The online propagandists of Elon Musk

After feuding with the US President on his own social media platform, X.com (Twitter), Elon Musk admitted to using Twitter to wield political influence and is already discussing the prospect of a creating new political party. The split between allies appears to have been violent, with Steve Bannon alleging that Elon Musk was struck by the US Secretary of the Treasury, leaving him with a black eye.

Backing Elon Musk in this feud are his loyal propagandists, whom he refers to as “citizen journalists.” However, these individuals rose to prominence on his platform largely thanks to his support. After Musk took control of Twitter, he began boosting the accounts of a number of these “journalists” who quickly became his most ardent supporters. They also share many of his political ideas and some of them are even on the payroll of the Russian government, such as one of his most ardent supporters, Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysian who regularly tweets about US politics. Ian Miles Cheong is a columnist for Russia Today.

 

 

 

Elon Musk regularly retweets and engages with these accounts, effectively boosting their following and their popularity. In turn, these accounts support him on a regular basis and promote his businesses and political initiatives. One of these accounts is “DogeDesigner” and the person running the account is from Mohali, India.

 

 

 

 

There are many other right-wing accounts on X.com run by individuals from India, and the phenomenon appears to be a story in its own right. These accounts seem to spend many hours per day simply posting and retweeting right-wing propaganda which is often in support of far0right parties and Elon Musk.

 

Another of these accounts is “InevitableWest”, another Elon Musk supporter and “citizen journalist” who is also from India but lives in Dubai. The individual is actually Saurabh Chandrakar, but he currently faces charges of money-laundering back home in India.

 

 

These accounts, apart from being boosted by Elon Musk himself, are then boosted by other fake accounts whose only role on Twitter, is to retweet and share specific tweets from the far-right movement and Elon Musk’s propagandists. This is an example of a tweet booster.

 

 

Then there are two other individuals who back Elon Musk, and owe media their careers on X.com to him, but regularly produce more sophisticated content. One of them is Mario Nawfal, who even interview the dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. Mario Nawfal has a very shady history in the world of crypto after having been part of the ICO craze, selling and promoting shitcoins with popular online figures, that eventually went to zero.

Last but not least, there is Lex Fridman, whose real name is Alexey Fedotov. He owes much of his online popularity to Elon Musk, after interviewing him on his podcast in 2019. Since then, Fridman has continued to extensively promote Tesla and Musk. Lex Fridman recently interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and asked him why Ukraine wouldn’t want peace with Russia, even after Russia had invaded it.

Elon Musk’s propogandists are all pro-Russian, they think that he is saving the world from many ills including the “woke”, and that he is a positive and net contributor to humanity. They rallied behind him in the last US presidential election and effectively helped Donald Trump get elected as President. Having admitted that he used his platform to help President Trump get elected, it is somewhat ironic that the far-right and MAGA political movement in the US was supported in the elections not only by Russia, but also by propogandists from India and Malaysia tweeting from their bedrooms. It will be interesting to see where Elon Musk will redirect the attention of his loyal propagandists as he feuds with the US President.