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Elon Musk is criticizing European leaders. Can these governments tackle his polarizing influence without facing backlash?

The tech mogul has been using his social media platform X to attack centrist and left-wing governments, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

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Elon Musk standing in front of a microphone with his arms up in a shrug.
Elon Musk has been attacking international centrist and left-wing governments. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

LONDON — Media barons have been a thorn in the side of political leaders in the past. 

But the social media age appears to have opened up the playing field well beyond national boundaries. Elon Musk has been making machine-gun like attacks on international centrist and left-wing governments, with the owner of X (formerly Twitter) firing off fresh posts and retweets at will.

Leaders in France, Norway and Germany have pushed back against the world’s richest man’s interventions into their domestic politics and his endorsement of far-right agendas.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is another administration that has come under heavy fire from Musk, who once proudly called himself British due to having an English grandmother.

Musk has used his platform on X, with his 211 million followers, to accuse Starmer — who was formerly the chief prosector in England and Wales before entering politics — of being “complicit in the rape of Britain.” Musk’s post attacked the former prosecutor’s record on jailing child rapists.

The naturalized U.S. citizen — who was born and raised in South Africa — has backed right-wing demands for a public inquiry into child sexual abuse in the U.K.

Starmer hit back in a thinly-veiled swipe at Musk, attacking those “spreading lies and misinformation.” The issue for the Labour leader is that just moments later, Musk was able to offer his own response to the prime minister, calling Starmer “utterly despicable” on X for refusing a national inquiry. The U.K. government has asked for local authorities to conduct their own investigations into grooming gangs.
Adrian Hillman, an expert in political communications at Northeastern University in London, says media tycoons exercising their political clout “isn’t something new,” pointing to Rupert Murdoch courting political leaders and Silvio Berlusconi going from television mogul to Italian prime minister.

But the difference with Musk, according to the professor, is that he is intentionally trying to create a “cognitive dissonance in people’s minds” and to polarize information in order to gain traction.

Hillman says it appears to make business sense for Musk, who has been tasked by President-elect Donald Trump with co-running a new Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal red tape, to “create issues” by rallying against centrist and left-wing governments.

“To understand what is happening,” continues Hillman, “you need to look at him with these three different hats — the businessman, the politician and the personality.

“And I think over the coming year we are going to see all these things interlinking and recognize that he may act in one way and then a few weeks later is going to act in a different way because it suits him at a particular point in time. 

“This is a man who is now becoming increasingly powerful obviously because of his fiscal strength but also because of his closeness to Trump.

“So all these things come into play when you understand that actually, all this polarization, this lack of agreement, this antagonism — it is playing into his X platform because it is generating more traffic, more interest and makes good business sense. So he can afford to be a polarizing individual, he can afford to be antagonistic, he can afford to change direction (politically) because it suits him economically.”

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Josephine Harmon, an assistant professor of political science, says Musk’s behavior is “very difficult to handle” for national governments, especially given that any move toward tighter regulation of X would be seen as “political vengeance” for the owner’s attacks.

Harmon argues that Musk’s behavior is indicative of debate in the social media age, describing him as a figure who is “very vociferous” in the way he wades into political topics around the world, even if he is “not very informed” on the substance.

Musk is also not exactly espousing popular public opinion, Harmons points out. A YouGov survey in November found that the 53-year-old is unpopular with 64% of the British public.

“He is behaving like somebody who has a social media addiction, as opposed to somebody who is a serious political actor,” Harmon says.

“And yet he owns this media content platform. This is a person with so much power, who is making political alliances, taking a very biased position — but also a position that I think much of the population would find fairly extreme.

“He is a very difficult one to handle, and it will likely be seen as political vengeance if there were action on this issue.”

Harmon argues that Musk is bringing the debate around “free speech versus responsible speech on social media” to the heart of Europe with his constant chirping from the sidelines. 

And her view is that the current row, particularly with French President Emmanuel Macron suggesting Musk has been trying to “intervene directly” in national elections, could force the European Union to clamp down on X being a free-for-all.

“Elon Musk would presumably be against the idea of the state trying to regulate

how social media is used in terms of misinformation, disinformation and offensive speech,” says Harmon.

“This is part of an ongoing debate that is forming before our eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the EU, which has more political purchase than the U.K. right now, took some form of regulatory action on X as a result of some of these behaviors.

“Based on Macron’s comments, as the symbolic leader of the EU right now, I think it is likely that the EU will take a much firmer stance on Musk and X.”

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