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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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What we certainly do know is that Musk bought twitter not to enable free speech, but to control speech according to his personal whims and beliefs.
I imagine the Saudi's went in with Musk on the twitter deal to also control and dilute unfavorable speech. The Saudi ruler is the guy that assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi on foreign soil because he wasn't exactly a team Saudi ruler kind of guy.
So if the Saudis went in with him, and he worked with them, then it wasn't solely his personal whims and beliefs. Just, for once, stop psychologizing celebrities and look at what's actually happening. Twitter was 100% a State Department and military intelligence asset. Musk makes most of his money from federal contracts, mostly related to military intelligence and adjacent domains. The state has all the means to stop Musk from destroying their asset with his personal whims (FTC, SEC, etc). Instead, he buys it with support from the Saudis, a family that leaders of the USA have sworn to protect for decades.
Face it. Musk's personal beliefs are merely what allows him to work with the power brokers. He is the lightning rod, the money launderer, the public face, the whipping boy, and eventually the sacrificial body. He's not running the show.
Also Musk is incredibly dumb and for most people, that veil is finally falling.
Some of the real power behind the 'throne' is Peter Thiel. That guy is the worst of everything.
It's his wealth and ego that allows him to attract folks like the Saudi regime. Shared whims, beliefs and goals can also be a thing. The Saudi's were buying influence. Kind of like how the Crown Prince bought Jared Kusher thanks to all the business deals he was busy working on while his father-in-law was president. Kushner the self-serving stooge of the Saudi Crown Prince helped sweep U.S. intelligence reports on Khashoggi's killing under the rug. Then was gifted $2billion of investment by the Crown Prince, which not even the Saudi's believe is a good investment.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/03/21/jared-kushners-2-billion-investment-from-saudi-arabia-what-to-know-after-republicans-delay-subpoena/
No one is claiming Elon is running 'the' show, but he certainly is running some show and has done plenty of damage with his twitter buyout. If you're calling out US foreign policy and the Mid East you're not wrong. Short-term selfish goals have lead to a myriad of long-term problems. Elon is not that bright, he has the temperament of a thin skinned teenage boy that never really grew up. I still don't understand why you're making him out to be some sort of martyr though.
I'm not saying he's a martyr, I'm saying he's not doing this from inside his skull but in concert with power brokers. The same is true of Kushner. Kashoggi's dad was likely involved with the CIA based on the history of his work and institutions. MBS is not some rogue mastermind - the USA, up to and including presidents, have publicly stated that the Royal Family is under their direct protection and a major part of US policy. The murder of a journo and the subsequent coverup happened within the context of US power brokers calling the shots. MBS is somewhat roguish as he seems he may be trying to decouple from the USA enough to save his house from the inevitable collapse of the USA, and the Kashoggi killing may have been part of that, so the USA powers got a little split over whether to threaten him or cover it up, so they did both, but ultimately Saudi isn't buying into Twitter with Elon as some part of a scheme against America, or against American liberals or against the Ds or whatever. MBS may be trying to purge Saudi institutions of the CIA, but his foreign policy is still constrained by his country's absolute need for American protection.
Musk didn't buy Twitter because he loves Trump and hates wokeness. He couldn't have because it's far too disruptive to power. Twitter was majorly important to power. Some moron with a lot of money, mostly money from the USA war machine, isn't going to be allowed to just go wrecking USA war machine components, especially not when there are so many controls in place. We have to see Musk not as an evil mastermind nor as a sideshow but rather as a state actor. I guarantee most nations adversarial to the USA see Musk as a state actor and not some strange independent anomaly. And if we have to see Musk as a state actor, then we have to see the purchase of Twitter as a behavior beneficial to the USA power centers and that it happened because it was beneficial to them, not simply an accident.