Filenews 14 January 2025
The impending inauguration of the US president casts a long shadow. A major source of uncertainty fuelling fears concerns the role of Donald Trump's close associate Elon Musk, the world's richest man.
Musk is even better known than the future president for his reckless speech, especially when it comes to Britain, for which he seems to harbour a strangely violent hostility. He characterizes our country as a "tyrannical police state" and believes that "we are becoming like Stalin", while predicting that "civil war is inevitable".
On both sides of the Atlantic, money has always spoken. For centuries, the rich bought politicians or shares of them. Rupert Murdoch may not bribe our rulers, but he secures the allegiance of many through their fear of his vast media empire. What seems remarkable in 2025 is that the super-rich are emerging from their hiding places, or rather from the gold-plated towers from which they run their companies, to wield power as members of governments, or at least seek to do so.
Musk appears to have discussed a possible donation to Britain's far-right Reform party of 100 million pounds ($125 million), the largest political donation in British history and a blatant attempt to buy an election. That prospect was removed when Musk expressed contempt for Reform leader Nigel Farage. However, the mere idea of such a move caused a stir, fuelling debate about the role of the rich in politics. Musk is the most unpredictable card in the deck that will begin dealing on January 20.
Posing daily alongside the incoming chief, Musk makes no secret of his eagerness to translate his acquisition of billions into power over the destinies of nations, most notably – apparently – the US.
It's impossible to doubt his erratic genius, which is reflected not only in his success at Tesla's automaker but also in the work of SpaceX. However, Musk, unlike Trump, has never put himself on any ballot. He never asked the American people, let alone any other country, for a mandate.
As owner of X, formerly Twitter, Musk has additional authority. Among the motives for supporting Trump was his apparent determination to fight any effort — as has often been suggested by Democrats — that seeks to tear apart the powerful social media giants. Not only X, but also Google, Apple, and Amazon.com have more influence than most governments. Several legal regimes allow them to take advantage of it to avoid significant taxation.
Their bosses were conspicuous by their absence on the political stage – compared to Musk – but their dominance is undeniable. Jeff Bezos was considered, for more than a decade after the Washington Post purchase, an educated, non-interventionist owner. But in the recent U.S. election, he sent shockwaves through the media world by instructing the Post not to endorse any candidate.
Few doubted that his motive was to protect Amazon from a vengeful President Trump. Similarly, after the election a procession of the richest Americans flocked to Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower to kiss the winner's ring, to which many provided campaign funding.
I dug into the dustbin of history to examine whether what is happening is unprecedented. The influence of business on democratic politics is a force that has existed for centuries. Many pundits have decried governments' willingness to stroke the hand of wealth, whether acquired honestly or through fraud. In 1873, British novelist Anthony Trollope wrote a brilliant, angry denunciation of the cult of money, entitled "The Way We Live Now":
A certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty grandiose in its proportions, and rising to high positions, has become at once so uncontrollable and so brilliant that there seems to be reason to fear that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can be made brilliant, will cease to be abhorrent.
If dishonesty can live in a beautiful palace with paintings on all its walls, and precious stones on all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can hold large dinners and enter parliament and deal with millions, then dishonesty is not shameful. And the man who is dishonest in such a way is not a scoundrel.
Every reader of Doris Cairns Goodwin's book "The Bully Pulpit," an excellent 2014 study of the Theodore Roosevelt era, knows the power wielded by the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and other ruthless American monopolists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Such personalities are comparable to today's tycoons. But as president, Teddy Roosevelt showed the courage to shrink the power of the barons, and it is doubtful that any modern American administration will do the same. Trump himself has achieved the hitherto unimaginable feat of turning a presidential bid into a center for profit.
Meanwhile, the old newspaper magnates, notably William Randolph Hurst in the US and Lords Northcliffe, Beaverbuk and Rotherhir in Britain, ruthlessly used their headlines to further political causes – which included fascism, in the case of Rotherir in the 1930s.
Beaverbrooke, when asked why he owns newspapers, replied without a trace of shame: "to make propaganda." It is said that the Canadian power broker never supported a cause that was both honest and successful.
Yet none of that generation, nor the radio and television moguls who succeeded them, had even a tenth of the power that modern social media leaders possess. It is characteristic of many rich people with political ambitions that they use their wealth as a bat with which to beat those who oppose their desires in small or big things.
One of those who tried to distort British politics while he did not have full taxpayer status in the UK because he lived abroad was Sir James Goldsmith, who founded the Referedum party, which ran a pioneering campaign for Britain's exit from Europe.
Goldsmith was a shameless thug. During the 1997 general election campaign, in which, as a newspaper editor, I blasted him and his candidates, his lawyers called me to get a message across: 'Sir James has instructed us to tell you that when the election is over, he intends to destroy you'. Goldsmith did try – unsuccessfully – to fire me.
This brutality makes many of us uncomfortable watching billionaires try to manipulate government levers. It now seems unlikely that Musk will carry out his threat to give Britain's Reform £100 million, but there is no doubt that he will continue to exploit his immense wealth to influence political outcomes. It is in the interest of all our democracies that Musk, and all the rich, get rich and leave governance to professional politicians and voters. Although I don't see it.
BloombergOpinion
