Profile: Elon Musk and the birth of the 'plebeian counter-elite'

When Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) in mid-2022, the high priests of global progressive hegemony lost their minds. They suspected they would lose their monopoly on information and ideas, though never in the forceful way it happened. But, all the same, they squirmed like a wounded animal that senses an unhappy fate.

The suspicions came true. Musk was the catalyst for the exponential growth of unmediated information, where ordinary people can post what they want. The popular shift occurred in the last two years against the woke ideology, the fall of its untouchable dogmas, the plebeian revolt against biased information by the mainstream media and the fresh, chaotic and renewing circulation of ideas and information are due in part to what Elon did with his social network. It is possible that without this breath of freedom, neither Trump nor the rest of the leaders who challenge the single progressive thought would have come to power. That's how political correctness, that poisoned potion, lost its power and the enraged elites blamed Elon.

Back then, in 2022, the attacks by corporations, media and governments on the entrepreneur were fierce. The turnaround transformed Twitter into pandemonium, employees throwing outrageous tantrums as if they were political negotiators in Yalta, government investigations of all kinds, celebrities taking down their accounts as if they were coming down from the Sierra Maestra. Added to this were a merciless attack from the press and advertisers fleeing en masse. Revenues were plummeting and the battle against the establishment seemed lost.

But there is an episode that embodies the core of that battle: Twitter's largest advertiser, Apple, paused its ads and tried to destroy the platform with the threat of blocking it in the App Store. This was a real danger since the App Store controls access for millions of users. If Twitter was removed, Elon would lose everything. It was a clash of titans in which Musk stood to lose. He was made into a pariah, he who had enjoyed the praise of that same establishment. But instead of backing down, Elon Musk doubled down against Tim Cook and unwittingly became a politician.

To fight Cook, Elon drew on his enormous powers of persuasion amplified by his millions of followers and opened the fight to the public forum, in a plebeian conversation about rights and free speech. Eventually, he won the popular debate and proclaimed victory. He became a charismatic global leader, savored political power (so much more important than economic power, according to Frank Underwood) and liked it. In a short time, Twitter recovered, turned into X and became one of the most important power struggle spaces in the world. Elon weeded out the company's management, improved revenues and the quality of users who started paying to stay in the forum where the decision makers are. Paradoxically, his haters make him more powerful and richer every time they post against him.

But how did this “nerd,” who until a few years ago was cited in pop culture as the stereotype of the extravagant entrepreneur, become an anti-establishment political leader?

Red pill

His professional history is full of anecdotes about pushing the envelope. As a teenager he sold his code for a video game called Blastar for $500. From his native South Africa to Canada, he changed careers several times and abandoned them for the ventures he went on to found, buy and sell, such as Zip2 Corp, Confinity, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, X; amassing an immense fortune along the way. For his mergers and acquisitions, he fought tough battles with the Securities and Exchange Commission, faced the many obstacles often faced by those who want to innovate within a social and economic system that went from rewarding invention to penalizing it.

His personal life is also very public and vertiginous, with several and resonant partners with whom he has had numerous children. His youngest children usually accompany him to all his public appearances, and it is common to see him at the most select events with one of the children on his shoulders. Elon found how to be countercurrent also in that proud form of familialism that is rarely seen among elites.

However, Musk used to be progressive and mostly apolitical, a fervent advocate of the environmentalist woke narrative. During Trump's first presidency, he quit the White House business advisory council because the president rejected the Paris Agreement. His stances that align with the cultural left are myriad, albeit nuanced by his support for the free market and his fight against government regulations, but when it comes to the "culture war," Elon was just another proponent of the Obama ideology.

Musk condemned COVID lockdowns and, like many citizens since, seemed ready to discover that the political, scientific, cultural and media world was not what he believed it to be. When a person takes the "red pill," they do so with fervor, tying up ends as best they can, with shame and a yearning for truth. Then, in general, everything gets organized, and it is impossible to go back. One by one, the pillars of the woke ideology fall apart when contrasted with reality. Musk attributes his ideological shift to the moment he understood how one of his children fell into the clutches of the trans ideology thanks to the clamp that makes up the educational and judicial systems, in the midst of a pandemic. From that moment on, he went from being a just a rich and famous celebrity to a convinced fighter against the global woke agenda.

Musk, perseverance and a new 'counter-elite'

It has become fashionable to use the Finnish concept "sisu" to describe the stance of those who decide to put everything on the line in pursuit of a purpose. Sisu combines ideas such as stoicism, tenacity, firmness of character, endurance and resilience. A kind of rigid courage, facing situations where it is necessary to win no matter what. It manifests itself in taking initiative and maintaining it against all odds. It is possible that this description fits what Donald Trump represents today, but without a doubt, it is embodied by Elon Musk in full.

