In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a South African-American businessman and social media figure, Elon Musk (@elonmusk). He’s best-known for being the wealthiest man in the world, running companies like Tesla Inc., SpaceX and Twitter/X, and for parroting the Kremlin’s propaganda narratives.

Let’s start with the obvious: Elon’s tweets have an enormous effect on Twitter & his tweets have a big audience. Every tweet he likes or comments gets a huge boost in the algorithm & is then shown to tens of millions of people.Some have called his replies a “stamp of approval”.

He’s promised to make Twitter the “most accurate source of information about the world, ” but strangely he’s flirted with various conspiracy theories throughout the years. Among other things, he’s denied the white supremacist background of a mass shooter, spread COVID-19…

…misinformation and parroted George Soros related conspiracy theories. A lot of Elon’s views on various topics may actually come from other people. His ex-wife, @TalulahRiley called for unbanning of @TheBabylonBee, his friend @joerogan had previously called for a social…

…media platform that works like a “marketplace of ideas” — a philosophy where the “best” ideas from the likes of alleged human trafficker/rapist @cobratate & QAnon-affiliated @RepMTG rise to the top — & said that Musk should “liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob”.

When it comes to the war, he seems to mostly listen to @davidsacks, among a few other disinformation peddlers. In October 2022, Musk tweeted about “Ukraine-Russia Peace”, calling for UN-supervised elections in the annexed areas. He also stated that Crimea would remain part of Russia.

He then warned about escalation and the threat of nuclear war. A very similar peace plan was suggested by his “war room” buddy @davidsacks just a week before Musk’s tweet. He later backtracked, polling whether the people in Donbas & Crimea should “decide whether they want…

…to be part of Russia or Ukraine" — which they did already in 1991 as you can see from this Independence Referendum voting map.

In June 2023, @davidsacks blessed us with another long tweet, condemning the Ukrainian counteroffensive as a failure, while at the same time…

…praising Mearsheimer’s realpolitik garbage. Musk commended his old friend’s post, stating that it was “Well said.”

Elon has also discredited @bellingcat, one of the biggest investigative groups fighting Russian disinformation, calling them a “psyop”.

Bellingcat has exposed loads of Russian atrocities, including the down shooting of MH17, the identity of Russia’s drone operators, and the Skripal poisonings.

For this, it has become number one target of defamation by the pro-Kremlin propagandists like @aaronjmate.

After Twitter introduced subscription service, one of Elon’s first subscriptions on Twitter was @KanekoaTheGreat, a QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theorist known for pushing Kremlin narratives about Ukraine, especially about the country’s ethnic “division”.

He’s also attended civil discussions on Twitter Spaces with pro-Kremlin propagandists like @KimDotcom and @stillgray. Incidentally, these Spaces rarely offer any real discussion, but are rather back-patting exercises of people who mostly agree with each other.

Musk has strongly promoted one of the biggest liars and Putin cheerleaders in the US media, Tucker Carlson. In the first episode of his new “show” on Twitter, Carlson implied that the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed by the Ukrainians — without offering any proof, of course.

These narratives are heavily promoted by Musk and his Twitter platform, promoting Russia’s biggest adversaries as “psyops” and Ukraine as a corrupt nation ruled by far-right militias. As you know by now, they come directly from the Kremlin propaganda playbook.

Of course all this has been used for propaganda purposes by Russia, and these days Elon appears often on RT’s headlines allegedly agreeing that the Ukrainian counterattack is failing and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a coup.

Elon has called himself a “politically moderate”, but in 2022 he clearly chose a side, saying that he could “no longer support” the Democrats due to their politics & encouraged people to vote Republican in the midterm elections. DeSantis announced his run for presidency on Twitter Spaces. 16/24

For some, Twitter has become more “free speech”. But for others, not so much: On 13 June 2023, Musk-led Twitter suspended the Twitter account of Aaron Greenspan, a critic of both Tesla and Musk. His project, PlainSite, that shares court filings for free was also suspended.

Musk has removed plenty of barriers to slow down the spread of disinformation, including EU’s voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. At the same time, he’s complied to censorship requests from Indian and Turkish ruling parties by removing and restricting content.

To conclude: Why is Musk pushing, among other things, the peace plan where Ukraine would lose a lot? My theory is that the war is bad for business. His businesses require a lot of raw materials, and both Russia & China are in the top 3 of the biggest raw material producers.

Tesla Inc.’s conflict mineral report from 2022 reveals that Russia (as well as China) is a country of origin for their gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten. Tesla has also been buying aluminum from Rusal since 2020. Rusal was founded by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and it…

…accounts for almost 9% of the world’s aluminum output. He was sanctioned by the Trump administration in April 2018 for alleged illegal wiretapping, extortion and racketeering, and he also allegedly ordered a murder of a businessman. The sanctions were later watered down by…

…Trump and co. as they would “disrupt the aluminum markets” and Deripaska intended to invest 200 million USD in a Kentucky aluminum mill, but this plan eventually failed.

But business is business, even when it comes from a Russian oligarch, and I’m sure Elon knows this.

It would probably be impossible or extremely expensive to produce cars, rockets and other technology without the raw materials from Russia or China, and the US sanctions imposed on the former have probably already made it more difficult.

Maybe Elon just doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds his companies? I’m sure his lobbying power in the US will keep his businesses going even after his “anti-establishment” hot takes, but we will probably never see him criticizing the likes of Russia, CCP or Saudi Arabia.

If you missed the first part of this #vatniksoup, find it here:

Elon Musk (part 1)

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Starlink