The owner of X uses fake news and far-right conspiracy theories to discredit political opponents and convey his own ideological battles. This article was originally published by Facta

In early February, Musk launched a message to all European citizens on his social platform, X: “Join the Mega movement! Make Europe Great Again!!”.

“Make Europe Great Again” (or MEGA) is a slogan that echoes President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and was first used last year by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during Hungary’s six-month presidency by the Council of the European Union (EU). A few days after Musk’s post, on Feb. 8, 2025, just under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again,” leaders of the right-wing and far-right eurosceptic parties of the “Patriots for Europe” group gathered in Madrid, agreeing that Trump is the example to follow in Europe. 

The post by Elon Musk, one of Trump administration’s leading figures, is just one of the latest episodes of his interference in European politics, which is becoming increasingly heavy-handed, including insults to European (left-wing) heads of government and calls for their arrest, attacks on the judiciary and open support for far-right parties and politicians in Europe. 

This online political campaign waged by the world’s richest man is not just affecting one continent, but several parts of the world. An investigation by NBC News showed that Musk over the past two years has encouraged right-wing political movements, policies, and administrations in at least 18 countries to push policies dear to him globally.

Among these policies is reducing immigration in the name of “nativism”, a theory promoted by the far-right that suggests that the native population of a territory has greater rights than newcomers, as explained Mattia Zulianello, a professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Trieste and a scholar of right-wing populism.

The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and owner of X also aims to limit regulations on businesses. In Europe, for example, Musk has targeted the Digital Services Act (DSA), the regulation on digital services approved by the European Parliament in 2022 and enforced in February 2024. Currently, there are ongoing investigations by the European Commission – responsible for enforcing the DSA – into X for potential violations.

Contacted by the American broadcaster, Manuela Caiani, associate professor of Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and an expert on international far-right movements, stated that in this way Musk is helping these movements grow by exchanging ideas, creating personal connections, and building a shared ideological framework with people attracted to him due to his wealth, even though he does not hold a conventional elected position.  “It is very dangerous that a nonpolitical actor now speaks with a sort of political legitimacy. He’s changing the paradigm of politics”, Caiani emphasized.

The main tool Elon Musk uses for this strategic global political campaign is X itself, the social media platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022, where he has a massive following—the largest on the platform, with a profile boasting over 220 million followers. According to Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Emarketer, a market research company that provides insights and trends on digital marketing and media, the entrepreneur who “controls one of the world’s largest microphones” is fully aware of “the power of social media in shaping a political narrative”. 

For this reason, as the owner of X and its most-followed user, Musk has increasingly used his platform as a megaphone to amplify his political views and, lately, those of the right-wing figures he has aligned with, explains Barbara Ortutay, a social media expert journalist at the Associated Press (AP).

At the same time, the billionaire has reportedly made structural changes to his platform’s algorithm to favor his content and that of far-right users in the feed, as various journalistic investigations have documented.

Due to these suspicions, in mid-January, the European Commission asked X to hand over internal documents on its algorithms to verify whether there were manipulations in the platform’s internal systems to give greater visibility to far-right posts and politicians compared to other political groups. In early February, an investigation into X was also launched by the Paris cybercrime unit following a complaint by French MP Eric Bothorel, who denounced a distortion in the platform’s recommendation algorithms. “There are several indications that suggest Elon Musk is organizing and prioritizing information favorable to the ideology he defends and that he is distorting the flow of information” on his social media, Bothorel explained to France Info.

From the emerging evidence, it is becoming increasingly evident that Musk has transformed X into a powerful tool for amplifying and mainstreaming his ideas and those of the political faction he supports. On The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel states that, based on Musk’s actions as the owner of X, it is accurate to define him as a far-right activist. Elon Musk, as the American journalist specializing in technology, media, and politics claims, “has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism […] his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology”.

And in this global propaganda operation, false and misleading narratives spread by far-right social networks play a central role, which the owner of X, with his hundreds of millions of followers, has systematized, politically legitimizing them as a means to attack and discredit opponents and push his ideological battles.

Disinformation as a political weapon

The public relationship between factual reality and the world’s richest man has always been complicated. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, Musk spread false news about the SARS-CoV-2 infection, minimized the risks of COVID-19, and promoted alleged treatments later proven to have no scientific basis, such as hydroxychloroquine.

