Donald Trump’s first term gave the world a taste of deliberately disruptive unwanted involvement in the domestic affairs of other countries, with examples ranging from Britain in the throes of Brexit to North Korea where the 45th US president attempted to forge a personal deal with Kim Jung-Un.

US tech billionaire Elon Musk, however, has taken this to a whole new level. Musk appears willing to intrude in other nations’ affairs by using his personal influence with specific decision-makers, governments and institutions, or by attacking them from the sidelines of social media in order to remake them in the way he wants them to be. In contrast, Trump is more pragmatic and could do a deal with any nation provided they fall in line with his “America first” mission, and give him what he demands.

In the past six months, many countries have been subjected to Musk’s “personal foreign policy” initiatives. Until fairly recently, there were two schools of thought on his interest in global politics. Initially, Musk was merely “a mischievous antagonist” who simply loved to shock and appeared largely driven by social media.

But that has given way to nervousness in the face of Musk’s increasingly deliberate attempts at destabilising governments, including his persistent stoking of populist support for far-right parties, and potentially funding populist allies. This comes as current president Joe Biden warns of the growing power of the ultra wealthy in his final address to the nation before he steps down.

Musk wields enormous global influence not merely because of his wealth, connections, and fleet of companies. But arguably because he is a self-proclaimed populist, with increasingly far-right political preferences. As of January 20, he will also be a significant member of the Trump administration.

His political toolbox includes supporting or (more usually) strafing individual politicians (for instance UK prime minister Keir Starmer, or German chancellor Olaf Scholz ). He also backs populist parties such as Reform UK and AfD in Germany. He criticises government officials in other countries, judges and broadcasting outlets in places where he doesn’t live.

Musk’s political involvement appears to be largely aimed at giving succour to populist individuals, parties and causes, as well as actively hollowing out centrist parties in other countries. Musk’s political intrusion, however, has expanded of late, with an apparent eye on election results.

Examples include countries with elections some way off (Canada by attacking prime minister Justin Trudeau), or much sooner (Germany), giving him scope to criticise the incumbents while backing his chosen opposition party.

Musk’s attention is extensive, from attacks on Starmer, to support for Italy’s Georgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei.

WHOSE FOREIGN POLICY?

The worry for those working in foreign policy is that Musk has proven effective in the role of Trump’s pre-inauguration disruptor of choice, and may well be deployed in the name of the US government to continue his interference and destabilisation. The challenge will then be discerning where Musk’s personalised foreign policy ends, and where precisely US foreign policy begins.

Musk positions himself as the global defender of free speech , in order to soften the ground for Trump’s preferred combination of far-right populism and protectionist, tariff-driven trade approaches.

Musk’s way of working is to encourage national communities and leaders to “rally against rules”, thereby empowering far-right parties, and industry leaders who have spotted an opportunity to deregulate key sectors.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg recently announced an enormous transformation of the social media giant’s content moderation policy in the US. The European Parliament’s far right grouping Patriots for Europe supported Musk’s call for greater media freedom.

Both of these conveniently aligned with Musk’s targeting of the EU and EU regulation as “institutionalised censorship”, paving the way for Trump himself to kickstart any number of quarrels.

The buffer zones of common sense, including former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg as (the now former) head of policy for Meta, have been dispensed with. Zuckerberg’s thinking now echoes that of companies, regulators and politicians who agree with Trump.

DISRUPTIVE AND DIVISIVE

Musk represents both indirect and direct state interference as a solo global disruptor and as Trump’s preferred front man. Sitting at Trump’s right hand and – as of January 20 – heading the new US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – means it is unclear who is acting, and in whose interests and crucially, who benefits.

Are countries less likely to tell Musk and Trump to back off, aware of the risk of a deluge of ire with very real consequences in terms of trade spats? This is certainly the approach of many, including Marietje Schaake, former European parliamentarian, arguing that: “Musk must be seen as representing the US president when he bets against the leadership of key European nations, allies until now.”

Or are countries just as likely to disregard Musk, betting that the ramped up performative bullying inherited from Trump can be largely ignored?

RESPONDING TO INTERFERENCE

While many may push back, only a few have the ability to make a difference in global politics, and the EU is one such example. The European Commission made clear that it closely watched Musk’s recent X livestream session with Alice Weidel, leader of German’s far right party AfD. This was in order to decide whether X itself provides (in this case) the AfD with an unfair public advantage – largely through the manipulation of algorithms designed to swamp competing non-AfD voices ahead of February’s German election.

