Why Elon Musk Is A Huge Threat to Democracy

**John Johnston** (0:00)
Hi, everyone, JJ here. Welcome back. Well, today, I want to address how and why Elon Musk is a threat to democracy. I mean, count the ways, right? But today, I want to react to this video, which is maybe about 10 days old from Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein having a discussion about this, how the world's worst person became the first trillionaire, is what they're discussing here. They cover a range of topics. I'm just going to react to some of it, but this is really worth watching.
They cover Elon Musk's trillionaire status and the economy, Musk's reliance on government subsidies, the equation behind Musk's wealth, the influence of billionaires, the threat to democracy and lack of accountability, which is where I want to start today. But as I said, this is all worth watching. If you want to do that, I'll put a link in the description. In Albania and the Trump family, you might know about that. There's been a lot of controversy about that. But anyway, let's get into this. The threat to democracy of Elon.

**Mehdi Hasan** (1:05)
When people can buy elections, when people can buy governments, when people can buy themselves a government job.

**Naomi Klein** (1:10)
Entire social media platforms.

**Mehdi Hasan** (1:12)
By social media, by themselves, an entire government job and department, whereby without any Senate approval or confirmation, they can rip apart multiple government departments and spending. That for me is fundamentally a threat to democracy.
Being against billionaires is not a left-right issue. This is about whether you care about democracy or not. If you care about democracy, if you care about one person, one vote, you simply cannot have one person, one vote in a society where a trillionaire controls more than all of our votes put together.

**John Johnston** (1:39)
Yes. I mean, I've done lots of videos on Doge as it was playing out last year. It was only last year, right? Elon has been on the Economist interview, which I could do another video and I've done one video on that where he denies anybody was harmed by Doge despite a peer-reviewed article running through how that happened and other people pointing it out, even specific people that were harmed by it. He continues to deny it and he's afraid of accountability in that regard, I think, say if the Democrats retake, if that ever happens at this point, but we'll have to see. It's looking good for the midterms, I think, but anyway, let's carry on.

**Mehdi Hasan** (2:21)
That fundamentally is why they are so dangerous. Then Musk in particular, to go back to my point earlier, it's not just any billionaire or trillionaire, it's this guy who is so dangerous. Again, so many people don't follow him. Unfortunately, in the way I do because I'm perpetually online for all my sins, people don't know that-

**John Johnston** (2:37)
Me too, you and me both.

**Mehdi Hasan** (2:39)
For example, Elon Musk spent his birthday the other weekend. His 55th birthday, what was Elon Musk doing? Promoting a movie called Citizen Vigilante.

**John Johnston** (2:49)
This was brought up in the Economist interview as well, where he had nothing to say on this except that it was a movie and that it's worth watching. That's all he had to justify it. He just denies gaslighting about his authoritarian, fascist tendencies or at least anti-democratic tendencies, supporting these parties in Europe and really all over the world. Anybody who's a far right candidate, he seems to really endorse them.

**Mehdi Hasan** (3:16)
A movie out of Germany starring Armie Hammer, that controversial once canceled American actor, in which he plays an American protagonist, Naomi, who is a landlord in Europe and spends his spare time secretly going around murdering migrant criminals who are raping European women. He doesn't just murder the migrants. He murders judges and police who are complicit. And then he murders the migrant's family. The end scene, it's a horrific, I had to watch it because I was writing an article about it. In the end scene, he kills a father, mother and two children because the son is a rapist and he believes the family covered up for them. He just curls them in cold blood.
And Musk is promoting this joyously, put the whole film for free on Twitter, for people to watch for 48 hours. He's promoting memes from the film, which say first the traitors, then the invaders.

**John Johnston** (3:59)
He was very enthusiastic about this movie. And really, I think he put it online, as Mehdi said there, about two days for people to watch it. I mean, it was just kind of disgusting stuff from him. And then when he's in an interview, ask questions about it, he just sort of gaslights and, you know, he says, oh, you know, plays innocent, but he knows what he's doing there. And it's incredibly anti-democratic at the very least.