Tesla boss Elon Musk has added German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to the list of politicians he has insulted in Europe. He also announced a plan to speak to the leader of the country's far-right AfD.

(…) Plans for online Musk-Weidel meeting

The spokesman for the leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, said concrete plans were underway for an online meeting between her and Musk.

That came after Musk himself suggested a meeting between the two via X’s Spaces chat feature. “Wait until Alice and I do an X Spaces conversation. They will lose their minds,” he posted. (…)

“Elon Musk is equipped with billions and unbridled communication power,” Habeck wrote on X. “His call for the AfD is systematic: He wants to weaken Europe. Power must be limited: no business model must destroy our democracy. Europe must now use its power consistently.”

Concerns are also growing in the UK as Musk takes an increasingly close interest in Britain’s political scene, aligning himself with hard-right lawmaker Nigel Farage.

Musk has busied himself with taking aim at the UK’s center-left Labour government, launching a series of blistering comments against British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

  • federal reverse@feddit.orgMEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    When I first read your comment, I knew that DOGE was going to be more real/impactful than you seemed to realize. After all, there was Project 2025 and it spelled out that that Trump should drastically reduce people power and spending everywhere across the bureaucracy. I also knew that Trump gave a fuck about legalities and that his goal would be to lead autocratically (he literally said the thing about being a first-day dictator).

    Here’s the things I didn’t know:

    • I saw the comments about “President Musk” but I didn’t realize that it would actually be true.
    • I didn’t realize that a coalition of atheist-tech libertarians and Evangelical-oil/gas libertarians would work either. I was counting on the latter being at the forefront, not the former.
    • I had no idea DOGE would simply close down entire federal agencies within weeks.
    • I had no idea that they would go right to the office that processes payments and slash everyone’s funding. Or that you could be brazen enough to just email the people of entire agencies “there’s a fork in the road, go resign”.
    • I hadn’t heard of network states or accelerationism. I’d mostly forgotten the name Curtis Yarvin and I’d missed that the libertarian idea of “seasteading” had morphed (and I’d only seen it presented to me as comedy, as part of the series Silicon Valley where one character [who was transparently modeled after Peter Thiel] built an artificial island).

    For the record: If you’re an American, I’d like to urge you to stand up and protest. At the rate it’s going, you won’t have much time to defend democracy. I’ve read Wapo yesterday and watched late-night shows – they’re all still sanewashing what is happening to some degree. They are still failing to mention the word “coup” and that’s extremely dangerous.