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Elon Musk’s ‘election integrity community’ on X is full of baseless claims
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Elon
Musk’s ‘election integrity community’ on X is full of baseless claims
Feed is rife
with posts of individuals deemed suspicious and calls for doxxing with little
evidence provided of fault
Johana
Bhuiyan
Thu 31 Oct
2024 21.40 GMT
While Elon
Musk faces his own election integrity questions offline, the X owner has
deputized his followers to spot and report any “potential instances of voter
fraud and irregularities”. The community he spawned is rife with unfounded
claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.
Musk opted
not to show up to a required court appearance Thursday in Philadelphia to
respond to a lawsuit challenging his political action committee’s daily $1m
voter giveaway. Meanwhile, online, he has started a dedicated community space
on X, formerly Twitter, where he’s asked users to share any issues they see
while voting. Users posting on the self-contained feed, the “election integrity
community”, quickly began pointing out what they deemed as evidence of fraud
and election interference.
Tweets
showing everything from ballots that arrived ripped, an ABC news system test, a
postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail-in ballots were all presented
as evidence that the upcoming presidential election had been compromised. Some
users posted videos of individuals they deemed suspicious, despite providing
little or no proof of suspicious activity and asked others in the community to
help identify them.
Among the
tweets are attempts at doxxing and identifying people who users falsely accuse
of ballot box stuffing or preventing Trump supporters from voting. In one case,
a post with 14,000 shares and 31,000 likes includes a video of a postal worker
bringing ballots into a polling location in Northampton county, Pennsylvania.
The same
video had been shared throughout X and other forums and retweeted by rightwing
influencers like Alex Jones. The user asks for help identifying the man. “He
says he’s with the post office but idk if I buy that,” the post reads. “He
wouldn’t talk to us and was acting very suspect.” The man in question was the
acting postmaster and a 25-year-veteran of the US Postal Service, the
Northampton county executive Lamont McClure confirmed to NBC News. McClure told
NBC News that the postal worker was already being harassed over the video.
Experts say
the community, which has more than 50,000 members, follows the same playbook
used in feverish online forums after the 2020 election to fuel claims that
votes were stolen. In 2020, it was the “Stop the Steal” Facebook group,
Telegram groups and message boards on alt-right social media firm Parler.
These groups
amassed hundreds of thousands of followers who perpetuated the baseless claim
that the election was being stolen from Donald Trump. Much of the anecdotal and
often unfounded stories shared in these groups by individuals were leveraged by
rightwing influencers and other figures to create the narrative that the
election was compromised, according to a report by the Election Integrity
Partnership.
“These are
real rumors by real people that are being picked up and used by a propaganda
machine that really wants to get that view out there,” said Renee DiResta, an
associate professor at Georgetown University and former research manager at
Stanford Internet Observatory. “That’s what happened in 2020. [It was the same]
process of ‘stop the steal.’ The slogan came from the top but it was ordinary
people who provided the ‘evidence’ to back up the idea that the election was
stolen.”
Before
anyone can determine whether the claims are true or false, users seize on the
posts and assume the often unsuspecting person being shown are guilty or doing
something bad, said DiResta. “Unfortunately the people who bear the costs are
the random people whose photographs they take.”
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The
“election integrity community” provides another glimpse into the echo chamber
of individuals across the country who believe the election will be or has
already been rigged against Trump. Though the space is separate from the normal
X feed, Musk has also shared some of the concerns posted in the community on
his own page.
Among the
narratives being pushed in the community is one that has become a pet
conspiracy theory of Musk’s. The SpaceX CEO has loudly and often made the false
claim that the Biden administration was “importing voters” in the form of
“unvetted illegal immigrants”. In the last few days, a Musk-funded super Pac
has been pushing a fake pro-Kamala Harris initiative called Project 2028. The
initiative has posted fake pro-Harris ads and sent texts to voters that include
claims that Harris will be opening the country’s borders and is pushing for
undocumented immigrants to be able to vote. Non-citizens are not allowed to
vote in the US, and there is no available evidence they are voting in droves as
claimed. Users in the community are sharing videos they say provides evidence
that Democrats are “bussing” undocumented immigrants to cast votes in their
favor.
