Fresh from pouring his money and energies into helping Donald Trump win reelection, Elon Musk has trained his sights on Europe, setting off alarm bells among politicians across the continent.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany, demanded the release of jailed U.K. anti-Islam extremist Tommy Robinson and called British Prime Minister Keir Starmer an evil tyrant who should be in prison.

  • moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    Who didn’t see this coming? It was clear. These corrupted politics should be ashamed of what they did. No surprise that Europeans don’t trust their politics. They need to act (what they won’t do). They have to stand up and say GFY. Europeans, even if I’m not fine with the global idea, have all in their hands to use the US of Trump as a ladder to gain power and influences. They would put the US as a second country. But for this, they need to step up and manage their own way away from neolibs.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 hours ago

      I think it might be too late. We just don’t have the mechanics in place to manage this type of threat.

      Take for example Musk’s “lottery” in the US. If not technically contrary to law, very much contrary to the spirit of the law, and while I suspect that some kind of “action” was commenced, it was certainly never progressed in any meaningful way. Closing the gate not only after the proverbial horse has bolted, but after that horse has run amok, sired a foal on the prize mare, and grown old and died.

      It was hard enough when nana was sharing memes on facebook or your second cousin was getting radicalised on youtube. Now social platforms are openly influencing “engagement” with bots, very obviously supporting far right rhetoric in the name of “free speech”, and avoiding any suppression of misinformation.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Liberal “they go low, we go high” hard.

        I was there when the first far-right parties took hold in Europe. Politicians were looking into censoring the shit out of them from the internet, but then “free speech absolutists” started to cry “that would be like the Soviet Union, they killed a lot more people than the nazis”.

        While European nazis doxxed people for calling them nazis, redefining the word “racism” to mean “irrational hatred of an ethnic group with the sole intent of evil”, etc., hate speech laws did not catch up with them. We even had early examples of nazis radicalizing gamers through shitty games (one infamous example is by Hungarian “centrist satirist” Tamás “Tomcat” Polgár, by writing the most (in)famous Hungarian language text adventure games, filled with “satirical” racism), and I wouldn’t be surprised if the alt-right later on learned from their successes and mistakes.

        Best we got is Hungary expanding the definition of Holocaust denial to include the “um, ackchually, we’re only questioning the suspiciously high numbers” types, which is now barely enforced by Fidesz.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Elon Musk is beyond insane, he is batshit crazy.
    According to Musk, Keir Starmer should be in prison but this idiot who repeatedly breaks laws should not?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson

    Robinson served four prison terms between 2005 and 2019. In 2013, he illegally entered the United States using a friend’s passport. In 2018, he violated a court order by publishing a Facebook Live video of defendants entering court. Prior to sentencing, he appeared on the American far-right website InfoWars to appeal for political asylum in the US. In 2021, he was subjected to a five-year stalking prevention order for harassing journalist Lizzie Dearden and her partner. In 2021, he was found to have libelled a 15-year-old refugee at a school in Huddersfield and was ordered to pay £100,000 plus legal costs. After breaching an injunction about repeating the libel, Robinson was sentenced to 18 months in prison. In June 2022 Robinson admitted gambling away £100,000 before declaring bankruptcy.

    Why the fuck would anyone of their right mind choose to support such trash?

    The only conclusion is that Elon Musk is not of his right mind, and should probably be committed to protect both himself and others from his insanity.

    Edit for clarity:
    Added "According to Musk, "

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Watch the Connoreatspants stream with “Adrian Dittmann,” it went so bad it’s why he had to admit he really is Dittmann.

      If you can stomach it, stay the whole time and listen to his views. He is seriously unhinged and views all human relationships as performative. He doesn’t understand emotions or care about them to the point that he thinks he doesn’t experience them despite his emotions being spectacularly on display anytime Connor got under his skin, which was a lot. He gets so fucking steamed.

      In a way, we are actually really lucky he is so honest about who he is and how he works.

      • i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Because he didn’t prosecute child groomers.

