Rasputin’s return — what does Elon Musk really want, now that the US election is over?

‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” (from the 1926 short story, The Rich Boy, by F Scott Fitzgerald)

In many, if not most ways, this was as much Elon Musk’s election as it was Donald Trump’s. The flood of post-mortem reports have all offered their diagnoses of the biblical plagues that rained down upon the Democratic Party. Wokeism, illegal immigration, inflation, crypto, climate alarmism, misinformation, misandry, identity politics, foreign policy, Kamala herself. Sure, any or all of these played a part, depending on an individual voter’s sensitivities.

There can also be little doubt as to the amplifying effect of Musk’s pro-Trump campaign during the election. Towards the end of the season, he was tweeting 100 times a day to his 200 million followers. The day after the election there were 40 million fewer pro-Trump tweets (according to one data analyst), suggesting that many of these tweets came from bots, presumably given safe passage by Musk just 24 hours earlier. I have not seen proof of this, but it is a seductive conspiracy scenario. 

In any event there was Musk himself. Prancing on stage with Trump, not tummy shy. Spending the night with him watching the election returns. Basking in MAGA applause. Being invited to be part of the family photo. You can see him in the accompanying image, second from right, with one of his children. Whose name is, I kid you not, X Æ A-12. (No, the rich are not like you and me).

It is important to pause here. The photo shows spouses, in-laws and cousins. Standard family fare. Then there is the richest man in the world who is not a relation and probably barely knows most of these people. This was surely not one of those “Hey, Elon, get over here, dude” spontaneous moments. This was a very carefully sculpted message. It says that Musk is more important than Vance or Thiel or Jared or Don Jnr or any of Trump’s other apparatchiks. Musk aced the loyalty test by using his X bullhorn for Trump and lobbing $120-million into the Trump coffers. He is now family, most-favoured son, consigliere and Trump’s right hand.

And then there is the startling story that broke a few days ago. In a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday after the election had taken place, Musk was apparently handed the phone. A conversation ensued, its details not fully revealed. Think about that. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is perhaps the number-one foreign policy issue on the planet, dripping with global risk. The presumptive president handed over the conversation, at least for a short time, to someone with zero foreign policy expertise. Not JD Vance. Not his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who does actually have some experience in foreign affairs. He was telling Zelensky: this is my guy, take him seriously, you’ll be talking to him again. 

For his loyalty, Musk’s first reward is the reins of a weirdly named new department, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is essentially an employee termination department married to a government department wrecking ball. Musk has said he will cut $2-trillion in waste, an unimaginably large number. Doing so will mean unemployment and pain for thousands of affected government employees, but that is clearly not a concern in the larger scheme of Musk’s worldview where the ends justify the means.

So it seemed to me a worthwhile exercise to take a look at some of America’s most famous historical oligarchs – the robber barons, the tycoons and the plutocrats – and their relationship to political power. To see if Musk is cut from the same cloth (ignoring the fact that Musk was not originally a US citizen).

There are a number of books dedicated to the achievements, wealth, personalities and peccadilloes of people like John D Rockefeller (oil), Pierre S Du Pont (chemicals), Howard Hughes (aviation), J Paul Getty (oil), Andrew Carnegie (steel) and Henry Ford (vehicles).

All these men wielded immense financial power, all were friends with presidents and other powerful office bearers. Some were eccentric or socially awkward or outlandishly abrasive. Getty was miserly, Rockefeller was ruthless to the point of cruelty, Hughes was what is now known as a control freak, Carnegie was cutthroat and imperious. Most of them displayed a lack of empathy, a grandiose sense of self-importance and a propensity for exploiting others.

No surprises here; these stories have been around a long time. The accumulation of vast wealth seems to distort the personality, or perhaps it is the other way around; one might need these character traits in the first place – the race to the top of the capitalist pile is not for sissies. In all cases, these men cultivated relationships with political power in a single-minded and, above all, transactional way. They sought political leverage to accumulate even more wealth by means of regulatory favours, special tax exemptions or no-contest government contracts.

For instance, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil secured favourable railroad rates and long-term shipping contracts through backroom deals with politicians. Carnegie’s steel empire benefited enormously from high protective tariffs which he lobbied Congress extensively to maintain. Hughes swam in Pentagon contracts. Of course, Musk has benefited similarly – both SpaceX and Tesla have employed lobbyists to extract maximum financial benefit.

On the surface, Musk is no different from these men. He can be as mercurial, narcissistic, abrasive, exploitative and self-important as the best of them. 

Except for the fact that Musk clearly wants something other than wealth. Something more. He wants to transform society according to his worldviews and his current whims. 

His obsession with Mars is not so much related to making money as some deeply rooted desire to create a hedge against the fragility of our fragile habitat. He subscribes to free-speech absolutism (although X is now reputed to be as censorious of the left as the old Twitter was of the right). He is violently opposed to identity politics and other excesses of the left, saying “the woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters”.

He is obsessive about population statistics: “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilisation than global warming.” He actively opposes DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), likening it to replacing one form of discrimination with another. He thinks the mass media is racist, specifically with respect to whites and Asians. He believes in immigration for highly qualified people only.

His proclamations about society, culture and politics are frequent, repetitive and urgent, swamping his tweets about his companies. Transformation is clearly more important to him than mere transactionalism.

There is one other thing that (I believe) separates Musk from his plutocratic forebears. He is, by all accounts, really, really clever. The others must have been smart too, but they focused their talents on their companies. They were, in a very real sense, tunnel-visioned, consumed by their creations. Musk has wielded his intelligence much more widely – in business, but also in culture, politics and society. His world extends much further than theirs and his intellect is applied promiscuously.

So, imagine you are the richest man in the world. Your businesses are solidly secured by talented and loyal minions. Like Rasputin, you have burrowed your way deep into the ear of the most powerful politician in the world; 200 million people hang on your every word, every day. You have a clear vision of what the world should look like.

What would be your next goal? What mountain will you climb next?

After Trump was elected, Musk tweeted “Novus Ordo Seclorum”. 

It is Latin for “A new order of the ages (is born)”.

I leave you to ponder this. DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg. His new book, It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership, is published by Maverick451 in South Africa and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.