UDATED WITH AUTHOR'S COMMENT ON MUSK'S NAZI SALUTE: Building the Techno-Fascist state? Elon Musk takes sole control of the Orwellian Department of Government Efficiency
UPDATE
Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their MAGA teams are absolutely brilliant at manipulating public opinion and journalists.
The huge story this week has been Elon Musk’s power grab, as discussed below and in the articles listed.
So what did Musk do to distract attention from the real story?
A very intentional and demonstrative Nazi salute! Sieg heil!
Absolutely brilliant!
No one focused on the real story, except the reporters at Th Telegraph in London and El País in Spain. Rather they reported on an inconsequential theatrical ploy by Musk. “Did he or didn’t he? Maybe it was because he’s awkward on the stage, and was autistic as a child? A few days later, the tempest in the teapot was over. As was any possible attention to Musk’s power play.
Until the Democrats come up with a quick and nimble mechanism for commenting on maneuvers like this, free of any bureaucratic hierarchy of approvals, Trump, Musk, and the MAGA propagandists will continue to shape public opinion without any effective contradiction.
By the time elections roll around, it will be too late to challenge opinions formed and reinforced by modern propaganda over years.
BACKGROUND
See,
1) James Crisp, “Inside Musk’s White House power grab, Billionaire pushes ahead with plans to infiltrate all parts of Trump’s administration after axing of his co-leader at Doge, The Telegraph, January 22, 2025 (3:00pm GMT);
2)Iker Seisdedos, “Musk amplía su poder en la Casa Blanca tras provocar una escisión en el trumpismo; La renuncia de Vivek Ramaswamy deja en solitario al dueño de Tesla, que se ha enfrentado a Bannon, al frente del departamento encargado de adelgazar la Administración estadounidense,” El País, el 22 de enero 2025 (23:40 EST);
3)Iker Seisdedos, “Musk expands his power in the White House after provoking a split in Trumpism; The resignation of Vivek Ramaswamy leaves the owner of Tesla, who has confronted Bannon, alone at the head of the department in charge of slimming down the US Administration,” El País, January 22, 2025 (23:40 EST);
4)Charlie Warzel, )”Did He Actually Do That? Elon Musk either had a slipped-mask moment or is supremely awkward,” The Atlantic, January 20, 2025.
5)Lenz Jacobsen, ”A German Eye On Elon Musk's Hitler Salute (Yes, That's A Hitler Salute); Elon Musk's stretches his right arm out at a Trump political rally. Could it mean something else? The Neo-Nazis don't think so. And the rest of us are left in the swamp of ‘attention politics’,” Die Zeit (online), January 22, 2025.
Elon Musk is brilliant in many ways. He is a visionary not only of space exploration but also of the dystopian future he and other billionaires envision in a a world controlled by them. A world with governmental processes of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires.
He understands how the control of information and the flow of information can shape governments and indeed the world. In purely short-term economic terms the acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion dollars made no sense. Viewed from the larger perspective of building the information infrastructure for gaining control of the government and eventually the world, the acquisition seems absolutely brilliant.
Its value cannot be measured by its stock-price alone. Rather, its value can only be measured by taking into account how the purchase of Twitter gave Musk the power to help elect the president of the United States, mDonald Trump, and to forge a close bond with the president.
The bond has already led to the concentration of great power and influence in the hands of Musk. As noted, Musk is a brilliant and visionary strategist, which has enabled him to become the richest man in the world.
Now, with the departure of Vivek Ramaswamy from the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a wondefully Orwellian name, Musk has acquired unmatched power to access and use not only secret and confidential information about and held by the government, but also detailed information about the information architecture of the government’s departments and agencies.
Under Musk DOGE’s mandate seems to be shifting from cutting wasteful programs to modernizing the information architecture across the federal government. That is a worthy and longstanding goal. But to entrust it to Musk comes at a very high price in terms if concentration of power in one person’s hands. That person is an unelected official who happens to be the owner if SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) and the richest man in the world.
Together with Donald Trump’s granting of temporary security clearances for access to top secret and the most sensitive “compartmentalized” intelligence information in the U.S. government, Musk and Musk’s elite staff will have access to information Musk can use to vanquish all opponents, and eventually (sooner than you think) to control what we think of as a ‘free press”and ”free speech”.
The Washington Post and The L.A. Tunes are already compromised by owners who are kowtowing to Donald Trump and who have interfered with the editorial room. The Telegraph (London)] is currently the target of a purchase bid by a joint venture with UAE investors. Rupert Murdoch owns The Wall Street Journal and The Tunes if London.
The threat to democracy is palpable.
What can be done to counter the threat, other than describe and denounce its existence, is not yet clear.
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James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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