Lessons On Power From Muskian Twitter

Some brief observations on the unfolding power dynamics over on the Bird-App

An interesting aspect of the ongoing and seemingly never-ending drama emanating from the ‘‘Bird-app’’ is that it allows us the chance to see elitist power plays and manoeuvres in real-time, rather than in old books or in the abstract. Elon Musk’s capture of an institution of obviously great importance to the regime has been a central point of discourse across the West for the last year.

Naturally, there are questions surrounding Musk himself and the degree to which he is another layer of containment or simply a flamboyant Gen Xer who wants to return to a less woke, less suffocatingly conformist age. My innate dread of intrusive technology and centralized digital systems makes me wince every time I hear of Musk’s planned ‘‘Everything App’’ which would see many people completely dependent on King Elon’s platform, for pretty much, well, everything.

Regardless of wider speculation of where Musk fits into the overarching drive toward transhumanism and elite skulduggery, I cannot help but notice how remarkably well ‘‘Elite Theory’’ principles map onto Musk’s Twitter takeover — so much so that I thought I’d list some of them here along with my own observations.

Rival Elite

The most obvious point to make from the start is that the richest man on earth, who has extensive connections to the American deep-state and military-industrial complex, is hardly a rank outsider. It is a trite, but important point to restate that not for the first time in recent history, a billionaire who wants to stir the pot and troll his peers shakes the system up more than ‘‘people power’’ or protests.

Clear Them Out

The difference between Musk’s approach to wielding power and Donald Trump’s is that Elon Musk ‘‘cleared them out’’ from day one, reducing the employees at Twitter by 80% (!). Naturally, the incentive to remove dead weight from a private corporation is usually seen as a financial necessity. However, Musk was also removing a certain type of employee, namely, those who would oppose him on ideological grounds. Consider the problems Musk would face in creating a relatively free speech platform if the employees had remained in situ, wilfully undermining and dragging their feet whenever faced with implementing a new policy, and you have Donald Trump’s dilemma upon becoming the U.S. President.

To be fair to Trump, replacing significant chunks of the U.S. government’s sprawling bureaucracy is not quite as simple as firing staff from a Big tech company. Cut too deep and the lights go out, payments to people cease, and the government begins no longer to function. Unlike Trump, Musk came ready and prepared with a cadre of super nerds from elsewhere in his tech-business empire. From the perspective of the yoga practising feminists, minorities, transexuals and intersectional social justice types who ran Twitter’s day-to-day functioning previously, Elon Musk was perhaps the worst person to make a move on the corporation because they had no counter-leverage to deploy.

Vox Populi

Having consolidated his power within Twitter via a purge, Musk then began ruling as something resembling a king. However, while the internal enemies had been dealt with, external enemies remained, indeed, they’d grown exponentially in number. I’ve discussed at length in a previous essay the possibility of Classical Liberalism forming an ideological basis of a future ruling elite, an ideology that Musk ostensibly shares. It is enough here to simply state that, whether sincerely believed or not, Classical Liberalism is being used by Musk as a means by which to create a significant base of support among the users of Twitter itself.

The declaration of an ‘‘amnesty’’ to people such as myself garners Musk a significant degree of goodwill, and at the same time creates what is essentially a Jouvenelian client group. If, for example, Hope Not Hate or the ADL were allowed to be more influential in Twitter’s moderation policies, I would be banned from the site once again. It is therefore in my own interest to support Musk and adhere to his rules.

Like Liberal Democracy more generally, Musk legitimates his own power by denying it. Elon Musk is the supreme ruler of Twitter, however, by claiming to merely act in the interest of the general population he allows himself to be the arbiter of what is and what is not that will. For example, the public will make Musk lose a poll on whether he should step down as CEO, thereafter he simply named his own dog as his successor and carried on as normal. The caper is illustrative because it reveals that Musk does not think of the ‘‘public will’’ as encompassing his enemies. His friends, which is to say the clients of his power such as me, constitute the public will, not a CNN journalist.

The New High-Low vs Middle

Having consolidated his power and a client group and base of support, Musk is now ready to engage his enemies. First, however, we must define who those enemies are. And that isn’t difficult to do because we simply have to look at who lost degrees of power via Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Primarily, but not exclusively, it is the institutions and media outlets responsible for the production of ‘‘truth’’ within the West, which they had a nigh-on monopoly over.

Twitter acted as a conduit for elite-driven narratives to be absorbed and then further promoted by the lower-level minions of Power. Institutions from CNN, and BBC all the way down to social media influencers such as Vaush. Power’s own client groups were predicated on political correctness and favoured groups. These client groups would then be used by Power against the middle, or normal, usually white, demographic in the middle. Hence, high-low vs middle.

The new dynamics on Twitter are interesting because we see this all-pervasive and hegemonic super-structure which rules the West falter and stumble somewhat. In what has become something of a populist Petri dish, the media outlets and ruling ‘‘woke’’ ideology has entered the middle of the above infographic, with Elon Musk being at the top and the ‘‘Populi’’ agitating from the bottom.

Thus, from above, Musk uses the populist sentiment of his client groups against his rivals now demoted to the middle.

Another way to look at this would be King Elon using the peasantry to undermine greedy and pompous aristocrats who scheme against him.

Nevertheless, as fun and interesting as all of this is, there’s also another lesson from Bertrand De Jouvenel — power seeks always to grow and extend itself. As somebody who regards Substack as his favourite platform, I was paying close attention recently when Twitter shuttered its links because of what appeared to be a potential bone of contention between the two platforms. What’s more, Twitter’s ‘‘Spaces’’ will have implications for streamers and further down the road, we hear talk about Twitter installing payment processors and, well, everything.

It may well be that Elon’s digital kingdom is about to become an empire, and that could be a problem….