Bluesky

In the world of MAGA, “regime change” is a dirty phrase, often decried as a policy of the bipartisan establishment that has entangled the United States in endless wars. In 2016, Trump quickly rose to the top of the Republican presidential primary because he alone was willing to denounce, in memorable terms, George W. Bush’s failed attempt to remake the Middle East. Subsequently, Trump disavowed regime change in Iran in 2019 and again in 2024. Tulsi Gabbard, the newly minted director of national intelligence, is a fierce critic of what she calls “regime change wars.” Last Friday, Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special missions, told right-wing activists meeting at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “Under Donald Trump, we don’t do regime change.”

As always with Trump and his cronies, you need to look at their actions as well as their words. Often there is a wide divergence between rhetoric and behavior. In his first term, Trump actively and unsuccessfully pursued regime change in Venezuela. In his second term, the record is even worse and more sordid. Elon Musk, nominally overseeing a trimming of the federal government as head of the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been acting as an ad hoc State Department, using his position as Trump’s closest adviser to push for right-wing parties—some of whom are undeniably racist and neo-Nazi—around the world.

As NBC News reports:

Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk has encouraged right-wing political movements, policies and administrations in at least 18 countries in a global push to slash immigration and curtail regulation of business…

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While Musk has received widespread attention for the upheaval he is causing in the U.S. government, as well as for his growing role in Germany, where he recently told voters to “move beyond” Nazi guilt, the tech tycoon is making his influence felt in a long and growing list of other countries.

Some of the parties that Musk has supported, notably the Conservative Party of Canada, are merely right-wing populist within the norms of mature democracies. But his patronage has extended further to regimes and movements that are either authoritarian (such as Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary) or rooted in neo-Nazism (such as Alternative für Deutschland or AfD in Germany). In the cases where the parties he supports aren’t in power, Musk has promoted government turnover by using his perch both as the owner of a powerful social media outlet (X, formerly known as Twitter) and as a close ally to the US president.

In effect, Musk has started a program of global regime change, one aimed not at America’s perceived foes but at America’s supposed allies. On January 22, Senator Bernie Sanders posted on X, “Elon Musk has been backing neo-Nazi parties around the world, interfering in elections and using his massive platform to attack anyone who doesn’t share his extreme right-wing views.” This is a view shared by French President Emmanuel Macron who in early January warned that Musk was fomenting a “new international reactionary movement.”

The idea of a reactionary international is not a new one. In Trump’s first term, his adviser Steve Bannon, now out of office and a rival to Musk, also tried to foster an international alliance of nationalist and antiliberal parties that would include figures like Orbán and France’s Marine Le Pen. But Bannon’s actions were embryonic and halting. He lacked the resources, confidence, and clout of Musk, who is pushing the same agenda with an alarming frenzy of activity.

In his post condemning Musk, Sanders linked to a video prepared by his staff, featuring Matt Duss, a former Sanders adviser who is now the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. In the video, Duss detailed the extent of Musk’s promotion of dangerous racists and authoritarians:

Musk, the richest person on earth, has long supported right-wing causes here in the United States, including spending a quarter of a billion dollars to re-elect Trump. But recently he’s decided to take his political project global, backing far-right parties in many other countries and using his massive platform to attack anyone who doesn’t share his views. Let’s start with Germany. In December, Musk publicly endorsed the German Alternative fur Deutschland, or AfD, a far-right political party with deep ties to the Neo-Nazi movement….

Despite trying to put forward a more moderate face in recent years the current party co-leader Alice Weidel has said she sees the defeat of Nazi Germany as “the defeat of one’s own country by a former occupying power,” rather than the country’s liberation from the cruelty of Nazism.

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But Musk seems fine with all this. He has written that quote, “Only the AfD can save Germany,” unquote. He has repeatedly praised the party and recently hosted a livestream with Weidel to boost the party’s electoral chances.

And it’s not just the German far-right. Musk has regularly attacked UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, most recently saying that Starmer was “complicit in the rape of Britain” and calling for him to face criminal charges while calling another labor minister a “rape genocide apologist.”

Musk has also repeatedly called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a member of England’s openly fascist British National Party, who is serving time in prison after libeling a 15 year-old Syrian refugee who was violently assaulted at school.

Both Sanders and Duss rightly link Musk’s behavior to the deeper problem of oligarchy. The superrich have amassed so much power in the United States that they now think they can use the government to promote a global assault on democracy.

The heartening news is that there is evidence that Musk’s promotion of the right and fascism is backfiring. In Canada, the Liberal Party, once lagging in polls by double digits, is now competitive again against the Conservative Party of Canada, running neck and neck. Credit for the Liberal surge goes to Trump and Musk, whose threats to absorb Canada as a 51st state have ignited a patriotic rally. Elon Musk happens to be a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. New Democratic Party member of Parliament Charlie Angus has crafted a petition calling for Musk to lose his Canadian citizenship.

The German elections on Sunday provide stronger evidence of a backlash against Musk’s far-right crusade. While AfD doubled its standing, receiving 20.7 percent of the vote, the party fell far short of their recent polling peak of 30 percent. Arguably, Musk’s embrace led to the party’s underperforming.

The likely new government with be a coalition between the traditional large parties, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) / Christian Social Union (CSU) working with the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). While there is little reason to be optimistic about this grand coalition of pro-system parties, which like similar arrangements in Canada and France is likely to prove incapable of addressing structural problems, the AfD will remain shut out of power. This pro-system coalition, made up of parties whose share of the popular vote has been shrinking, will have to contend with rising anti-system parties of both the right (such as AfD) and the left (the most promising development of the election being the revitalization of the unapologetically socialist Die Linke, which now has 8.5 percent of the vote).

Strikingly, Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union leader who will be the new chancellor of Germany, has taken a strong stance against the election interference by Trump and Musk. Although he has in the past been a staunch advocate of the NATO alliance, Merz now talks about Europe forging its own independent foreign policy.

On Sunday, Merz said, “I have absolutely no illusions about what is happening from America. Just look at the recent interventions in the German election campaign by Mr. Elon Musk—that is a unique event. The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my absolute priority now really is to create unity in Europe.”

Merz added: “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA. I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program. But after Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

It’s worth underscoring that Merz is a conservative European, the type of political figure that was once a crucial to supporting US hegemony over the continent and the world. The old dispensation of European elites being willing satraps of the United States is ending.

The fact that Trump and Musk are promoting a global fascist revolution is terrifying. But there is no certainty that they will succeed. Merz’s comments indicates one likely source of resistance. America’s erstwhile allies will increasingly turn against a superpower committed to undermining their democracies. The likely result is a United State that will be become more and more distrusted, isolated, and weakened. The true global revolution Musk is starting might be the end of American primacy.