Robert Reich has suggested governments should consider arresting Elon Musk to curb his enthusiasm for freedom of speech and Donald Trump
Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor, has suggested world governments should consider arresting Elon Musk because of the way he runs Twitter/X and his support of Donald Trump.
“Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth—he’s the richest person in the world— into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world,” Reich wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian on Friday.
Reich claims that Musk has become an open threat to democracy since acquiring Twitter/X and announcing his endorsement of Donald Trump for president.
“According to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk himself has posted 50 false election claims on X so far this year. They’ve got a total of 1.2bn views. None of them had a ‘community note’ from X’s supposed fact-checking system,” Reich explained.
“Evidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents are using X to disrupt this year’s presidential race, presumably in favor of Trump. Musk has done little to stop them.
“Meanwhile, Musk is supporting rightwing causes around the world.”
Reich suggest that one way for governments to rein Musk in would be to “threaten [him] with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”
Reich notes with approval the arrest of Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, in France a week ago.
In addition, Reich suggests that consumers should boycott Tesla; advertisers should boycott Twitter/X; the Federal Trade Commission should force Musk to “take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals” and sue him if he doesn’t; the US government should cancel its contracts with Musk’s companies including SpaceX; and “make sure Musk’s favourite candidate for president is not elected.”
As well as endorsing Donald Trump, Elon Musk has used his social-media platform to advocate for freedom of speech worldwide and to fight back against censorship.
In response to Friday’s banning of Twitter/X in Brazil, Musk warned that “censorship is a certainty” if the Democrats win the upcoming US presidential election.
Musk also described the Brazilian judge who instituted the ban, Judge Alexandre de Moraes, as “an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.”
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