Errol Musk and son Elon.
Credit:
Kathy Hutchins – Shutterstock.
Why are so many around the world all het up about what one man says on his X account?
You can barely move for headlines about what Elon Musk is claimed to have said on social media and calls for the tech magnate to stop interfering in the politics of other countries, not least that of the UK government. Keir Starmer concerning himself with what he sees as interference from abroad is one of the most painfully ironic elements of all of this debacle, given that he himself sent one hundred Labour activists to Washington in October 2024 to campaign for Kamala Harris.
Social media users decrying the policies of political leaders in other countries is hardly remarkable stuff, but in the case of Musk, it has got European leaders in such a panic, that it has provoked a flurry of flip-flopping on policies.
No one batted an eyelid when Irish president Michael D. Higgins called Donald Trump an ‘awful gowl’. Nor were there any international incidents when UK politician David Lammy called Trump a ‘Nazi-sympathising sociopath.’ And barely anyone can remember when the French president, Emmanuel Macron, referred to Trump as ‘braindead’.
Reactions to Elon Musk’s social media comments
The knee-jerk reactions to Musk’s social media comments conjure an over-appropriated line from Hamlet: ‘The lady (or politician) doth protest too much, methinks’. The panicked reactions to claims that Trump intends to buy Greenland and Canada, or that Musk wants to buy Liverpool Football Club, have been every bit as over the top as the original quips themselves.
Does no one remember that Trump famously asked if chugging bleach could combat COVID, or that Elon Musk walked into his newly acquired Twitter offices carrying a kitchen sink, preparing for his droll tweet, ‘Let that sink in’? No one in their right mind ever thought bleach would be mandated as a medicine, and Musk’s sink joke was just met with groans and eyes rolling. But now, anything the two say is being taken as statements of US geopolitical policy.
What Elon Musk’s dad said about his son’s tweets
Speaking on LBC radio, Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk urged people to ‘just ignore’ his son and that ‘people don’t have to listen to what he says’. When did one man’s tweet cause this much of a stir? One has to ask, ‘Why? Is there actually something to this?’
Errol Musk went on to say, ‘I mean, he’s just a person. The fact that he has money or something, he’s a billionaire or something to that effect. I mean, hundreds of thousands of people are tweeting the same things or saying the same things as he is. So I wouldn’t just because he’s a person that stands out more that they can knock him or just don’t listen to him, that’s all. I’d say don’t worry about it. Tell him to get lost.’
Social media has become a competitive sport. There’s a race to get the most likes, the most followers, or the most retweets. It’s one of the driving forces behind the popularity of the social media phenomena. However, it seems some in Europe have started taking posts as some sort of act of aggression.
