Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has risen to prominence as an influential political figure in recent years. He now leads the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump Administration. Recently, he criticized various European governments and their leadership and even offered to make significant donations to the UK’s Reform Party. 

As John T Psaropoulos has suggested, Musk believes he influenced Trump’s re-election, and now has his sights set on Europe. Psaropoulos notes ‘Musk, the tech billionaire who owns X and backed United States President Donald Trump, is at the centre of several debates in Europe having fanned British politics into a firestorm by amplifying attacks on Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and platforming Germany’s far right … Musk is also busy meddling in German politics, in advance of a critical election next month that the governing Social Democrats are set to lose … On January 9, he conducted an interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel, in which she recast Adolph Hitler’s Nazis as the forerunners not of her party, which sprang from the Neonazi movement, but of Germany’s Social Democrats … Digital experts place X’s penetration somewhere between 50 and 100 million users on the continent of 550 million people, but Musk’s reach is amplified through the news media and his influence on other platform owners. Musk’s close alliance with Trump also creates the perception that he speaks for the president, and gives him power over his peers … Musk has fused his companies’ interests with the state’s, making himself indispensable. Space-X launches NASA’s payloads, Starlink provides the Pentagon with the largest global system of communications satellites, and Tesla disrupted a global car industry that had marginalised Detroit carmakers, bringing the US back to the fore. X has now become the dominant global communications platform, and Musk is weaponising it against news media, telling followers, “X is the future, it’s citizen journalism … It’s by the people, for the people.” (Al Jazeera.2025) As Psaropolous outlines, Musk is increasingly becoming an influential force in politics, establishing himself as a key player in the newly formed Trump Administration, aligning himself with far-right parties in Europe and using his influence over X to amplify his political ideologies. 

Regarding Musk’s growing influence in US and European politics, Jos Betts and Lydia Wilson affirm ‘Musk appears to have tapped into the ongoing stream of far-right invective and, in one sense, this is hardly surprising. His takeover of X, recasting it as a bastion of “free speech,” and his alliance with President-elect Donald Trump have seen him become a right-wing figurehead and led to him rubbing shoulders with Britain’s Nigel Farage, the anti-EU and anti-immigration campaigner who is now a lawmaker and leader of the Brexit Party’s reincarnation, Reform UK. It is also clear that, as an enthusiastic user of his own product, Musk has been on a journey of self-radicalization, as the more extreme, conspiratorial and visceral X emerged like the “Alien” chestburster from the body of Twitter. Musk had previously turned his attention to the U.K. during the summer riots, posting that “Civil war is inevitable” and promoting the idea that British police were harder on right-wing protesters because of their backgrounds, which prompted a pushback from Starmer and the police and possibly gave Musk an ax to grind … Musk is now clearly in the game of accumulating political power, even if a large part of the purpose is to challenge social media regulation, hoover up government contracts and subsidies beyond the U.S. or secure global market share in electric vehicles by ensuring that his Teslas made cheaply in China can continue to be sold everywhere while European car manufacturers go to the wall. Whatever his motivation, his vast wealth and the connections of his enterprises to policy will make learning how to influence global politics more effectively an achievable and worthwhile goal in his eyes. This is likely to remain the case even if splits within Trump’s camp, like that with strategist Steve Bannon (who has vowed to reduce the influence of the “racist” and “truly evil” Musk), pry him away from the president … What exactly this means for politicians like Farage and Weidel — or Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Viktor Orban and others — is unclear. The first quarter of the century has seen them successfully chip away at Europe’s political norms without the help of Musk’s X account. Can his money, publicity and proximity to Trump outweigh his capriciousness and relative unpopularity in Europe, and will Musk enjoy the process of managing new alliances? Amid the onslaught of outrageous and clearly spontaneous statements from both Musk and Trump, understanding what’s sincere and what’s posture is not easy. The element of chaos is clearly a fundamental part of the communication style, but it doesn’t follow that all the effects are part of the plan. For both Musk and the rest of the world, the ultimate results of playing with right-wing fire are unknowable.’ (New Lines Magazine) As the authors explain, Musk’s desire to gain political power, coupled with his vast wealth and connections could bolster the far right political campaigns in Europe which have already begun to rise in popularity over the last few years.

Musk’s foray into politics will undoubtedly have tangible implications on the landscape of US and European politics for years to come, with the far-right likely to make the most significant gains.