Come to Seattle, Mary Harrington, and I’ll put on a seminar about The Most Unjust Ruling Class in History. I mean of course the educated class that has dominated and despoiled us and driven us into the killing fields for the last century and more.
Really, those feudal lords and Grand Dukes weren’t so bad after all. For one thing, they weren’t much into World Wars.
I understand Elon not as a feudal lord but as a Great Man helping to destroy the monstrous and unjust culture of Mass Media and replace it with the hope of Independent Media. And if he gets to Occupy Mars on the way, so much the better.

Oh dear, the neo-feudal Musk is threatening the feudal oligarchy of old-line media that was completely in the bag of its government overlords. Sometimes they didn’t even have to be in the bag, they were in the bed – maritally and otherwise – with them. That system was as corrupt and self-serving as any Habsburg or Medici. That system failed the public spectacularly and burned any credibility and assumed virtue that it had through its complicity and hubris. They brought this on themselves, and Musk is the response. He may be just as bad – but someone is always going to be at the top of the system. The old princes are dead – long live the new prince!

Oligarchs influencing the electoral process is nothing new. Recently, you had the Koch brothers on the right, Soros and Reed Hoffman on the left. At least Musk wields his influence out in the open, rather than lurking behind closed doors. If Musk wasn’t saying stuff that resonated with a huge number of voters, no one would listen. His legitimacy results not from his money and reach, but the popular support for what he says.

Next time , before sending emissaries to interfere in elections in a sovereign state, may be think about the consequences. You may be a big fish over here bullying and subjugating the ethnic British but, over there you’re not even a bad joke. You’re nothing.

The power of major donors in the American political system has grown, is growing and ought to be diminished. Elon Musk is the prime example BUT I think “Neo-feudal” is a misleading metaphor. The idea that Musk is a free standing power dictating to the US and other governments is wrong. The reality is more complex and two way.

The same week that world’s richest man has been throwing his weight around has also seen the third richest, Zuckerberg, running for cover, tossing Clegg overboard and adopting X style free speech in the hope of placating Trump. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and others have as much to fear as gain from the new Trump Administration.

The expansion and intrusion of the regulatory state has created a blurred situation with the public and private sectors commingled and each compelled to seek to influence the other. The old paradigm of companies pursuing their interests within an impartial framework of laws while largely keeping out of politics has collapsed. If anything, the new system resembles less feudalism that the endless bureaucratic manoeuvring of pre Xi China as political factions / economic blocs (eg the energy / security grouping) sought to retain favour and access to resources.

In the long run, I am optimistic. The absurdity of the status quo is so self evident that reform seems probable. Free speech is already regaining ground. The growing corruption since the Citizens United case has become as blatant as that of the Age of the Robber Barons and – as in that case – will provoke a reaction. Even the underlying blurring of private / public boundaries as the result of the growth of the regulatory state will probably eventually get sorted out.

What’s Mr Tate’s view on Gaza? Isn’t that the new determining factor in UK elections?
Will this gentleman provide a novel synthesis of all the factors involved in these disquieting controversies? A ‘bruv’ who is also a follower of the religion of peace would, as a ‘pound shop demagogue’, offer his fan club among the ‘white working class’ a difficult choice.
The ‘bureaucracy’ only sees the activities of the ‘grooming gangs’ as a failure of bureaucracy. The ‘solution’ is more procedures, systems, processes, and…bureaucracy. Multiplying the eyes of Argus; eyes that are only sleepy with euphemisms.
What a beast Musk must be. Our Jess reports that her world has been turned upside down by his tweets; so fragile is our gal that she’s all teary over the hurty words from thousands of miles away emanating from the ‘special relationship’.
If these legacy political parties, the old ones from the 19th century, are reaching their Bourbon moment, they would be completely unaware of the sans culottes about to be unleashed by the personages of the internet salons.

Excellent stuff.
Musk’s influence-peddling is obviously extra-democratic, in this sense. But many other more progressively inclined lords and princes meddle openly in the democratic process without triggering nearly the same fury.
Seeing the reaction to Musk’s interventions is amusing on several counts, but seeing the furious have to grapple with the fact that, no, you didn’t go nearly so ballistic when George Soros waded into the Brexit issue (for example) is one of the better bits.
And I think this is part of the Musk strategy: purposely go too far, purposely say something well off the mark so that our current leaders (if you can call them that) have this false sense of security in their response and happily trot out the well-worn platitudes (misinformation, far-right, don’t interfere in our democracy blah blah blah)…which only serve to make them look entirely out of touch and hypocritical when you remind them of their own past behaviour, thus undermining their own authority further.
It’s an incredibly efficient method of wielding power. All Musk does is write a sentence, maybe an article if we’re thinking about the Welt am Sonntag piece, and it sets off a dynamic and a debate that runs all on its own. It’s also self-reinforcing in that everything our leaders try to do to then get out of the mess just ends up getting them even deeper into it.
While I do think that we’re in a time of massive reorganisation, I think these “leaders” would be massively helped by just thinking things through a couple of steps before responding. It doesn’t take a genius or chess grandmaster to do this, just a bit of self reflection.
But no – Starmer just stands there and sputters about the far right and seems horrified when, oh dear, it’s not working quite as well as it did in summer, what do I do now? The way he over-pronounces “far right” is a sign of the rising panic that he must be feeling about the tools in his arsenal which he believed to be nuclear disintegrating to dust on impact.

I think feudal princes were tied to a particular place. MH gives the example of the Medici clan. They were tied to Florence… and then France, through advantageous marriages.

In contrast, Musk wields his influence in a way that is not tied to a particular place, and the reason is that his influence machine Twitter/X is one which is disembodied and dislocated… themes which MH is very familiar with.

Maybe the best analogy is with other captains of industry who have wielded great influence in the past through similar abstract mechanisms of information and financial influence, unmoored from ties to a particular place, such as William Randolph Hurst, Rupert Mudoch, and Nathan Rothschild.

Interesting article. I’d like to see Mary’s take on the generational aspect of this; Musk is firmly Gen X. The Boomer political cohort is on the way out, what do the pre-Millennials bring to the table? Growing up pre-internet, Gen X seems less censorious (and more potentially rebellious) than Boomers and Millennials both.

He can’t have the American presidency but he may just secure the first British one.
Never has a government looked more likely to be overthrown from outside the usual processes.
If that happens then it may finally be Britain’s revolutionary republican moment.