The European Commission – in its role as enforcer of Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) – could impose high fines, or blocks. But it will need serious political will to do so, as well as incontrovertible evidence to prove that X is causing risk to the public by augmenting unlawful hate speech.

What are the consequences of Musk’s rollercoaster ride into global affairs? Deregulation is likely to be the order of the day. Maga has long pushed for a “small state/big companies” approach and this is likely to continue under Musk’s leadership of Doge.

There could also be problems ahead for those who don’t understand Musk’s role. Casualties here could include prospective secretary of state Marco Rubio along with US foreign policy officials in Washington (and their counterparts around the world), all of whom may be confused by whose agenda is being carried out.

But a slew of angry international allies is a poor start for any new government. Violating the “norms of responsible conduct” – however flippantly Musk regards them – will not ultimately assist in Trump himself being effective, but rather just more disruptive.

(Author: Amelia Hadfield, Head of Department of Politics, University of Surrey)

(Disclosure Statement: Amelia Hadfield has received Jean Monnet /Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe funding from the European Commission)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Participants gather to demonstrate after AfD won its state election in Thuringia in Weimar, Germany on September 2.  
| Photo Credit: AP

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) have massively upended mainstream politics in two German regional elections on September 1. The AfD’s victory in the stronghold state of Thuringia marks the first time in the country’s post-war history that a radical right-wing party has come within touching distance of forming a government in a region. Similarly, in the regional polls in neighbouring Saxony, the AfD, sections of which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated as extremist, stood a close second behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Also Read: ​Hollow middle: On the regional election results in Germany

The recent surge follows a watershed moment last year, when it registered a significant presence in western Germany in the legislative elections in Bavaria and Hesse, as the three parties in the German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition suffered a drubbing. Additionally, the BSW, launched in January, overtook all the constituents in the federal coalition in both regions. The AfD and BSW’s inroads has come just a year before Germany’s autumn 2025 elections.

Towards either extreme

Polling over 30% of the votes both in Thuringia and Saxony, the AfD has capitalised the most on the internecine squabbling within chancellor Scholz’s coalition, extreme xenophobia and disapproval of German arms supplies to Ukraine. The scars from the upheavals of transition following German reunification in the 1990s also appear to weigh heavily on voters in the eastern regions.

The political tide turned particularly hostile when the federal government last year sought to ban gas and oil-fired boilers from 2024 to replace them with heat pumps powered by renewable energy. The potential burden on households from the measure sparked intense outrage, forcing the government to water down the legislation. The controversy, moreover, exposed deep divisions in the ruling coalition between the Greens, who spearheaded the environment-friendly shift, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Right-wing resurgence and response

Bjorn Hocke is the AfD’s polarising ethno-nationalist leader from Thuringia who almost single-handedly moulded the AfD to an irretrievably ultra-nationalist hard-right movement. The former school teacher earned notoriety for his infamous denunciation in 2017 of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to the Jews as a “monument of shame,” calling for a “180 degree turnaround” in the country’s attitude to its Nazi past. Undeterred by fines imposed by two courts, Mr. Hocke continues to spout banned Nazi era slogans in his speeches. He has drawn fresh ammunition from the refugee influx from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was well in excess of the one million inflows from the Syrian conflict in 2015. Mr. Hocke is one of the architects of the party’s aggressive push for the repatriation of migrants, a euphemism for the mass deportation of German nationals with immigrant roots.

Even though Mr. Scholz has warned mainstream parties against forging alliances with the AfD, his own governing coalition is fighting speculation that it might break up and trigger snap parliamentary elections. While the main opposition CDU aims to exploit the slump in the popularity of the ruling coalition in the 2025 general elections, its leader Friedrich Merz has so far proved ineffective in realising his pledge to halve the poll ratings of the AfD. The failure may have something to do with the CDU’s controversial approach, in its new programme adopted in May, to return the party to its old conservative principles. The new programme requires immigrants to sign on to the country’s dominant culture and knowledge of German history, besides recognising Israel’s right to exist. Most controversial of them all is a plan to discourage refugees from seeking asylum in Germany, by transferring applicants to “safe” third countries.