As soon as Musk began to question some of the dogmas of progressivism, he received a barrage of condemnation from that monolithic progressive hegemony that has no room for nuance. But Musk is not just anyone, he has been in the ranking of the richest people in the world for more than a decade, he is famous and loud, and consequently, he became the black sheep in the herd of "useful idiots" who are famous and successful and who uncritically embrace progressive politics in international forums or at awards ceremonies. The infantile, polarized and intolerant left accelerated Musk's radicalization and made him the enemy to beat.

Elon has a very sophisticated ability to understand complex situations, and he also has good reason to suspect that the global progressives hate him more than Trump. Early last year, both the European Union and the World Economic Forum threatened him with sanctions for not censoring X's posts. Brazil shut down X in 2024 due to the demands of the socialist government that criminalizes divergent opinions and demanded that he attack accounts opposing the Workers' Party regime. The British government practically blamed him for the riots that occurred in 2024, just for expressing his opinion on X. Today, many European governments, especially those fallen from grace for their perversity, inefficiency and corruption, blame him for their instability, using him as a scapegoat for all the ills those same governments generated. The woke empire believes that Musk is the cause and not the consequence of their decline. They are wrong, but their blindness is as great as their hatred.

They are like the medieval elites who condemned the advent of the printing press. It's not just Musk shouting that they are naked, it's millions of people posting, researching, retweeting, commenting, outraged and complaining. What the elites hate most about Musk is what he has facilitated: that the plebs can speak freely even when their ideas offend the ruling caste.

One of the greatest thinkers in politics, Robert Michels, argued that all societies, even democratic ones, become oligarchies because the power dynamic will always be delegated to an undemocratic elite. Michels called this the "iron law of oligarchy." A predecessor, Vilfredo Pareto, had warned about the measures necessary to control the power of these elites by demanding a continuous renewal of ruling groups. If such renewal does not occur, the elite in power faces the new elite that necessarily arises from the demands of the masses. Then comes decadence, confrontation and collapse, a fate explained by Pareto in his famous phrase: "History is a graveyard of aristocracies."

"The deep state's antipathy toward Musk is matched by Musk's antipathy toward government spending and debt."Karina Mariani

In short, that an elite needs a "counter-elite" influential enough to keep it in check or, eventually, to oust it from power if necessary. Such is the pendulum of history. In the coming years, the progressive elite, cornered and divorced from the desires and priorities of the society it governs, and which already dominates all major institutions, will impose its worldview in an ever more totalitarian manner. State interference in people's lives will intensify; all fundamental rights will be undermined in exchange for unintelligible new-fangled rights administered by the oligarchy in power.

That was what Elon Musk sensed when he began to confront the progressive hegemony because of the obstacles standing in front of his businesses, in the regulations that flattened his innovative spirit or, (perhaps what has definitely marked him), because of the "criminal" indoctrination suffered by his teenage son whom he considers lost. As it was, the indelible image of Donald Trump on the Butler, Pa., stage, fist raised in defiance of a bullet and the useless mob of Secret Service agents, blood flowing from a near-fatal wound, shouting, "Fight!" made Musk find his transcendent purpose. He immediately went public with his support for the man he had previously criticized and judged.

The Musk-Trump alliance

Trump and Musk are the counter-elite, not because they have no common ground with the current elite to which they once belonged, and not because they are perfect, untainted, infallible. It is simply because they have the necessary determination to fight and because turning back would mean inadmissible defeat, jail or exile. They have the nose, the courage, the madness and the perseverance demanded by the struggles to come.

Musk spent many millions and hours on Trump's campaign. In mid-November, after the Republican's victory, together with former presidential candidate and also disruptive entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, he was entrusted with the titanic task of trimming the elephantiasic American administration; the ecosystem where the members of "the swamp" live at ease. The name chosen for said repartition is the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The deep state's antipathy toward Musk is matched by Musk's antipathy toward government spending and debt. Musk will be a Trump general fighting on a fierce front.

Elon differs philosophically with Trump and much of the Republican Party on the issue of public spending and others such as those relating to legal and meritocratic immigration. This breath of fresh air seems vital for a second Trump term, which many protectionists, mercantilists and isolationists dreamed of as a payback to their hindered corporate dreams. Musk also challenges the sector of MAGA anchored in the past and resentment. The hope that Friedman's philosophy will defeat Buchanan's perspective and lead Trump down a path of prosperity and freedom this second time around may be the main reason why many young voters and ex-progressives who have gone the same ideological route as Musk now trust incoming President Trump.

Musk's nose, again, may infect the Trump administration with his passion for the future, replacing the old tariff and dogmatic obsessions with this bright outlook. Musk's influence may be the brightest spot of the second Trump administration, the most important hope for lasting change in the monstrously corrupt deep state. The world is watching this powerful alliance between Trump and Musk that can change the fate of the West. Musk's "sisu" will be providential in the next four years. Hopefully it will infect freedom fighters all over the planet.