BRUSSELS — One of the cardinal rules of Fight Club, the '90s bloodsport classic that enjoys cult status among Silicon Valley’s tech-bro caste, is that “fights will go on as long as they have to.”
Europe’s leaders would do well to learn that lesson as they grapple with the question of how to handle Elon Musk, the megalomaniac globalist billionaire cum Rasputin to the US president-elect currently engaged in a rhetorical rampage against the continent’s political establishment.
The South Africa-born American is fond of presenting himself as a Marvel superhero and his recent jihad against Europe’s political establishment has been no less cartoonish.
In the past few weeks alone, Musk has called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “incompetent idiot” and the country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, an “anti-democratic tyrant.” He saved his harshest invective for Keir Starmer whom he accused of being complicit in the “rape of Britain” during the UK prime minister’s tenure as the country's chief prosecutor, a claim as absurd as it is libellous.
Though an immigrant himself, Musk has become an enthusiastic supporter of many of Europe’s most virulent anti-migration forces, from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to Tommy Robinson, a British far-right activist currently serving a prison term for contempt of court.
Musk has also discovered a soft spot for Alice Weidel, the leader of the Alternative for Germany, a party that, among other things, wants to take Europe’s largest country out of the EU. As you read this, you may be watching in the background his livestream with Weidel, whose party Musk has called Germany’s “last spark of hope.”
One may wonder why Musk, the richest man in the world who appears to spend most of his free time whispering into Donald Trump’s ear at Mar-a-Lago (a shrine to American ostentation in Palm Beach), is so obsessed with Europe.
This answer is simple: business.