As a detailed Rolling Stone investigation recently reconstructed, Musk began using political disinformation as a deliberate strategy to delegitimize liberal parties, progressive causes, and opposing governments. His immense influence and global celebrity allow him to shape public discourse both online and offline.

In 2022, Musk amplified a conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi’s family, the former Democratic speaker of the US House of Congress from 2019 to 2023. In that year a man, after breaking into the Democratic Party member’s home, had violently assaulted, hitting him with a hammer, her husband, Paul Pelosi (82 at the time). Musk had shared with his millions of followers an article from a site known to spread false news that supported the unsubstantiated claim that it was not an assault but a drunken fight between the Speaker’s husband and a prostitute the man had paid.

The following year Musk also endorsed far-right conspiracy theories that denied the fact that the man with Nazi tattoos who shot dead 8 people in a shopping mall on May 6, 2023 in Allen, Texas was a white supremacist.

There are also Musk’s posts against George Soros, a Jewish-born billionaire philanthropist who supports liberal causes through his Open Society Foundations and who has long been at the center of a variety of conspiracy theories from the right that portray him as a high-powered “puppet master” who moves behind the scenes to influence governments around the world. Musk has posted content in which he accuses Soros of “eroding the very fabric of civilization” and “hating humanity,” helping to fuel the various conspiracy theories, including anti-Semitic ones, against him, as denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights group that monitors and combats incidents of anti-Semitism.

Weeks after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Musk endorsed as an “absolute truth” an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews had incited against white people in the same way that hatred had been incited against them. The owner of X also supported the completely unfounded theory that recent mass shootings in the United States were primarily carried out by transgender individuals. Musk has long promoted a right-wing political campaign based on stereotypes against transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community.

Last summer, violent anti-immigrant protests took place in various parts of the United Kingdom, fueled by the far right and xenophobic disinformation, following the deadly stabbing of three girls in Southport in late July by a 17-year-old born in Cardiff (Wales) to Rwandan parents. Musk also participated in spreading false news, sharing, for instance, a fake Telegraph article claiming that center-left Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer was considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detention camps” in the Falkland Islands. He also amplified the false myth that white far-right protesters in the UK were victims of a “two-tier policing system” that treated them more harshly due to their skin color and political beliefs compared to Black individuals. Twelve of Musk’s posts on the topic had garnered over 352.9 million views in total, according to an analysis conducted by Logically Facts.

At the beginning of 2025, the owner of X launched a social media attack against the Labour government of Keir Starmer, publishing over 100 posts that amassed more than 100 million views. He falsely accused the Prime Minister of allowing grooming gangs to avoid prosecution in exchange for votes from their communities during his tenure as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013. Musk referred to an old scandal in the UK, uncovered through investigative journalism, regarding sexual abuse and rapes committed in certain English cities by organized grooming gangs, often composed of men of Asian descent. This politically motivated attack, based on false information and misleading content, managed to dominate public opinion in the UK and forced the government to issue multiple rebuttals to Musk’s accusations.

With Donald Trump’s return to the political scene, the billionaire entrepreneur actively campaigned for the Republican candidate ahead of the November presidential elections. In addition to financing Trump and the Republican Party’s campaign with approximately 130 million dollars, Musk spread disinformation against the Democratic Party through X.

By echoing Republican figures and MAGA influencers, Musk promoted false narratives, such as claims that Democrats allowed illegal immigrants into the country to expand their voter base. He shared doctored images of Kamala Harris wearing a communist red uniform with a hammer and sickle emblem and baselessly questioned the electoral process in Michigan, a key swing state, accusing Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of dishonesty. According to a report by the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), Musk’s false or misleading claims about the U.S. elections reached 2 billion views on X. Reuters later described X and its owner as “the epicenter of disinformation” in this crucial election cycle.

After winning the U.S. election and becoming the 47th President of the United States, Trump appointed Elon Musk to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) to advise on reducing bureaucracy and cutting wasteful spending.

Between January and February 2025, under Musk’s direction, the new Trump administration dismissed thousands of federal employees, particularly those working in diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, as well as foreign humanitarian workers.

Specifically, Trump and Musk announced their intent to shut down USAID, the US federal agency for international humanitarian aid, labeling it “a criminal organization” and “a nest of radical leftist Marxists who hate America”.

