The Super-Rich have a long history of Backing Fascism and Buying the White House: It is Happening Again
Dan Dinello 11/01/2024
Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Hopping around the rally stage like a drunken monkey, Elon Musk — the world’s most awkward man — demonstrated his subservience to the alpha ape Trump by repeatedly baring his bloated, bone-white belly. Several weeks ago, Musk made a fawning, cringe-worthy spectacle of himself as the primate Cult Leader watched in slack-joweled satisfaction. Shaking Trump’s limp paw with an _expression_ of adoring zealotry and desperately begging for the approval of the MAGA menagerie, the submissive Musk announced his rabid dedication to helping the felon Fascist become president.
Musk — owner of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter/X — had already endorsed the Tyrant and helped fuel his alternative reality, based on lies and fear. Throughout 2024, he amplified Trump’s xenophobia and election paranoia with a steady drumbeat of conspiracy theories and disinformation. Messaging his 202 million followers, Musk stoked panic about Haitian immigrants and spread debunked claims that FEMA failed to help victims of hurricane Helene and spent the money instead on migrants.
Regarding the election, Musk asserted that “if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election” and wove that lie into a false narrative about the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. He posted a vile, toxic, hate video that purports to lay bare the vast conspiracy: Democrats are expediting the conversion of “illegals” to citizens in an attempt to make America a “one-party state.” Musk amplifies radical right propaganda to the masses that might otherwise languish in the darkest corners of the internet.
With his promotion of fascist fabrications, Musk channels Model-T owner and Hitler-apologist Henry Ford. In 1918 plutocrat Ford, who had just lost a Senate race, purchased a newspaper The Dearborn Independent — the 20th century equivalent to Twitter/X. Convinced that victory had been stolen from him, Ford bought a platform for his self-promoting populist message, unfiltered by media skeptics and naysayers.
After purchasing the newspaper, Ford attacked the man who beat him in the Senate election and continuously harangued readers that the election had been stolen. Musk has feebly crawled onto Trump’s 2020 Big Lie bandwagon and is even helping set the stage for Big Lie 2.0 by spreading false claims that voting machines are programmed to rig the election against Trump.
One of the most successful industrialists on the planet, Ford became well-known for his anti-Semitic scapegoating of Jews that echoed Musk’s current scapegoating of immigrants. According to Rachel Maddow in her book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism: “Ford spewed anti-Semitism freely in private tirades among friends, family, business cohorts, newspaper reporters or anybody within earshot. He attributes all evil to Jews or to Jewish Communists.”
For Ford, Jews and Communists were interchangeable. He hated both equally and considered them synonymous. After Trump repeatedly called Kamala Harris a Communist and referred to her as “Comrade Kamala,” Musk amplified the Demagogue on Twitter/X. He posted an AI-generated image of Harris dressed as a “communist dictator,” wearing a red uniform complete with hammer-and-sickle emblazoned hat. Musk captioned the image with the false assertion, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” A troll like Trump, neither Musk nor Trump ever says anything that is amusing, wry or witty.
Finding a new way to scapegoat Communists and “evil Jews,” Ford latched onto a newly translated tome called ”The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The work of Russian fabulists and the Tsars’ secret police who were furious at the Bolsheviks’ overthrow of tsarist aristocracy, the screed purported to be the surreptitious “notes of a top-secret meeting wherein Jewish puppet masters had drawn up their strategy and tactics” to overthrow the regime. As Maddow says, “Ford unleashed a new era of anti-Semitism.”
Beginning in 1920, Ford’s newspaper published 149 articles, a multi-year series on the anti-Semitic hoax “proving” that a cabal of Jews were plotting to enslave the “goyim” and take over the world. The Protocols were debunked over and over. But that didn’t matter to Ford. Like Trump and Musk’s promotion of anti-immigrant lies, Ford’s unbounded hatred was not susceptible to facts.
