Using social media platforms can lead to self-radicalization. Apparently, so can owning one.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
The internet, a (largely) unregulated cesspool of propaganda and misinformation, has made it easy for just about anybody to become radicalized. Even worse, the social media companies that host this “information” are encouraging impressionable individuals to wade right into that cesspool and go deeper and deeper until many of them can no longer get out.
The classic example may be the one of Western, secular Muslims stumbling across a YouTube video and descending on a downward spiral that ends with them joining ISIS. But self-radicalization isn’t a problem that is limited to a specific group of people or an ideology.
No matter which philosophy or belief system you adhere to, an extreme version of it is now just a few clicks away… and some of those who tumble down that rabbit’s hole often become a danger to themselves and others.
Who and why requires urgent study.
Why do some environmentalists turn into “activists” who believe that destroying priceless art is the way to get attention? Why can millions of people watch the news from Gaza and feel sympathetic toward the plight of the Palestinians, but a handful of them will then want to fight for Hamas? What compelled some Republicans to believe the Big Lie so much that they took up arms to storm Congress?
We have to understand the answers to these questions because, given the right tools, those who become radicalized can do tremendous harm to themselves and everybody else.
That might involve a truck they drive into a group of people out celebrating, an AR-15 they use to shoot up a synagogue, a bomb-containing suicide vest, or even “just” bear spray and clubs turned against Capitol Police officers.
Fortunately, in spite of social media algorithms that push the doors to extremism wide open and nudge people toward them, it seems as though only a small minority of people chooses the most destructive path.
It would be easy to say that only the most gullible are susceptible to the messages of extremists. Or perhaps just people with mental problems. Or losers and loners. Or those desperate to make ends meet whose frustration takes a dark turn .
However, both history and current examples show us that this isn’t the case.
In fact, there is evidence in plain sight that even someone who is intelligent, well educated, adored by millions, and has it all can fall prey to online propaganda and become radicalized.
And that brings us to the man of the hour: Elon Musk.
It seems absolutely crazy that, just a little over two years ago, Jeremy W. Peters of the venerable New York Times suggested that the politics of the newly minted owner of the social media platform X are “complicated.”
We don’t normally name-check others for being wrong, but since that piece wasn’t about untangling the conundrum of whether Musk was “just” a white nationalist or a full-on Nazi, Peters deserves all the scorn in the world.
To be fair, that article was published during the early days of Musk’s hard-right turn, so a non-discerning writer angling for a PR job at Tesla may be excused for having missed it.
There are really only a handful of options as to what happened here.
The first is that Musk is right about everything. However, in light of how much verifiable misinformation he spreads nonstop, we can dismiss that possibility.
The second is that his current views are those he has always harbored and only now feels comfortable sharing. That’s possible.
After all, he was born and grew up in South Africa, a country in which a white minority oppressed all other groups by imposing a system of strict racial segregation on them. And, while racism was obviously not a new problem or only practiced there, apartheid was so bad that South Africa was shunned by many Western countries and subject to economic and other sanctions that eventually led to significant reforms.
Therefore, it would hardly be surprising that someone who spent his entire childhood and adolescence there might harbor some white nationalist feelings.
However, if that were the case, then Musk did a pretty job of pretending to be all over the map politically.
The last option is that we are witnessing the most public example of self-radicalization in human history.
In less than three years, Musk went from this:
For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
to “Hey, why not give the fascists another shot in Germany?”
By the way, this isn’t about Musk supporting Donald Trump and buying him the presidency. That’s just what billionaires in the US do.
If this were a century ago, he would call on the Weimar Republic to release prominent Nazi Ernst Röhm, who was serving a prison sentence for his role in Adolf Hitler’s coup attempt; schedule reelections; and then back the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
It’s also not about him styling himself as a guardian of Western culture in the United States (apart from wanting to continue importing cheap workers for his company from abroad). That’s a fairly mainstream view in the MAGA movement (well, as we have learned in the past week, not the part about hiring Indian engineers who will lose their work permits if they quit their jobs).
No, it’s about Musk eagerly jumping into politics in different Western countries (usually those with left-of-center governments) and instinctively picking the most extreme parties and individuals to back.
In the US, his extremism was masked by the fact that there are only two parties, and everybody is forced to pick one or the other (and, in the last election, a majority sided with Musk’s choice).
But things are different in Europe, where there are many more options, including plenty of parties that are conservative. But Musk never backs those. Instead, he goes as far right as possible.
His extremism is also reflected in what he chooses to write or amplify online.
This week, we looked at his tweets from just one day, and what we found is deeply troubling.
He accused President Joe Biden (and others in his administration) of “treason” and threw his full support behind a British activist who is too extreme for even the far-right party in the UK that Musk himself has endorsed.
If this were a century ago, he would call on the Weimar Republic to release prominent Nazi Ernst Röhm, who was serving a prison sentence for his role in Adolf Hitler’s coup attempt, schedule reelections, and then back the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
And, to top it all off, he would say that the Nazis could not possibly be Nazis because Röhm was gay (which is Musk’s reason for saying that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland could not possibly be an extremist party because its main candidate has a same-sex partner).
Obviously, what is most disconcerting about his radicalization is that he controls a tool that allows him to influence others, and that he has no qualms about using it to spread right-wing propaganda and falsehoods that he claims to be “news.”
He isn’t the first person to have that much control over one medium. That honor probably goes to Kim Jong-un followed by the leaders of the Third Reich and various communist regimes.
However, he is certainly the only private citizen who ever held such sway over what he wants people to think, which makes it so troubling that he is an extremist.
Other social media oligarchs simply want to monetize the pain and suffering they cause with their algorithms. But Musk wants something different altogether.
And, whatever that is, now that he has bought himself a US president and is trying to install like-minded governments throughout the world, he may just get it.
