Putting the tech billionaire in the same category as China and Russia does a disservice to attempts to thwart actual election meddling
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It’s getting hard to take the once-great European powers seriously when their leaders can’t even handle a foreign celebrity commenting on their political affairs.
On Monday, the leaders of France, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom made separate, yet near simultaneous statements denouncing Elon Musk for tweeting about European politics.
Britain’s Keir Starmer accused the tech billionaire of “spreading lies and misinformation,” after Musk said the prime minister was “complicit in the rape of Britain” for failing to do more to prevent child sex abuse when he served as director of public prosecutions.
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Liberal Democrats Leader Ed Davey went as far as to suggest that the government should summon the American ambassador and “make it clear both to the current White House and the president-elect that anyone who is working in a senior level in any American government needs to be very careful about how they comment on U.K. affairs.”
Except Musk is not a senior government official. He’s been tasked by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory commission with no real power that doesn’t actually exist yet.
French President Emmanuel Macron also criticized Musk’s newfound interest in continental affairs, accusing him of supporting “an international reactionary movement,” during a speech on foreign policy.
“Who could have imagined, 10 years ago, that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would intervene directly in elections, including in Germany?” said Macron, referring to Musk’s endorsement of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in that country’s upcoming election.
A German government spokesperson similarly accused Musk of “trying to influence the federal election.” And the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, reportedly launched an investigation into whether Musk’s Thursday interview with AfD Leader Alice Weidel, which was live-streamed on Twitter, could be considered an illegal political donation.
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It’s incredible how low a bar these politicians have for what constitutes “electoral interference.”
Macron, for example, had no problem receiving an endorsement from former U.S. president Barack Obama in 2017. He even posted a recording of a private telephone conversation he had with the ex-president, and then retweeted Obama’s official endorsement with the message, “Hope is on the move. Thank you Barack Obama.”
So, to be clear, when an American says nice things about Macron, it’s cause for celebration; when a Yank says something good about his political opponents, it’s election interference.
As bad as this sounds, the implications of this moral panic on the part of European elites extends far beyond political hypocrisy.
Some politicians have been calling for the full weight of the European Union’s byzantine bureaucracy to be brought down on Musk for daring to speak his mind.
Damian Boeselager, a German member of the European Parliament, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot both called on the European Commission (EC) to investigate and crack down on Musk’s alleged “interference” in European elections.
The EC then assigned a team of three staff members to monitor Musk’s interview with Weidel, to ensure it didn’t violate the EU’s Digital Services Act, which regulates social media companies.
If a political opinion can be considered election interference and a podcast is deemed an illegal campaign contribution, there’s no reason that such a precedent couldn’t be used in the future to censor traditional media platforms.
Alas, is there really that big a difference between Weidel sitting down for a Twitter conversation with Musk and her recent television interview with Bloomberg journalist Oliver Crook? Can we make a distinction between Musk writing an op-ed in a German paper advocating for the AfD and a hack Canadian newspaper endorsing Kamala Harris in the last U.S. election?
Is it just that Musk has Scrooge McDuck money while the rest of us in the media are frantically searching for recipes to mask the taste of Spam? Or do they simply not like that he owns a social media company (boo!) and is friends with Donald Trump (boo, hiss!)?
Either way, attempting to pass off some guy’s political opinions — regardless of how well he’s managed to hack the Twitter algorithm to feed users a constant stream of his inner thoughts — as electoral interference does a disservice to attempts to crack down on actual election meddling on the part of adversaries like China and Russia.
This is an issue Canadians have become far too familiar with, which perhaps explains the muted reaction in this country to Musk’s social media attacks against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and praise for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre compared to our overly sensitive cousins on the other side of the pond.
Canadians know that calling Trudeau an “insufferable tool” (who among us hasn’t in recent months?) is a lot different than sending a bus full of international students to help elect a China-friendly candidate in a Liberal nomination race. And I would hope that our politicians know we are smart enough to think for ourselves.
After all, when European leaders say that Musk’s tweets amount to election interference, what they’re really saying is that their citizens are not smart enough to think critically and make their own decisions at the ballot box. One day Elon Musk takes an interest in your country, the next thing you know everyone’s driving Teslas and voting for populists.
Europeans should be outraged at the mere suggestion — which, ironically, may be enough to send politicians like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz packing.
National Post
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