Ford pressured his dealerships, which were selling the wildly popular Model-T at the time, to distribute his publication. It reached 900,000 copies at its peak in 1925 — the second largest newspaper circulation in the US. Ford also published the noxious series in book form, titled The International Jew. It ran to four volumes and contributed to the deaths of millions.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler — one of Trump’s favorite dictators according to his former chief of staff — lifted ideas, stereotypes, and whole passages from Ford’s publications. Hitler extolled Ford by name, singling out the American automobile baron for his steadfast courage in the face of assault by strikers or Communists or bankers, all of whom he asserted were Jews.
When Ford mulled running for president in 1923, Hitler wanted to deploy “some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections.” Hitler kept a large framed portrait of Ford in his office and told a reporter, “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.” Returning the adulation, Ford — who did extensive business in the Third Reich — was obsessed with Hitler and Nazism and throughout his life kept company with Nazi sympathizers and devout Hitlerites including Fritz Kuhn, the Nazi leader of the German American Bund.
Kuhn, who wanted to be the American Hitler prior to Trump, helped organize the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden that championed Nazi ideals camouflaged as pro-American rhetoric. It presaged Trump’s recent MSG MAGA rally — an orgy of fascism, misogyny, racism, and grievances. The MAGA retribution list included Blacks, Latinos, Jews, women, and liberals and anyone who would even consider voting for Kamala Harris. To MAGA, all that matters is gaining power and then using it to crush anyone who would stand in their way. At the rally, Musk said nothing of consequence, but wore a black hat in which the MAGA lettering resembled the Nazi font Fraktur.
Like Ford did for Hitler, Musk has become a mouthpiece for Trump, turning Twitter/X into the 21st century version of The Dearborn Independent — one that scapegoats immigrants, Muslims, and, more quietly, Jews. Musk praised the pernicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish communities are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “flooding” into the country to replace white people. He further asserted that George Soros “appears to want nothing less than the destruction of western civilization.”
Musk has also re-instated Twitter/X accounts that are pro-Hitler Holocaust deniers, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis with a predictable surge in anti-Semitism, racism, and homophobia, according to reports in Media Matters. He allowed Nazis like Andrew Anglin and Nick Fuentes back on his Website along with Qanon supporter, pardoned-by-Trump criminal, and violence promoter Mike Flynn. The Twitter/X algorithm blocks left liberal views and clearly favors MAGA content, with the blatant goal of breeding extremism and radicalizing people against their own government — and against each other.
To help buy Twitter/X, Musk received funding from a Saudi conglomerate, the cryptocurrency firm Binance, entities associated with the rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs — indicted recently for sex trafficking — and fellow apartheid veteran and PayPal Mafia associate Peter Thiel, who controls JD Vance. United in their formative white supremacist experience in South Africa, Musk and Thiel — in backing a racist for president, expressing xenophobic views, and opposing a Black presidential candidate — show that the old white South African mindset lives on in MAGA. Musk, like Ford, chooses to use the power gained through the labor of others to persecute and dehumanize those they consider lesser.
Musk, however, is going beyond Ford in his parasitical attachment to Trump and his manic pursuit of political power. The MAGA billionaire founded America PAC earlier this year so he and his like-minded, ultra-rich MAGA pals could dump tens of millions of their own wealth into registering and persuading voters on behalf of the criminal candidate.
“If the Blind Lead the Blind . . ,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024
Musk craves a techno-fascist fantasy of ultimate power. As a foreign-born South African, Musk cannot run for president, according to the Constitution — assuming that still matters. By attaching himself to Trump like a leech, he hopes to not only enrich himself but also seize power in the United States. The wannabe Dictator has explicitly invited Musk into the government as a social engineer to redesign America.
To reach that objective, Musk — a messianic narcissist — is pouring tons of personal attention and financial resources into the campaign. He has relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee Trump’s ground game there. Last week, he rehashed the refuted assertion that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the vote count in 2020, a falsehood that resulted in a $787.5 million settlement paid by Fox News. “We should not allow voting machines of any kind,” he said in Pittsburgh. If Trump wins Pennsylvania and the presidency, it will be by a slight margin that could be attributed to Musk. He can boast that he was the critical variable in this success.