        Despite being the first prosecutor to do just that.

        But I guess he was too late to do it, even though Elon didn’t mention it anywhere near when it actually happened.

        Hindsight is sometimes 20/20, but in this case I think Elon’s hindsight is 14/88.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        Cuz Musk said so. The point OP was trying to make was that Musk says Starmer should be imprisoned and yet wants to release a real criminal.

  • john89@lemmy.ca
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    9 hours ago

    The solution to this is to stop putting our faith in government and live a more localized, tribal lifestyle.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 hours ago

      Just gonna point out the obvious - this “tribal lifestyle” you speak of would be amazing… for about 1% of the population that would be happy with a subsistence agrarian lifestyle.

      For the other 99% of us it would create more problems than it solves. How do you have any form of technology whatsoever without organisation, which requires regulation, and regulators, which we call government.

      • john89@lemmy.ca
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        9 hours ago

        tribalism noun

        1. the state or fact of being organized in a tribe or tribes

        2. the behaviour and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group

        It doesn’t have to be a hunter-gatherer society. Focus on what’s around you instead of what’s far away. Local news. Local elections. Local businesses. Local friends.

        • DacoTaco@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          That would work even less. Thats a breeding ground for oppression, lying, control of knowledge etc on a much bigger scale than we have today. Think the catholic church in the middle ages, or to go smaller incase of your tribalism, lords and small towns. It just wont work how you imagine it would

          • john89@lemmy.ca
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            8 hours ago

            You can still trade with other people.

            The meaning of what I’m saying is to focus on problems you can affect, not ones that only affect you as much as you let them.

            Slacktivists won’t like this, though.

            • The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net
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              47 minutes ago

              Slacktivists won’t like this, though.

              Yeah, and unfortunately most people fall in that category. Just need to look at how many people say “we need another Luigi”, and someone should Luigi Elon/Zuckerberg/whoever”, it’s always someone else who should do something while they remain online making memes. Sometimes it’s the government who “should do something about global warming, while I keep choosing to follow a meat based diet that is more expensive and much worse for the climate than a plant based one, because I shouldn’t have to do anything!”

              Someone else should always do something about the thing, because heaven forbid those people actually do something and give up some comforts.

            • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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              6 hours ago

              It sounds like you mean we should focus on impacting and supporting our local communities. That is definitely something more of us should be doing.

              It’s the use of the word “tribalism” that’s putting people off. That word has connotations that (I don’t believe?) you intended. To a lot of us, it’s a pejorative term that refers to the mindset of a small group that’s fiercely hostile to other groups (while only being protective to their own.) A group with a “tribalist” mindset is likely a bubble of xenophobia.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              7 hours ago

              Which tribe will run the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and who assures they won’t put poison in it to wipe out a rival tribe?

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    We can all hope for early dementia, heart attack or unfortunate voyage to Titanic or the moon or Mars. Somewhere between the moon and mars would be awesome. Or maybe a successful sun landing! Be unique!

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Those still clinging to the rules based order need to realize they are under attack. Its war on multiple fronts.

    Under attack by Russia, Iran, North Korea and Chinese military action. and Under attack by Often Russian aligned, Fascist elements within NATO countries. Trying to seize power globally.

  • alexc@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The fault here is not necessarily Musk. He asked these Politicians (and others like them) to reduce the barriers to putting money into Politics. These politicians agreed.

    Remember this.

    You didn’t enable him by voting for this. These alarmed politicians changed the laws to permit it. We need to be asking our politicians to get rid of these laws, and then tax billionaires out of existence.

  • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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    22 hours ago

    There’s not a single fucking “alarmed” politician in Europe, is there? 😂

  • atro_city@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Really? A bunch of people didn’t vote and just let Trump win + the democratic party fucked up and didn’t learn from it. Elon Musk helped, but he wasn’t the deciding factor.

  • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    Any more of this and we all should be considering passing into law arsher anti social statutes, from any political quadrant or entity.