agriculture. No agriculture, no civilization. No civilization, no more Human Race. And it all goes back to the insane avarice of the oligarchs and their corporations. They. Are. Monsters.

Have a nice day.

[dalton99a]

15. +1. Basically they want the ultimate power: to decide who lives and dies

and like Nero and Caligula, they want you to suffer for their entertainment and amusement

The French used to have a simple mechanical solution to the problem of excessive wealth and power

[GiqueCee]

17. Now watch one of 'em...

... patent the guillotine and then sue the living shit out of any poor fool that even draws one.

[Mossfern]

16. If I could

I would rec this a million times.
The truth of this however, leaves me with unmitigated sorrow.