Musk’s conservatism rises from a profit motive at best and a contrarian need for hero worship at worst. (File)
Elon Musk’s outright support of Donald Trump at recent rallies has come as a shock for many, given the liberal tag usually applied to Silicon Valley. But is this shift truly so shocking? While commenters have most often described him as a libertarian, Musk himself has preferred the term centrist/“politically moderate”. So why is his political shift to conservatism considered a radical departure? The surprise over this move can be attributed to three factors.
The first is his glorification as a futuristic techno-optimist and maverick, labels that have served to conceal his more “eccentric” personal beliefs. Second, despite implicit ideological leanings to the Right, he has historically supported Democratic candidates — Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and even Joe Biden in 2020. The third is the intensity of his pivot and the financial capital that he has invested in the Right, with his opposition to the “woke” Left manifesting as support for Dark MAGA — a fringe movement advocating for a vengeful and dystopian return of Trumpism. While in some ways this might seem like a radical shift, the reality is much more banal. Musk’s conservatism rises from a profit motive at best and a contrarian need for hero worship at worst.
Hero for hire
Musk’s techno-optimism has often served to hide his more problematic behaviours, such as union busting, advocacy of gun rights, misogyny, and anti-immigration positioning. However, it was his disruption of the auto industry with Tesla that popularised him as an Iron Man-esque saviour of mankind. By heading Tesla, a seemingly sustainable alternative to a gas-guzzling auto industry, Musk became the poster boy for people who believed that technological solutions could solve the systemic problems faced by humanity without reducing profit margins. Adding to this aspirational ideal was Musk’s futuristic vision of multiplanetary existence through SpaceX. The latest claim in Musk’s planetary colonialism timeline is the transportation of one million humans to Mars within the next two decades, an audacious claim made at a point when Starship has had only five test flights (two of which ended in fiery explosions). Claims like this have Musk’s fanbase convinced that he is the hero to lead humanity to a future built on a terraformed Mars. This symbolic status makes it easy to ignore the profit-seeking that fuels his decision-making as a corporate executive on Earth.
Even if one were to accept his entrepreneurial genius, it is precisely within the structures of this success (and the profit motive fuelling it) that Musk’s conservatism makes sense. The pandemic was one of the more obvious instances that highlighted Musk’s preference for conspiratorial propaganda, with his dismissal of the pandemic’s severity, willful ignorance of lockdown mandates, platforming of misinformation and attempts to belligerently contest public health mandates. And all of this, just to keep the lights on at Tesla. The saviour was well aware of how much maintaining a business in a blue state during a crisis was costing him. Since then, Musk has gradually moved all his businesses from California to Texas, to pay lower taxes and escape pesky regulations. These practices, while not illegal, should certainly raise questions about his altruistic humanism.
Twittersphere: Platforming the fringes
What has also been shocking about Musk’s pivot to the Republican Party is the ideological and financial intensity of the shift. Ideologically, ever since he acquired X (Twitter), Musk has been featuring and boosting fringe rhetoric on the platform by diluting content moderation policies in the name of free speech and reinstating accounts that had been de-platformed for misinformation and hate speech. Twitter was never a bastion of objective news by any measure. But Musk’s overhauling of the legacy verification system in favour of a subscription model added to the crisis with the mushrooming of fake accounts. Musk has also been accused of using the algorithm to boost his own posts, essentially treating the platform like a megaphone for his bizarre self-victimising posts. In a moment of brief levity, when Musk put out a poll in 2022 asking if he should step down as the CEO of X, a majority of disgruntled users of the platform voted yes to oust the messiah.
Accompanied by this ideological shift are the material politics of Musk’s conservative swing, given that he has been pumping lots of money into Trump’s campaign. While his funding of conservative causes can be traced back to 2022 when he spent $50 million on anti-immigrant and anti-transgender ads by Citizens for Sanity, the quantum of financial support has increased significantly this year. This year, he donated almost $75 million to America PAC, the super Political Action Committee that he created to support Donald Trump. He has also committed to giving away $1million a day to voters who sign his PAC to support the First Amendment (freedom of speech) and Second Amendment (the right to bear arms). Additionally, he has also offered between $47-$100 on X for signing the petition and referring it to other people (signatories of the petition need to be registered voters). This move raised eyebrows, given its proximity to financially incentivising people to vote a certain way. Additionally, America PAC has targeted this initiative in six swing states — Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina — raising the stakes enough that even former Republican officials have raised concerns regarding its legality.
Musk’s conservatism, in many ways, is par for the course within the logic of the American aspirational ideal. Tech entrepreneurs are seen as unconventional and “disruptors”, which would explain their portrayal as liberal, but once inside the system, the highest profit margins come from the tax breaks that the conservatives provide. Political thinkers have often critiqued modernism as harbouring within it the seeds of totalitarianism when left unchecked. In a similar vein, it might be good to keep a critical eye on techno-optimists to prevent a descent into interplanetary fascism. Perhaps we should prioritise those putting out fires on this planet before unthinkingly jumping with self-styled messiahs on a starship to Mars.
The writer is an independent researcher and a former analyst for the cyber programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
