The billionaire owner of X, who is set to join the incoming Trump administration, has been investing his energy in attacks on leaders on this side of the Atlantic, in conspiracy theories, and, above all, in support for the far right, and Europe is worried. For Scholz, “you don’t feed the trolls,” but for Macron, “you can’t just sit back and do nothing”
“Macron is saying: ‘we can’t just sit back and do nothing'”
“I think there are three reasons why Macron decided to respond publicly to Musk, the first being the question of elections in France,” Julien Hoez, geopolitics analyst and editor of The French Dispatch, tells CNN. “There will probably actually be general elections if [French] governments keep falling, and on top of the major presidential elections we’re going to have in 2027, all of this behaviour has, or threatens to have, a real impact.”
While a return to the polls in France remains uncertain for now, that isn’t the case for a number of other EU member states with important elections scheduled this year, including Germany, which saw its Bundestag elections brought forward to 23 February after the collapse of the Scholz-led coalition. “And if Scholz wants to sit back and not feed the troll, good for him, that was his style of governing and it’s what’s going to determine his defeat in the next election,” Hoez argues. “But something has to be done. France remains one of the largest member states and, looking at reality, is something like Europe’s guarantor at the moment, and seeing Musk basically saying the British prime minister protects child molesters, and attacking other European leaders, including the German chancellor, Macron felt he had to do something.”
Even more than the spread of conspiracy theories, Europe seems concerned about the potential impact of the magnate’s support for the European far right on the various elections set to shape the continent. This Thursday, the billionaire has a live debate scheduled on X with AfD leader Alice Weidel, and the European Commission has already warned it will be watching the event closely, as part of its ongoing investigation into the social network over potential violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), passed two years ago to “prevent illegal and harmful online activity and the spread of disinformation.”
“Nothing in the DSA prohibits any platform from hosting a livestream or expressing personal opinions,” a spokesperson for the EU executive said on Tuesday. “What is very clear, and what we will be examining as part of the current proceedings, is whether the platform operates within the DSA’s legal limits and whether it has assessed the risks” of the live chat with Weidel.
“In a democracy we can’t just sit back and do nothing, especially with so many important elections this year, in Romania, where there has already been interference from Russia, in the Czech Republic, in Poland, in Croatia…” Julien Hoez notes. “When we have a billionaire spreading fake news and propaganda created by a hostile state like Russia, using it to destabilise democracies, we can’t just sit back and do nothing. That’s Macron’s position.”
“Europe is different from the US” — and is that enough? “There is no way to know for now”
It is difficult to make predictions about what awaits Europe with Trump back at the helm of the US, at a time when the future President continues to make several worrying threats, the most recent being to take the Danish autonomous region of Greenland, which yesterday led the head of France’s diplomacy to follow Macron’s example and speak for all of Europe, when he assured that the EU will never allow such annexation.
It is also difficult to try to anticipate what role Elon Musk will play as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, the new arm of government responsible for slimming federal spending, under a man who spent more than $250 million on Trump’s election campaign and who has seen X’s value fall by about 70% since he acquired the former Twitter for €44 billion at the end of 2022.
“It will all depend on the relationship between Musk and Trump, and that’s a big unknown, but as we saw two weeks ago with the discussions about migrants and visas, Musk is already in conflict with most members of Trump’s team,” Julien Hoez points out. “We are going to see strange and embarrassing situations, but for now Musk will continue to pressure Trump and continues to control one of the largest social networks in the world, which although it is hemorrhaging users, ultimately still gives him a lot of control over public discourse.”
It’s in this context that the EU faces a challenge and, in the French analyst’s words, a problem, given that the Commission president is “trying to avoid” transatlantic wars. At a time when the far right is on the verge of taking power in Austria and is on track for major electoral wins in a number of other countries, in the same week that Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, announced the end of its fact-checking tool, another setback in the fight against disinformation, Ursula von der Leyen “has no one in power who can fight the trolls,” and that’s also why “Macron decided to take on this fight,” Julien Hoez points out, because “you can’t have an entire continent being run over by tantrum-throwing children who are progressively losing touch with reality.”
Echoing the caveat made by the European executive’s spokesperson this week, the editor of The French Dispatch doesn’t dispute anyone’s right to their own point of view, including far-right supporters. “The big problem, as the Commission has pointed out, is that Musk has an outsized reach on his side, has the ability to manipulate content to fit his own views, and uses his platform to boost the far right at everyone else’s expense.”
That’s exactly what a Financial Times investigation concluded this week, finding that, even when based on conspiracy theories, Musk’s tweets have already pushed the alleged grooming gang scandal to the top of the UK’s political priorities. The impact of his online actions on politics is notable, including among the billionaire’s former allies, take the case of Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, who met with Musk at Mar-a-Lago in December and this week found himself in the Tesla owner’s crosshairs after criticising his support for Robinson, with Musk saying Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the British far right and should be replaced.
And this isn’t confined to the digital sphere. Last week, in a preview of the insults he has since directed at European leaders on his social network, the magnate signed a controversial opinion piece in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag formally endorsing the AfD ahead of February’s federal elections, saying that a party whose leader “has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka” cannot be considered extremist, a week after declaring on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.”
The Scholz government accused him at the time of trying to influence the country’s election, but downplayed the potential impact of his actions on voters, with a chancellery spokesperson saying that “normal people, sensible people, decent people are the overwhelming majority in this country,” adding: “We are acting as if Mr Musk’s statements on Twitter could sway a country of 84 million people with untruths, half-truths or opinions, but that simply isn’t the case.”
For Julien Hoez, that statement may be premature, even if it remains a possibility. “This support from Musk could either increase or decrease the appeal of the far right in the EU, there’s no way to know for now. What we do know, though, is that Europe is a different place from the US, and what we also know is that in the UK, not even Farage agrees with him, and the vast majority of people don’t like Musk, which limits his ability to influence British voters. I’d say the same could apply to the rest of Europe, including Germany, for better or worse, people know what the AfD is, they don’t need Musk to tell them.”