An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted
An excess
of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted
Zoe Williams
Politicians
have always courted the wealthy, but Elon Musk and co represent a new kind of
donor, and an unprecedented danger to democracy
Thu 31 Oct
2024 10.00 GMT
The concept
of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin
around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich
people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton
of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough
positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think
themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in
the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law,
but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain.
The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern
remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising
US politics.
In the UK in
recent years the phrase has been repurposed in the wildest ways – to mean an
excess of people at university creates unwanted activism (my précis); or, in
the Economist (paraphrasing again), landslides create too many mediocre
backbench MPs, who can’t hope for preferment so make trouble instead. And while
the second proposition might be true, the first is basic anti-intellectualism.
Turchin didn’t specify exactly how much wealth puts you in a situation with an
overproduced elite, but he didn’t mean debt-laden students; he didn’t mean MPs;
he meant, for brevity, billionaires or the top 1%. When a lot of your media are
billionaire-owned, those media sources become endlessly inventive in taking the
heat off billionaires, nipping criticism in the bud by pilfering its vocabulary
and throwing it back at everyone.
But put a
pin in that for a second, because elite overproduction in its true sense is
hitting global politics square in the jaw. Elon Musk has inserted himself into
the US election by means long term and short, above board and below it. His
impact on X (formerly Twitter) since he bought it was mired for a while in
comical cackhandedness, but over the past few months the real purpose has
crystallised. Paid-for verification removed any faith in trusted sources that
couldn’t be bought; Republican accounts flourish, Democratic ones languish.
Musk himself has amplified lies and conspiracy theories. He has directly given
$75m to his America PAC (political action committee), which has an X account
and a yellow tick (whatever the hell that means) – it peddles xenophobic bilge.
Musk opened a $1m Philadelphia voter giveaway that may be illegal earlier in
the month.
Musk also
spoke at the Madison Square Garden rally, but left the “ironic” fash posting
(derogatory language about places and races) to others. He made one promise:
“We’re going to get the government off your back.” He fleshed out what small
government meant, in a telephone town hall (like a radio phone in, except the
radio phones you, the constituents) over the weekend: ordinary Americans would
face “temporary hardship” as welfare programmes are slashed in order to
restructure the economy, but they should embrace the pain, as “it will ensure
long-term prosperity”.
It’s not the
worst thing to come out of Trump’s camp in these last, nail-biting few days,
and it’s by no means the worst thing Musk has said, but it is the cleanest
image yet of what elite overproduction looks like: Elon Musk could never have
got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a
made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to
cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug
it. Another billionaire donor, John Paulson, has been floated for the treasury
secretary job, and Trump has a track record of rewarding big-ticket donors with
a seat at the table – the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman boasted in print about
his role in the new North America Free Trade Agreement negotiations in 2018,
and as part of Trump’s “strategic and policy forum” during the 2017
administration.
Inconveniently,
more billionaires (21) have donated to Kamala Harris’s campaign than to Trump’s
(14); this is a problem for mature democracies everywhere. All political
parties court high net worth individuals. It creates an atmosphere of
equivalence – if a rich man buys your clothes, how is that different to his
buying you a social media platform, except that you’re a cheaper date? If a
rich man quashes an endorsement of your rival, but doesn’t endorse you, does
that pass the sniff test? If a rich man creates a thinktank, which devises an
ideological scheme that people are medium-sure that you, in government, will
adopt wholesale, whose proposals are recruiting ideologically loyal civil
servants, collecting data on abortions and limiting the use of abortion pills,
is that any different to a money-bags with a pet peeve buying a tennis match
with a political leader at a charity auction?
And what
about the billionaires who keep a finger on both scales, donate to both
candidates because why not, it suits them to stay friends and it’s chicken feed
to them anyway? Is all this just the same game?
