Elon Musk Can Own the Libs. Can He Convert Them?

Elon Musk was Time‘s Man of the Year in 2021, named the second most influential figure in media in 2022 by this publication, and although he’s never called himself conservative, can now lay claim to the title of “the nation’s foremost culture warrior,” according to Rich Lowry, the editor-in-chief of National Review and my old boss.

Converts often make for the most fervent zealots, after all.

Insofar as Musk is a ubiquitous figure, engaged in the most controversial fight of the day, in the center of the public square, this is true. Musk has managed, for now, to become an object of fascination exceeding even former president Donald Trump in the pages of the nation’s newspapers, on it airwaves, and, yes, on Twitter.

And although Musk has proclaimed that “Twitter is being fair when extremists on far-right and far-left are simultaneously upset,” he is largely warring on behalf of the right. Restoring controversially banned accounts, including Trump’s, has overturned a past grievance. Sacking activist executives has given conservatives hope that they won’t be repeated. Releasing the Twitter Files signals a previously lacking commitment to transparency. And the hysterical reactions to Musk’s poking fun at progressives’ sacred has produced a surplus of schadenfreude not seen since Trump’s heyday on the site.

There is no doubt that there is much to celebrate about the new Twitter. Trump, as pernicious a figure as he is, should have access to his account for at least as long as Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei does. Many of the exiting executives appear to be if not unbalanced, incompetent. Transparency must be central to any enterprise functioning as a platform for and moderator of discourse. And the left could do with a bit more tolerance for being rankled.

Even so, Musk should, if he wants to not only be the most famous but most successful conservative culture warrior, do more than please his newly minted constituency on the right.

Musk’s pro-expression ethos is a breath of fresh air in the age of Taylor Lorenz and the late Disinformation Governance Board. Powerful actors in government, the press, academia, and other institutions are openly floating censorship as the appropriate remedy to the plague of “misinformation.” Those same elites have proven hopelessly inept at distinguishing between misinformation and things they don’t like. Musk is right, as a matter of both strategic business and culture war positioning, to present himself as an opponent of these forces.

But in order to win this contest Musk should be careful, if not self-censorious in his own rhetoric. If the liberal values he’s championing on speech are to prevail, his comportment should reflect those same values.

The Musk tweets causing so much gnashing of teeth on the progressive left (“my pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” “the woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters”) shouldn’t compel anyone to clutch their pearls. If as many people did so every time the rich and famous called for Trump’s prosecution, or drew a comparison between conservatism and pestilence, there’d be none left to clutch.

To what extent, though, do these musings move the ball forward? And to what extent does it undermine the more important arguments he’s advancing?

Perhaps the most common mistake of the modern culture warrior is delivering applause lines inside of the tent, while doing little to make converts of the persuadable. The most venerated soldiers have been able to take ground, as well as defend it.

“The fight over Twitter,” writes Lowry, is “ultimately over whether progressive ideology will maintain its default status in elite precincts of America, and whether a high-profile dissenter can survive and thrive.” That’s a keen observation, and the obvious explanation for why conservatives have rallied to Musk’s corner.

One of the world’s richest men has abandoned the safety of the sidelines to take up their cause; it’d be foolish, and even ungrateful not to take up his. Whether Musk improves upon his own advocacy or not, the changes he’s already made as well as those he’s promised to make render him an influential figure within conservative circles and an effective one on behalf of the conservative cause.

If he is to fully realize the potential that his resources and reach afford him, though, he should pursue a course guided by prudence and outreach as well as conviction.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.