To discredit USAID and strengthen his campaign against government spending, Musk began spreading disinformation on X, falsely claiming that the agency’s funding, meant for humanitarian projects worldwide, had been misused. He also shared a fabricated Russian propaganda story alleging that USAID paid Hollywood celebrities millions of dollars to visit Ukraine as a publicity stunt. The Antibot4Navalny collective, which monitors Russian hybrid warfare operations, stated that this was the first time such content had been disseminated by the head of a social media platform.

As Musk cemented his role as one of the main political disinformers online, X underwent managerial decisions that significantly weakened efforts to combat false news and hate speech. Under Musk’s leadership, content moderation teams were heavily reduced, tools for reporting political disinformation were disabled, and access to platform data for disinformation research was restricted. The “Community Notes” system, designed to counter disinformation, was widely criticized as a failure.

At the same time, numerous right-wing activists and conspiracy theorists were reinstated on X after previously being banned for violating Twitter’s former policies on hate speech and misinformation. This included far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who had been ordered to pay billions in damages for falsely claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax. With his readmission to X, Jones was able to return to a new life online, reaching an ever-widening audience with his content.

According to multiple studies, these decisions have led to a significant increase in hate speech, false news, and conspiracy theories on X. Such management has led several media outlets — including Facta — as well as institutions, organizations, and many ordinary people to abandon X. Several major advertising investors had also decided to withdraw from X, and nearly two years after Musk’s acquisition, the platform’s value had dropped by 80 percent, according to estimates from investment giant Fidelity.

However, after his rise as a key figure in Donald Trump’s administration, some major advertising corporations returned to investing in X. According to a February report by Bloomberg, Musk is in negotiations to raise money from investors at a valuation of at least $44 billion for X. This would bring the company’s worth back to approximately what he originally paid for it. Furthermore, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, a US-based think tank, X stands out among social media platforms as the primary source people turn to for updates on politics and political issues.

As Adam Clark Estes wrote on Vox, as the billionaire accumulates more power, X’s influence over global public opinion increases. For this reason, the technology journalist continues, “we are all living inside Elon Musk’s disinformation machine”. Which, as we will see, has a specific way of operating.

A participatory disinformation

When using disinformation as a political tool, Elon Musk does not create false news and conspiracy theories himself. Instead, the owner of X primarily shares false and misleading content from a swarm of far-right and conspiracy accounts highly active on his platform. This strategy achieves multiple objectives at once: with his account boasting over 220 million followers, he mainstreams far-right narratives that were previously marginal, while simultaneously boosting the follower count and social reach of these profiles, granting them credibility.

In April 2023, Musk promoted a post falsely suggesting that doctors had misdiagnosed influenza cases as COVID-19 deaths. The tweet came from @KanekoaTheGreat, an account that has promoted far-right conspiracy theories in the US, including unfounded claims about the COVID-19 pandemic and election fraud in Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. An investigation by Agence France-Presse (AFP) at the time found that this was one of at least 40 instances where Musk had interacted with this account. @KanekoaTheGreat even boasted about these interactions, claiming to have received “a stamp of approval” from the head of X.

A Media Matters’ analysis from the same year found that Musk’s interactions with @KanekoaTheGreat’s tweets correlated with a sharp increase in the conspiracist influencer’s engagement. Tweets to which Musk responded saw significantly higher engagement compared to the account’s usual activity. “At the time of publication, @KanekoaTheGreat averaged over 7.500 retweets per tweet Musk replied to — totaling more than 159.000 retweets. This is more than four times the account’s usual average of around 1.700 retweets per post since it was reinstated”, wrote the progressive research and information center that monitors and analyzes conservative disinformation in US media. Between September 2023 and the present, @KanekoaTheGreat’s follower count has surged from 189.000 to over 1 million.

This is just one example among many. AFP also reported that a January 2023 study by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue recorded a ‘staggering’ increase in Musk’s interactions with right-wing accounts since acquiring Twitter, including several profiles identified by other research as spreaders of US election-related disinformation. Musk has continuously amplified posts from sources such as the pro-Trump propaganda page “Catturd”, the anti-LGBTQ and transphobic account “Libs of TikTok”, and the conspiracy website ZeroHedge. Brendan Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth College who studies political misinformation, told the French news outlet that Musk was “elevating some of the worst voices on Twitter,” which in turn increased their reach and visibility.