Qualitatively,
yes: all billionaires are bad news in politics; all bought influence is
undemocratic. But as billionaires line up behind a neofascist, you can see that
this is a new phase in which they’re looking for more bang for their buck.
They’re not trying to protect their commercial interests; they don’t need more
money. They don’t even seek to shore up their own political influence – rather,
to neuter any influence that may countervail it. Delinquent elites are in an
open crusade against democracy, which, yes, does appear to be pretty
destabilising.
Zoe Williams
is a Guardian columnist
Elon Musk skips hearing as $1m election giveaway case moves to federal court
Elon Musk
skips hearing as $1m election giveaway case moves to federal court
Absence
would have risked contempt of court had the case continued in Pennsylvania
Blake
Montgomery and agencies
Thu 31 Oct
2024 17.45 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/31/elon-musk-court-hearing-voter-lottery
Elon Musk
failed to show up to a required hearing in a Philadelphia case challenging his
$1m-a-day sweepstakes. His absence would have risked contempt of court had the
case continued in Pennsylvania court, but it was moved to federal court in
response to a motion filed by Musk’s attorneys, who did attend the hearing. No
hearings were immediately scheduled in the federal case.
Judge Angelo
Foglietta agreed that Musk, as a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by the
district attorney, Larry Krasner, should have attended the hearing in person,
but he declined to immediately sanction the tech mogul. Musk’s attorney said
his client could not “materialize” in the courtroom with notice only given the
night before.
Krasner’s
team challenged the notion that the founder of SpaceX could not make it to
Philadelphia, prompting a quick retort from the judge.
“Counsel,
he’s not going to get in a rocket ship and land on the building,” Foglietta
replied.
On
Wednesday, the judge had ordered all parties to attend the Thursday morning
hearing, including Musk. Musk’s attorneys had filed a motion to shift the suit
from Pennsylvania state court to federal court in a filing late that day, which
was granted shortly after Musk did not appear.
Lawyers for
the Philadelphia district attorney’s office requested the case be returned to
state court, calling the move to the higher court a “cowardly” delay tactic
meant to “run the clock until election day”. The federal judge assigned to the
case ordered Musk’s attorneys to respond by Friday morning. Musk’s counsel had
argued that state court was not the proper venue and that the Philadelphia
district attorney was engaging in thinly veiled electioneering.
“Rather,
although disguised as state law claims, the complaint’s focus is to prevent
defendants’ purported ‘interference’ with the forthcoming federal presidential
election by any means,” the Tesla CEO’s attorneys wrote.
In the
original suit, Krasner argued that Musk’s petition and associated contest were
“indisputably violating” specific Pennsylvania laws against illegal lotteries.
Musk’s attorneys said he was engaging in legally protected political speech and
spending.
John
Summers, an attorney for the DA’s office, told the judge on Thursday that
Musk’s Pac had “brazenly” continued the sweepstakes despite the lawsuit,
awarding about 13 checks of $1m since the contest began, including on the day
of the hearing.
“They’re
doing things in the dark. We don’t know the rules being followed. We don’t know
how they’re supposedly picking people at random,” Summers said. “It’s an
outrage.”
The cash
giveaways come from Musk’s political organization, which aims to boost Donald
Trump’s presidential campaign in the vital swing state, which is seen as a key
to victory by both Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris.
Krasner, a
Democrat, filed suit on Monday to stop the America Pac sweepstakes, which is
set to run through election day and is open to registered voters in swing
states who sign a petition supporting the constitution. Musk has been tweeting
photographs of the winners holding novelty checks.
Krasner has
said he could still consider criminal charges, saying he is tasked with
protecting the public from both illegal lotteries and “interference with the
integrity of elections”.
Election law
experts have raised questions about whether Musk’s drawing violates a federal
law barring someone from paying others to vote. Musk has cast the money as both
a prize as well as earnings for work as a spokesperson for the group.
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