Elon Musk’s Battle For Twitter Is A Proxy War For Americans Against The Ruling Class

Elon Musk’s battle for Twitter has become a smoldering proxy war between the ruling class and a free and sovereign people, a war that transcends the four corners of his offer letter. It is a contest over who controls the public discourse, and with it, who rules.

Our elites self-evidently believe that, to retain power, they must dominate the digital public square. A monopoly on The Narrative is integral to a monopoly on power.

That Musk threatens to return that power to us — restoring our right to speech in one of the digital public square’s most important forums, and perhaps most importantly creating a safe space for speech critical of our would-be rulers — is intolerable to them.

America’s commanding heights — Silicon Valley, corporate media, and a slew of institutions represented by a veritable blue checkmark brigade — aren’t even bashful about the fact their aversion to Musk’s bid is rooted in a regressive ideology demanding censorship and suppression aimed at achieving power.

They care not whether Twitter maximizes shareholder value. What hysterical Twitter employees, the fearmongers at Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, and melodramatics like Max Boot apparently find most objectionable are the liberal grounds on which Musk claims to have made his offer.

Musk’s Intent

The bid would almost seem to be an afterthought. When Musk proffered it — at a significant premium to its recent trading price — he said he did so because he “believe[s] in its [Twitter’s] potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe,” and that “free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”

In a TED Talk, Musk elaborated on his view, stating:

Twitter has become…a de facto town square. It’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law…and so one of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and [if Twitter] make[s] any changes to people’s tweets – if they’re emphasized or de-emphasized, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that action’s been taken so there’s no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation either algorithmically or manually.

Musk added that “this is not a way to make money… My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization… I don’t care about the economics at all.”

So Musk says his effort to take over Twitter flows from his belief in free speech. Were he to prevail, he says he would aim to ensure due process, transparency, and inclusiveness; and that he is driven by a modern sense of noblesse oblige over avarice.

Isn’t this the kind of move our “democracy-defending” ruling class would typically award someone a Nobel Prize for? Well, no, because for all the ruling class’s anti-authoritarian rhetoric, it consists of those who seek total economic, political, and social control — projecting its pathologies onto its opponents, whom it works to crush using every lever of its power.

Hence its opposition to Musk, who threatens to break the ruling class’s stranglehold on the communications platforms it controls — enabling it to propagate narratives conducive to its rule while suppressing conflicting ones; cowing Joe Rogan, who threatens the narratives of the ruling class communications arm in the corporate media, as well as the legitimacy of that media; and de-platforming a Donald Trump who threatens the power and privilege of the political establishment and all of the institutions reliant on it. In so doing, the ruling class exposes their rot and corruption, showing the lengths to which they will go to destroy Musk.

Elon Musk Fights for Us by Proxy

These powerful and influential figures targeted by the ruling class have become stand-ins for us. But we are not spared either, with the ruling regime pursuing everyday Americans who dare to question the regime’s narrative on a million issues from election integrity to the Chinese coronavirus, critical race theory, and human biology — through platforms including Twitter.

Our betters are loathe to relinquish the power to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story while propagating an American information operation claiming it was Russian disinformation, or to prohibit people from sharing information deemed damaging to the regime.

They now seek to legitimize and augment that power by invoking national security, which only further imperils the republic, classifying wrongthink as dangerous misinformation or disinformation, those who engage in it as dangers, and siccing the public sector and its private-sector auxiliaries on them in a brutal War on Wrongthink.

It was reported that the feds were probing Musk soon after he disclosed his Twitter offer, which only further contributes to the Third World vibes. For Twitter and like-minded Silicon Valley leaders, the corporate media, and the feds all to be targeting Musk concurrently may well parallel the collusion seen with respect to Hunter Biden’s laptop, the anti-Rogan jihad, and the myriad coordinated campaigns to topple Trump.

It is a shame the depths our republic has plumbed. It is a shame that we no longer have an elite in America dedicated to protecting and preserving the foundational principles that have enabled themselves and the country to thrive. It is a shame the best we can hope for to restore some semblance of balance is to back one Big Tech titan — whatever pause his heterodox views might give us, including his apparent acquiescence towards the Chinese Communist Party — over others.

But this is what time it is.

Deranged Response

By the mere act of seeking to effectuate change at Twitter, Musk, like Trump before him, has elicited a deranged response, exposing the hypocrisy, fraudulence, and fragility of our supposed democracy-defending keepers of the liberal, rules-based international order in our ruling class — to our benefit. That is a significant contribution.

With Twitter now adopting a poison pill aimed at thwarting Musk’s bid for the company, we should be hoping he is preparing to engage in a protracted legal battle. As he hinted at:

Any litigation and corporate wrangling that might result from Twitter’s effort to fend off Musk’s takeover could be costly to the company — perhaps ruinously so — as could any revelations or missteps that might arise in connection with the litigation. Musk has deeper pockets than does Twitter — not to mention the leverage of all the shares he owns.

Will Twitter blink? Let the negotiations begin.

Ben Weingarten is a Federalist Senior Contributor, senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and fellow at the Claremont Institute. He was selected as a 2019 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow of the Fund for American Studies, under which he is currently working on a book on U.S.-China policy. Ben writes on national security and foreign policy, economics, and politics for publications including City Journal, Conservative Review and PJ Media. He is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media, a media consulting and production company dedicated to advancing conservative principles. Ben is also a 2015 Publius Fellow of the Claremont Institute. You can find his work at benweingarten.com, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.

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