Throughout history, the world’s richest people — almost all men — have often operated from the shadows, taking on governments they don’t like quietly.
Not the world’s current richest man.
In recent months, Elon Musk has taken on government after government, mostly left or liberal administrations, in public online wars centred around his claim that they are curbing free speech. But often, the spats have also come amid attempts by governments to regulate social media — where Musk, the owner of X, has a direct business interest as well.
From Brazil to Australia, France to the United Kingdom, and of course the United States, here’s a look at the battles Musk has stirred, and how they’ve played out for him and his companies.
Brazil
Latin America’s largest nation and economy banned X in August after Musk refused to comply with a court order to appoint a legal representative in Brazil.
The court had also ordered X to block a series of far-right accounts. Musk had rejected that demand too, clashing publicly with Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
But the judge didn’t back down either. In addition to the ban, he ordered X to pay more than $3m in fines. The court also froze the Brazilian bank accounts of Starlink, Musk’s satellite communications firm.
Then, on the judge’s order, the Brazilian government transferred $1.3m from X’s local bank account and $2m from Starlink’s local bank account to settle the fine.
Musk first tried to circumvent the ban: for a brief period last week, X was online again in Brazil, after the social media platform rewired how its servers are accessed. But de Moraes threatened it with a daily fine for flouting the ban, and X soon went dark again.
Eventually, the multi-billionaire appears to have accepted defeat — at least for now. Last week, X’s lawyers told the Brazilian Supreme Court that the company would appoint a legal representative in the country and block the accounts accused of spreading hate speech and disinformation in its bid to get X available in the country again.
There is plenty at stake: Brazil is X’s third-largest market with 21 million users.
Australia
Across the Pacific Ocean from Brazil, Musk described the Australian government as “fascists” in an X post after its centre-left Labor Party administration announced legislation that would fine media platforms 5 percent of global revenue for spreading information that is “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive and reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm”.
“Misinformation and disinformation pose a serious threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy. Doing nothing and allowing this problem to fester is not an option,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said last week.
Musk’s argument, again – that the law goes against the principle of free speech.
Musk isn’t the only critic of the new legislation. David Coleman, shadow minister of communications, had concerns too.
“In this bill, if you’re an academic, something you say basically can’t be misinformation. But if you’re an ordinary Australian who disagrees with an academic, it can be misinformation,” Coleman said last week.
But the Australian government has in turn accused Musk of being inconsistent on the matter of free speech. The X owner, his critics say, has accepted calls from right-wing or authoritarian governments to crack down on many accounts.
“Elon Musk’s had more positions on free speech than the Kama Sutra. You know, when it’s, in its commercial interests, he is the champion of free speech and when it doesn’t like it, he is, you know, he’s going to shut it all down,” Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said in an interview on Nine Network’s Today breakfast show.
France
Last month, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested at a Paris airport after arriving from Azerbaijan. According to Paris authorities, he was arrested and then detained due to failure to regulate alleged drug trafficking, organised crime, “terrorism” and fraud on his online messaging platform.
Musk, in a series of X posts, criticised the arrest. In a sarcastic post, replying to the breaking story of Durov’s arrest, he wrote, “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme”.
POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme https://t.co/OkZ6YS3u2P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2024
He posted a #FreePavel on X several hours after Durov’s arrest.
Musk later took to X to criticise fellow multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, responding to a post questioning why the Meta CEO hasn’t faced legal consequences for allegations similar to those against Durov.
Russia, where Durov was born, imposed a ban on Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court mandate requiring it to provide access to its encryption keys. However, the ban was eventually lifted in 2020.
UK
Early in August, Musk ensnared himself in another war of words on X, this time with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, after far-right and anti-immigration riots across Britain.
Responding to a post suggesting that mass migration and open borders were to blame for the riots, Musk posted: “Civil war is inevitable”.
The UK government hit back. “There’s no justification for comments like that,” a spokesperson for Starmer told reporters. “What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online. We’re talking about a minority of thugs that do not speak for Britain … I think you can tell from that that the prime minister does not share those sentiments.”
Musk would further antagonise Starmer with yet another X post, with the hashtag #TwoTierKier — a term popularised by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage — implying that people on the far right are policed more heavily than those on the left.
Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain? @Keir_Starmer https://t.co/gldyguysNe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2024
London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley pushed back on Musk’s comments in an interview with Sky News, saying, “We have commentators from either end of the political spectrum who like to throw accusations of bias at the police because we stand in the middle, we operate independently under the law without fear or favour … The serious voices who echo those are of more concern to me because the risk is … they legitimise the violence that the officers I’m sending [out] today, will face on the streets … they are putting them at risk.”
US
Musk said earlier he voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, but ahead of the 2024 election, he has made clear that he backs former President Donald Trump.
On X, he has called Biden a “damp sock puppet”, and criticised the president’s policies on immigration and health.
In November 2023, after a Musk post where he appeared to blame Jews for mass immigration into the US, the White House described his comments as “abhorrent”, “racist” and “anti-Semitic”.
But he has also worked with the US government to provide Starlink satellite access to Ukraine amid its war with Russia — though in recent months, Kyiv has alleged that Moscow’s forces too have accessed the service via third countries.
Most recently, following the second alleged assassination attempt on Trump, an X account user asked: “Why [do] they want to kill Donald Trump?”
In a now-deleted post, Musk responded, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”
The comment drew a firestorm of criticism for Musk, including from the White House.
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