After helping to get their “bro” Donald Trump elected in the United States, are the tech billionaire “broligarchs” now trying to spread their reactionary revolution to Europe? If their activism in recent weeks is anything to go by, their sights appear set on influencing the European political agenda.
Thus, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and a close adviser to Trump, regularly floods X, the social network he bought in 2022, with posts calling for the resignation of British Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or expressing support for the German far right. Musk has falsely accused Starmer of having covered up paedophile rings when he was Director of Public Prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, and claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany“, before hosting a sympathetic interview lasting over an hour with the party’s leader, Alice Weidel.
Then there is Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, who recently took aim at European regulations on digital services and competition, which he blames for limiting freedom of expression and penalising American companies. Zuckerberg also announced that he had abolished fact-checking on content posted on his platform.
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