Mr. Merz has been explicit that Germany could emulate the U.K.’s controversial policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The way forward

The victory in Thuringia could prove the biggest test yet to the mainstream parties’ notional firewall to preclude any collaboration with the AfD.

Sahra Wagenknecht, the BSW leader, has emerged kingmaker following the CDU’s invitation to explore a coalition in Thuringia. While such a deal seems the only realistic option to isolate the AfD in the state, there are clear indications that talks are headed for a hard bargain. For a start, there are rumblings within both the CDU and BSW against working with an arch ideological opponent.

Some of the terms Ms. Wagenknecht has placed for discussion fall outside the purview of the regions. She has for instance insisted that her party’s support for a government would be conditional upon the cancellation of plans Chancellor Schulz and U.S. President Joe Biden have finalised with respect to stationing medium-range missiles in Germany. Her other condition, to the discomfort of many in the CDU who regard her as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is to explore a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

The writer is Director, Strategic Initiatives, AgnoShin Technologies.

People gather at Republique plaza in a protest against the far-right on July 3, 2024 in Paris
| Photo Credit: AP

French voters face a decisive choice on July 7 in the run-off of snap parliamentary elections that could see the country’s first far-right government since the World War II Nazi occupation — or no party emerging with a majority at all. In Sunday’s first round, the National Rally came first with an estimated one-third of the votes. The New Popular Front coalition that included the center-left, green and left forces polled close to 29% of the vote and came in second place, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance.

If the National Rally or the Left alliance gets a majority, Mr. Macron will be forced to appoint a Prime Minister belonging to a new majority. In such a situation — called “cohabitation” in France — the government would implement policies that diverge from the President’s plan. The rise of a far-right party in France has not been sudden. When Mr. Macron was re-elected in 2022, his vote share did not increase in any department. In contrast, his challenger from the far-right National Rally Marine Le Pen’s vote share rose across the country, resulting in the far-right’s best-ever performance. More importantly, the rise of the Right in European politics is not limited to France.

Also Read | The far-right swing in European Parliament elections | Explained

In last month’s European Parliamentary Elections, right-wing and far-right parties achieved their best performance in the legislative body’s history. The far-right European Conservatives and Reformists Group and the Identity and Democracy Group together increased their tally from 118 to 131 seats in the Parliament, while the left-Greens’ seat share was reduced to 53 from 71.

Chart 1 | The chart shows the vote share secured by right-leaning parties in the national-level polls of the U.K. and select countries in the European Union. 

Chart appears incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

The vote share of right-leaning parties is increasing at varying degrees of pace in each country. For instance, the vote share of the National Rally increased from just 4% in 2007 to 19% in 2022. The German party, Alternative for Germany, recorded over 10% vote share in the last two elections, with the Sweden Democrats vote share increasing from 2% in 2006 to 20% in 2022 in Swedish polls.

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Given that most such parties have an anti-immigrant stance, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday called for vigilance, citing narratives that dehumanise migrants and asylum seekers. One other impact may be on the nations’ views about NATO, and the ongoing-war between Russia and Ukraine.

Also Read | Comment: The spectre of neo-fascism that is haunting Europe

Polls by Pew Survey indicate that in some European countries, positive views about NATO and confidence in Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy have started to decline. In contrast, slight increases in favourable views towards Russia and confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin were recorded across many European countries in 2024 compared to a year before.

Table 2 | The table lists responses to four questions — Q1: % who have a favourable opinion of NATO; Q2: % who have a favourable view of Russia; Q3: % who have confidence in Mr. Putin to do the right thing; Q4: % who have confidence in Mr. Zelenskyy to do the right thing. The percentage point change in 2024 from 2023 is also listed.

According to Pew Survey, in several European countries, people who have a favourable view of a right-wing populist party in their country see Russia and Mr. Putin more positively than people with unfavourable views of those parties.

Also Read | Turning inward: The Hindu’s Editorial on the rise of far-right parties in Europe

While their support dropped in 2022 and 2023, confidence in Russia and Mr. Putin has climbed back up in 2024 as shown in Chart 3.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the share who have confidence in Russian President, Vladimir Putin, among supporters of right-wing parties.

Note: This article appeared on the print version on July 4, 2024

Source: Pew Research Centre and ParlGov