Elon Musk stages coup d'etat. Expect the Democrats and media to roll over
No big deal. Just the unravelling of an already flawed democracy by an unelected plutocrat
A coup d’etat in the United States. You may arch your eyebrows and ask - how did I miss that one, then? You may not have noticed any tanks in the streets, dissidents thrown into prisons, any firing squads, or declarations of martial law. No menacing generalissimo wearing sunglasses, arms crossed, flanked by henchmen.
But Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, a South African-born businessman who not a single American has voted for, has been placed in charge of the department of government efficiency, or DOGE, with a supposed mandate to slash away government spending.
One of Donald Trump’s many executive orders instructed all government agencies to grant DOGE “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems.” But note that DOGE isn’t a government agency. It’s supposed to be merely advisory. And yet it is being turned into the absolute centrepiece of this entire administration.
He is now leading a massive purge of the government bureaucracy, whilst seizing control of the Treasury Department’s $6 trillion payment system. That now means Musk has hit mitts all over the Social Security numbers and indeed general personal and financial information of most American taxpayers. If there is a federal employee who displeases them, they can simply cease paying them. Musk also taken over the General Services Administration, which underpins the basic functioning of federal government agencies, and the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the US civil service.
What does this all mean? Well, as Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren puts it in a letter to the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besent:
"Controlling the system could allow the Trump Administration to 'unilaterally' – and illegally – cut off payments for millions of Americans, putting at risk the financial security of families and businesses based on political favoritism or the whims of Mr. Musk and those on his team who have worked their way inside.”
What next? There is USAID, the US government’s $40bn a year international development agency. Now there is all sorts of very good leftist critiques of USAID, about its role in further the interests of US imperialism. Well, that’s certainly not Musk’s critique, and it also, for example, provides assistance on, say women’s health, HIV/AIDS treatment, energy security, and so on.
The point here is this is a coup with no democratic mandate, with a billionaire using his wealth and therefore power to dictate policy to the President. Musk repeatedly declared the agency is “a criminal organisation” and said it was “time for it to die”, and got Trump to agree to it being shut down.
It’s been reported that the USAID Director for Security and the Deputy Director for Security Brian McGill were fired - because they tried to stop DOGE getting access to classified material in restricted areas.
Meanwhile, millions of federal government workers face redundancy, with two million of them being offered voluntary redundancy. Musk has brought in people from his own companies to oversee cuts, correctly described as “lackeys” by Wired magazine, which notes that the people now at the top of the Office of Personnel Management include a 21 year old and someone who has just left high school.
We should remember that Musk’s companies get billions of dollars form nearly 100 government contracts. Two of his companies account for at least $15.4 billion in such contracts over the last 10 years. To suggest there is a conflict of interest here is putting it exceptionally gently.
As Michael J Gerhardt, a professor who specialises in constitutional law at the University of North Carolina School of Law told Al Jazeera: “This is perhaps the first time ever someone from outside the government has been so openly given free rein within.” He adds: “There is no mechanism for keeping Elon Musk in check.”
In the words of the political scientist Seth Masket: “Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup.”
And indeed as progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez puts it: “This is a plutocratic coup.”
Well indeed. Musk bankrolled Trump’s campaign, handing him approaching $300 million to ensure his successful election. Here is the painful reality of what is described as ‘right-wing populism’, which claims to represent the little guy against the elites, but is in fact an extremely clever ruse to facilitate entirely naked rule by the rich, of the rich for the rich in what was already a democracy rigged in favour of Americans with bottomless pockets. A study over a decade ago - when Barack Obama was President - found that the US was an oligarchy, rather than a democracy: so what words to describe this?
What does Musk plan to do to the federal government he now has unaccountable control of? Well let’s see what he did to the artist formerly known as Twitter, which we are supposed to call X, a crap rebranding effort which itself speaks volumes. Was that a success? Depends on your metric, I suppose. Its value has fallen by about 75% since he took it over in 2022. Its number of active users has fallen by tens of millions. Its usability has markedly declined. It is an unchecked cesspit of disinformation and hate.
Well here’s why we debate what the metric of success is. You see, if your metric is turning X into a political weapon in the service of right-wing extremism, then Musk’s take-over of X has been a stunning triumph. And so if X is the template for what Musk intends to do the federal government, well I think it’s pretty clear which direction we’re heading in.
But where is all the opposition to all this? The Democratic leadership are cowed, without any obvious fighting spirit, unable to decide what they even stand for or believe in. And what about the media? Well so many Americans get their information from social media, and the tech bros are at the heart of the court of Trump. There’s Musk, obviously, but look at Mark Zuckerberg, redrafting his content moderation policies after Trump wrote in his latest book that the owner of Facebook and Instagram and the like would spend the rest of his life in jail if he politically displeased him.
You can see how Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, pulled the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, apparently fearing Trumpian retribution, while signing a $40m deal to produce a vanity documentary about Melania Trump. Note how the LA Times similarly abandoned its usual endorsement for the Democrats. Note the lawsuits Trump is filing against media organisations. A man who has repeatedly threatened to lock up his opponents may well start a whole range of vexatious investigations into media and political critics, not least with Kash Patel, his pick for FBI chief, installed, who apparently has a so-called ‘enemies list’.
For those who thought US democracy - however flawed it always was - would never die, well, a brutal appointment with reality now beckons. We can see the playbook in other countries, like Hungary, ruled by Viktor Orban, a pin-up for Trump and his allies. No tanks on the street, no firing squads, but democracy was simply dismantled by attrition behind closed doors, from allies buying up newspapers, to a law on foreign funding to harass, intimidate and silence critics in civil society and the media. Well, Trump and Musk are significantly more extreme than even the gruesomely autocratic Orban.
This is heading in only direction - and that is towards the end of democracy as you and I understand it.
How utterly horrifying. Where will this end? A third term for Trump, for sure.
Thanks Owen, this is horrifying. But also predictable. Musk getting away with his Nazi salute tells us all we need to know. If you are rich enough, and you're in with the Trump crowd, you can be an actual Nazi and nobody will say anything.