No, really, Elon Musk is not Thomas Paine

On rebranding and the recapturing of dissent

When news on Musk’s Twitter takeover first struck back in April, I wrote a short piece on how the character of management is basically irrelevant to the inherent structural effects of these kinds of digital platforms. These remarks seem relevant once again.

So let me be frank.

The “controversial” and much ballyhooed “corporate raid” perpetrated by the libertarian loose cannon™ Elon Musk is nothing more than an attempted facelift of a core propaganda institution of the system.

The immediate intended effect is the softening and recapturing of the broad, popular dissent that emerged in the wake of the covid tyranny, and which has been consolidated not least in relation to the imperialist Ukraine proxy war, the immense and tangible propaganda that’s drowned us for the last two years and a half, and the increasingly draconian censorship measures that have come to characterize the digital… Realm.

The intended indirect effect is the restoration of the legitimacy of legacy mass media institutions and the suppression of the alternatives.

The massive if disorganized dissent has for various reasons been funnelled towards the right-libertarian political sphere, including the ascendant radical right. This broad-spectrum opposition is in many ways is a sort of rag-tag movement with little in the way of a stable theoretical foundation upon which to mount a durable transformation of society.

And now we see tweets upon tweets of libs pulling out their hair over the purported loss of censorship that Musk’s purchase will entail, and the dissenter movement is naturally quite giddy over all of this.

It’s not surprising that people within the broader and embryonic uprising feel satisfaction over the firing of Twitter managers making headlines.

But we’re being played here. Structurally.

And a lot of voices within the opposition seem to take the bait. Robert Malone recently posted a triumphant piece celebrating Musk’s enthronement. ZeroHedge gave us this smug article on how Musk’s Twitter “slaps the White House” with fact checks, sticking it to the Brandon administration.

The character and position of the platform itself is suddenly not a problem. Now censorship and propaganda can be a force for good again. Twitter’s still the kingmaker. Cancel culture is all good now that it has a new management, and can be used to target those we happen to dislike.

And all of this takes place in a context of a major narrative shift. Finland refuses the recommendation of further covid vaccinations, actually citing risks of immunity suppression. Biden’s pinning the Pelosi assault on the “deplorables” is predictably not being received well, and likely implies a mid-term victory for the Republicans. The incredibly incendiary and implicitly conceding call for a “covid amnesty” is making the rounds.

The problem is that the system can easily pivot in terms of narrative and just throw a few symbolic scapegoats under the bus, while its fundamental structures remain entirely unchallenged. It can scrap the covid narratives and any support for the already-complete mass vaccination, own up to mistakes being made and even send a few of the most visible representatives to the gallows.

And if a few of our more prominent leaders are given high posts in the media apparatus, the brand new Republican party, or the right-wing coalitions of Europe, most of you are going to fall in line.