Europe's challenge: Change or chaos

The Objective, January 12, 2025

The influence of Elon Musk, owner of the social network X (the former Twitter) and recently charged by Donald Trump with reducing federal bureaucracy in the United States, has become the linchpin of European politics. His criticisms and stances have already shaken the continental establishment, exposing its weaknesses and fears. The novelty of his appearance, his disruptive style and his independence inspire fear and generate revealing reactions.

Sheltered by Musk's mistakes and exaggerations, as well as his control of the Twitter algorithm, European leaders, instead of tackling the real problems he points out, such as immigration and insecurity, have reacted with defensiveness. They have even proposed banning Twitter, encouraged the European Commission to prosecute it and suggested that its recent interview with the leader of the German AfD could constitute illegal funding. This idea could be used to overturn elections, as happened last December in Romania. For Musk, these attacks in a secondary market such as Europe are nothing new: in recent years, his companies have been the subject of eleven investigations by seven of the major US regulatory bodies, particularly intense the more he supported Trump.

It would be suicidal, but it is likely that our leaders persist in their strategy because, deep down, they live in another era. Their attitude reflects their distance from reality: some may even believe their half-truths. As they showed when setting up the new European Commission, their immobility risks a clash in which even the future of democracy is at risk

After Musk opened the Twitter Files to the public and, again, after Mark Zuckerberg recent unusual admission’s , it became clear that the old media and the major social networks acted as gatekeepers of the official truth. Bowing to pressure from their governments and employees, they censored crucial debates during the pandemic, such as those concerning the origin of the virus or the efficacy of masks and confinements. These platforms blocked issues and silenced voices under the pretext of combating misinformation, while pushing a single narrative that, to a large extent, turned out to be incorrect. Cases such as the corruption of Joe Biden's son or the senility of the president himself have shown how governments, media and networks collaborated to public opinion with a clear partisan bias.

In this context, Musk has been the main disruptive force. His purchase of Twitter and his decision to remove content censorship have brought deliberately hidden issues to the fore, starting with the previous censorship itself. The case of Rotherham, a British town where more than a thousand girls were systematically abused while authorities kept quiet for fear of breaking with the official creed and provoking ethnic tensions, illustrates how Musk pushes leaders to confront uncomfortable truths. Through his platform, he has managed to bring issues and politicians considered taboo back into the public debate, defying the silence and cordons sanitaires imposed by the rulers in power.

In the same vein, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has just acknowledged that his companies (including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) censored content. He now promises to "restore freedom of expression" on these platforms. He has decided to abandon identity politics and follow Musk’s model by firing human fact-checkers, who have been criticized for displaying a notable leftist bias. He will replace this centralized censorship with transparent, decentralized control, based on Twitter-type "community notes," a system that amounts to crowdfunding of ideas, as it is the users themselves who rate and add context to flagged posts. It thus assumes an open and participatory control of the marketplace of ideas and news. On the other hand, the European directive on digital services is wrong when it obliges networks to use specialized censors. At present, no one knows what the socially desirable solution is, so it is premature to establish imperative rules. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether Europe is strong enough to enforce them.

It is not the only mistake. Figures like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer have accused Musk of misinforming and fueling reactionary movements. While some of their criticisms are understandable, the same rulers who have manipulated the public debate have little moral authority to criticize Musk. Moreover, it is striking that they are so concerned about Twitter's content, but avoid addressing the risks posed by TikTok, a network with a larger audience and under Chinese government control. This difference has its logic: under Musk, Twitter puts the power of the rulers at risk, while the threat of TikTok hangs over the future and poses a risk not so much to them as to citizens.

The most serious thing is that the denialist castling European leaders only aggravates the problems. Ignoring them intensifies social discontent and opens the door to more extreme populism. Whether or not we like the way Musk raises these issues or the political positions with which he chooses to align himself, the problems he points out are real and do not disappear with silence; on the contrary, they get worse. Moreover, in the face of events like Rotherham, official silence is more immoral than Musk's exaggeration. It is true that exaggeration can provoke emotional and excessive reactions, but silence condones and, perhaps, perpetuates real crimes.

It is the refusal of elites to address real problems that has created the vacuum that figures like Musk now occupy, channeling popular concerns. True, his fortune enabled him to acquire Twitter, but his influence would be nil without the mass discontent that had previously been silenced

The question today is not whether figures like Musk and Trump represent a danger or a solution, but what their rise reveals about the current state of our democracies and the absenteeism of their leaders. As Niall Ferguson warns, when elites become disconnected from social reality, “republics” often succumb to populism and transform into “empires.” If the elites do not correct their course—as they have begun to do in the United States—the confrontation with figures like Musk and the 212 million who follow him could be the prelude to a shift in that direction.