By Betsey Piette
January 16, 2025
Why does multibillionaire Elon Musk, one of the richest individuals in the world, need to throw his weight and financial support behind right-wing neofascists and want-to-be dictators such as Donald Trump in the U.S. and others around the world?
Manu Cornet
Musk is not simply one of the world’s richest people. He is the monopoly owner of the electric car company Tesla, space launch technology and the social media platform X and as such is a major influence over the global political discourse. Yet while he openly supported Trump’s campaign, which was largely based on xenophobic attacks on undocumented workers, Musk came to the U.S. on a student visa but stayed illegally after it expired. (Electrek.co, Dec. 30, 2024)
Musk’s wealth doesn’t come from his own sweat and labor but from the superexploitation of workers at his Tesla plants where he has fought against workers’ efforts to unionize. In April 2024, Musk let go 15,000 U.S. workers and in late December ramped up the use of H-1B visas for temporary foreign workers. Many of the laid-off U.S. workers were more senior engineers with higher compensation rates. They are being replaced with junior engineers from abroad working for lower pay and for longer hours. Musk often pushes Tesla employees to work 60-80 hours per week.
As owner of SpaceX, Musk filed a lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board after the agency charged him with two instances of using illegal unfair labor practices. Musk’s suit against the limited government protection for workers that has been around since 1935 claims that the NLRB is “unconstitutional,” because its “administrative courts rule on cases that can be challenged in federal courts.” (AP, Nov. 18, 2024)
Increasingly, workers in the U.S. and around the globe are pushing back against bosses such as Musk and Amazon’s anti-union owner Jeff Bezos. This helps explain why Musk is increasingly turning to supporting far-right politicians.
Meta weaponizes ‘free speech’
Suddenly social media monopolists such as Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have discovered “free speech,” which they interpret as a totally unhampered right wing outlet allowed to spew whatever racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic garbage they choose to post. No holds barred now that Trump is back in office.
As the capitalist system declines worldwide, centrist capitalist governments in the U.S., Germany, France and Britain are proving incapable of protecting workers. As military spending for imperialist wars escalates, workers have grown more frustrated, and in some cases they are drawn to supporting far-right politicians like Trump, Nigel Farage in Britain and Marine Le Pen in France.
Musk has gone all-out to promote neo-Nazis in Germany who make up much of the base of the Alternative for Germany party which is gaining support in the parliamentary elections to be held Feb. 23. The AfD is vehemently racist and anti-immigrant. Musk, via X, has tweeted that “only the AfD can save Germany.”
The British Independent on Jan. 3 noted Musk praised the AfD “for its plans to reduce government overregulation, lower taxes and deregulate the market.” Musk, who will open his first Tesla electric vehicle plant in a region east of Berlin, will benefit from any deregulation.
The megabillionaire’s statement reveals his goals, as well as those of other multibillionaires, who want governments to create an environment where they continue to profit, regardless of the price that workers pay, and the damage to the environment is unlimited.
But that’s not the future.
Around the world, workers are organizing. In Cuba, China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Venezuela and Nicaragua, workers are demonstrating that another world is possible — one organized around the needs of the majority of the population and the need to save the planet, not the profits of a handful of wealthy billionaires.
Filthy rich capitalists such as Musk and Trump will promote policies that pit workers against each other and support global imperialism. The global working class needs to unite and fight back through workers’ solidarity.