On this matter, a 2023 analysis by Science Feedback — an international network of experts combating scientific disinformation — revealed that since Musk’s acquisition of the social platform, the collective popularity of 490 “super-spreader” disinformation accounts on X has grown significantly (on average, a 42% increase in interactions per tweet). The study also found that “four out of the five accounts that have gained the most influence have received replies from Elon Musk’s personal account to at least one of their top ten tweets”.

This dynamic has played out across every topic Musk has engaged with. For instance, regarding USAID, NBC News reported that “Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts (which, since Musk’s changes to X, no longer indicate verification but rather paid premium subscriptions), many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics”.

The accounts cited by the American broadcaster have a history of spreading false, misleading, or baseless claims, as well as hate speech on various topics, including the recent US elections, COVID-19 vaccines, and the notion of male supremacy in determining truth in decision-making. Some of these accounts had even been suspended under Twitter’s previous management for violating misinformation and hate speech policies. Analyzing their content, it becomes clear that the “crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force” had initially developed in relatively fringe online circles, but thanks to Musk’s amplification of these narratives — useful to his political battle against the agency — these baseless accusations became mainstream, NBC News reported.

The same phenomenon occurred during last summer’s violent racist protests in the UK. Musk, through his profile, “boosted accounts that were contributing to the narratives of disinformation and anti-Muslim hate speech that were fueling these riots”, said Marc Owen Jones, a specialist in far-right disinformation and an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. A similar pattern emerged in the social media attack against Keir Starmer’s Labour government regarding “grooming gangs”: Musk used false news and biased interpretations spread by a network of fascist and far-right online activists. The first post Musk amplified in this attack came from @eyeslasho, a far-right account with nearly 200,000 followers that primarily shares racist content based on eugenics and pseudoscience. This was not the first time Musk had shared content from this account—he had done so on multiple occasions, helping @eyeslasho grow its audience and spread its political propaganda.

Regarding Europe more specifically, Le Monde reported that Musk interacts with and amplifies the content of a handful of X accounts, almost all linked to the far right. These profiles “cover” European news in English and hold anti-immigration and anti-Islam positions. One such account is “RadioGenoa” a far-right social media page with over 1 million followers that continuously shares misleading or false content portraying Black people, migrants, Muslims, or LGBTQ+ individuals as threats to society.

Among the accounts most frequently reposted by Musk are those of far-right activist “Peter Sweden”, Australian entrepreneur Mario Nawfal, British Islamophobic activist “Tommy Robinson” (currently in prison), and the ultraconservative Polish news aggregator “Visegrad24”.

According to Jessica Yarin Robinson, a researcher at the University of Oslo and a specialist in online political movements, these accounts and their connections — established before Musk’s acquisition of Twitter — constitute “a network that exists mostly online, and even mostly on X”, as she explained to Le Monde. On multiple occasions, these accounts have coordinated efforts, working together to massively disseminate events or news stories from France, the UK, or Italy to reinforce their rhetoric, the French newspaper continued.

According to The New York Times, some of these right-wing activist accounts with which Musk frequently interacts appear to have direct connections to his team—now leading the “DOGE” – and the ability to exert pressure to influence policies within the “Department of Government Efficiency”. For example, after Kyle Becker – a former Fox News producer turned right-wing influencer who has spread false claims about Ukrainian President Zelensky and USAID – posted misleading allegations about government agencies funding news outlets through subscriptions, Musk shared his post, stating that this “huge waste of public money” would not last much longer. Nine hours later, the official DOGE account on X announced, referencing Musk’s tweet, that the department had canceled the spending Becker had criticized.

In many ways, this dynamic, as Timothy Graham, a digital media expert, wrote on The Conversation, exhibits all the characteristics of so-called “participatory disinformation”. “This concept, developed by computer scientist Kate Starbird and colleagues, explains how both ordinary people as well as politicians and influential actors become active participants in spreading false narratives”, Graham specified.

In 2016, during the US presidential election won by Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, media coverage focused heavily on fake news campaigns driven by anonymous accounts, amplified by bots, and orchestrated by Russian propaganda to influence the election outcome. Nearly a decade later, sociologist and disinformation expert Joan Donovan has pointed out that today, false and misleading news no longer comes from anonymous bot-driven accounts. Instead, “lies travel further and faster across social media, which is now a battleground for narrative dominance. And now, the owners of the platforms circulating the most incendiary lies have direct access to the Oval Office”.