In another desperate attempt to elect the Insurrectionist and gain the approval of the MAGA pack, the socially inept Musk hosts his own rallies that turn into bacchanals of greed. In one instance, Musk stood stiffly before a huge US flag and told an assembled crowd that he loved them while promising one of them a million dollars. Like the audience at a giveaway gameshow, they howled in ravenous anticipation and chanted Musk’s name. He glowed amidst their purchased admiration.
“This kind of energy lights a fire in my soul,” Musk said, as he made one of the crowd a millionaire and pledged to do that daily. His love and the million-dollar-handouts were conditioned on their signing a petition tied to his PAC, which is devoted to returning the Madman to the White House. The spectacle was bizarre and potentially illegal — akin to buying votes. But no one, not least Musk himself, cared in the slightest.
Musk’s public adoration of the Bigot begins with his avaricious understanding of his own economic interests. A corporate welfare bum, he has turned the government into a spectacular money gusher. Tesla flourishes on tax credits for electric cars as well as subsidies for its charging stations. SpaceX heavily depends on contracts with the Department of Defense while taking over key roles previously handled by NASA. Both companies have won $15 billion in federal contracts. But that’s just the beginning. SpaceX is designing a slew of new products with “national security customers in mind.”
While railing against alleged government giveaways to migrants, Musk himself has only begun to tap the financial benefits of the government. Trump will fulfill his ambitions. He rewards loyalists, whether they are foreign leaders who praise him, former opponents who genuflect before him, or supplicants who spend money at his resorts and hotels. In office, Trump gave some of his donors highly unusual and potent roles in government, despite conflicts of interest. The king of corruption, Trump knows that his party or even the Supreme Court will never punish him for his lawless transgressions.
Trump makes it easy to imagine how the Tesla car-baron will exploit this deal with the Devil. When Trump brags that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, he is pledging to bestow SpaceX with a gargantuan amount of money. He is talking about making the world’s richest man even richer.
Trump already announced that he will put Musk in charge of a murky new government-efficiency position — the “secretary of cost-cutting.” Hating regulation, Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing state functions to self-interested hustlers and his technologist pals. Musk would also reap one of the largest personalized tax breaks in American history — a tax benefit available to government employees. Further, by targeting regulators of his own companies, conflict of interest will be institutionalized as the normal method by which Musk does government business.
Project 2025 involves the dismantling of the federal government — eliminating entire agencies while sweeping out swaths of politically neutral civil servants. This kind of transformative change suits Musk’s grandiose dreams of world domination and his techno-authoritarian ideology. An exaltation of the narcissism encoded in the Silicon Valley Tech Bro’s pursuit of monopoly is the belief that concentrating power in the hands of self-described geniuses is the most desirable social organization. Musk agrees with his accomplice Pete Thiel, “Competition is for losers.” In this worldview, democratic restraints on absolute power must be eradicated as hindrances to “progress.”
While Henry Ford hung out with fascists back in the 1920s and 30s, and published anti-Semitic bilge, Musk has wealth and access to power that Ford could only dream of. A sniveling sidekick to the Despot who wants generals ”like Hitler had,” the raving reactionary Musk — out of rapacious greed — is doing everything in his power to get that maniac elected.
At Tesla, Musk crowned himself “technoking.” Following Trump’s example of malfeasance, Musk will not divest himself from his businesses — not even his social-media company. In a dictatorial regime of unchecked power, he would not need to fear congressional oversight. The risk posed by Musk running parts of the government will not be on the minds of most Americans voting in the election, given the myriad other potential horrors already promised by the delusional Authoritarian. Yet if Americans elect the Fascist or the Fascist steals the election and the ghastly Trump nightmare becomes real, Musk will be one of its hideous monsters — a vampire squid feeding on what remains of America’s lifeblood.