The Cult of Musk and the Cost of Believing in Billionaires

But sometime between his purchase of Twitter and his emergence as Donald Trump’s financial patron and technological vizier, it became clear that we were dealing with something more dangerous than a typical billionaire megalomaniac. We were witnessing the formation of a cult, complete with its own mythology, epistemology, and apocalyptic vision of the future.

The cult of Musk operates on several levels of delusion simultaneously. At its base are the retail investors who call him “Papa Elon” and believe he will make them rich with whatever cryptocurrency he happens to be promoting. Above them are the tech enthusiasts who’ve convinced themselves that he is a genius inventor rather than what he really is: a wealthy man who buys companies and takes credit for the work of others. And at the apex are the political operators who have realised that his wealth, social media control, and messianic self-regard make him the perfect tool for their own ambitions.

Let’s start with Twitter or “X,” as he insists on calling it, in what must be the most expensive midlife crisis in human history. The purchase was a masterclass in self-destruction: $44 billion spent to transform a problematic but essential public square into a grotesque carnival of Nazis, bots, and people paying $8 a month to have their inanities amplified. Musk claimed he was buying Twitter to “save free speech,” which in his lexicon means the right of fascists to organise pogroms while journalists who criticise him get banned.

The destruction of Twitter was not accidental. It was deliberate vandalism dressed up as reform. He fired everyone who understood how the platform worked, reinstated banned fascists and conspiracy theorists, dismantled the verification system that identified reliable sources, and turned the algorithm into his personal amplification machine. The result is a platform where lies travel faster than ever, harassment is encouraged, and truth itself is subordinated to the whims of a man who thinks replying to racist memes constitutes meaningful discourse.

The Twitter debacle was merely the overture to Musk’s political opera. His transformation from Obama voter to Trump financier did not happen overnight. It was a gradual descent, accelerating whenever someone criticised his labour practices, false promises, or obvious market manipulation. Like every thin-skinned authoritarian, he could not tolerate criticism. And like every billionaire, he decided that the problem was not his behaviour but the system that allowed others to question it.

His endorsement of Trump in 2024 surprised no one paying attention. These were two men who understood each other perfectly: both pathological liars, both narcissists who had inherited their fortunes, both convinced that rules were for other people, and both surrounded by sycophants praising their every thought as genius. Musk provided Trump with more than money. He gave him access to millions of young men programmed to see him as humanity’s saviour.

The funding Musk poured into Trump’s campaign, the hundreds of millions in dark money, the lottery that was obviously vote-buying, the transformation of X into a 24/7 Trump propaganda machine, was illegal, immoral, and predictable. When you’ve spent your career violating SEC regulations, labour laws, and basic decency without consequence, why wouldn’t you assume you could buy an election?

Tragically, he was right. The Justice Department, which should have stopped him, was too timid. The media that should have exposed him was too distracted. And the public that should have rejected him was too entranced by the myth of the genius billionaire.

That myth deserves examination. Musk has convinced millions he is a genius inventor, a real-life Tony Stark personally designing rockets, cars, and brain chips. The reality is far less impressive. He didn’t found Tesla; he bought it and rewrote history to call himself a founder. He didn’t invent PayPal; he was forced out of his company because his code was so bad it had to be rewritten. His hyperloop is a 19th-century pneumatic tube idea that doesn’t work. His brain chips have killed test animals. His “full self-driving” cars have been six months away for over a decade.

What Musk is, in truth, is far more mundane, and far more dangerous: a rich man adept at taking credit and even better at securing government subsidies. Tesla was built on tax credits, SpaceX on NASA contracts, and all of it on the labour of engineers and designers whose names we will never know because they signed draconian NDAs. He is not a genius; he's got a talent for making the technically illiterate believe he is revolutionary.

The psychological hold he has on his followers is disturbing. They call him “based” when he shares racist memes, “savage” when he bullies critics, and “genius” when he makes scientifically impossible promises. They have invested not just money but identity in the belief that he is leading humanity to the stars. They will forgive any failure, any lie, any cruelty rather than admit they’ve been duped.

If Musk were simply another rich fool with a Twitter account, none of this would matter. But he now controls one of the main platforms for political discourse, has the ear of the president, and commands a fortune large enough to sway governments. His whims become policy, his grievances become law, and his fantasies become what millions mistake for reality.

The damage goes beyond politics. His promotion of conspiracy theories has corroded rational discourse. His attacks on expertise have convinced millions that watching YouTube is equivalent to earning a PhD. His transformation of X into a far-right echo chamber has driven away journalists, academics, and anyone else interested in information rather than engagement farming. He has created an epistemological crisis where his followers believe mainstream media is lying but anonymous accounts like “Cat Turd 2” are telling the truth.

Then there is his environmental hypocrisy. He claims to care about climate change while flying his private jet for trips that could easily be done by car. He talks about sustainable transport while producing outlandish trucks. He promises to save humanity while his factories violate environmental regulations. He has done more to discredit the environmental movement than any climate denier by associating it with his brand of techno-authoritarianism.

His alliance with Trump has only amplified his worst tendencies. He has moved from dog whistles to bullhorns, from flirting with fascism to funding it, from claiming neutrality to actively working to undermine democracy. The “efficiency commission” promised to him in a Trump administration is a perfect marriage of delusions and contempt for governance. It will bring the same destruction his Twitter takeover did: essential services gutted, competent people fired, and government functions reduced to chaos.

Internationally, the implications are equally disturbing. His control of Starlink gives him power over internet access during conflicts. His ties to China through Tesla make him vulnerable to Beijing’s pressure even as he postures as a defender of Western values. His parroting of Putin’s talking points on Ukraine reveals either dangerous naivety or something worse. He has become a one-man national security crisis, too rich to prosecute, too powerful to ignore.

What we are witnessing is the apotheosis of everything wrong with modern capitalism: the confusion of wealth with wisdom, the worship of disruption without concern for what is destroyed, and the elevation of narcissistic man-children to power they cannot handle. Musk represents the merger of Silicon Valley’s god complex with Wall Street’s sociopathy, wrapped in a mythology that would embarrass L. Ron Hubbard.

His followers will not be dissuaded by facts, logic, or mounting evidence of his failures. They are too invested in the myth. They need to believe technology will save them if they trust the right billionaire.

As I write this in 2025, Musk stands at the pinnacle of his power: Trump’s technological consigliere, master of a social media platform shaping reality for millions, and possessor of a fortune large enough to bend governments to his will. History, however, suggests that such peaks are followed by spectacular falls. The question is not whether the cult of Musk will collapse (all cults do) but how much damage it will cause before then.

The tragedy is that we had all the warning signs. We saw how he treated workers, manipulated markets, responded to criticism, and wielded power without responsibility. We watched him morph from supposed visionary to standard oligarch with eccentric hobbies. But we let it happen because we wanted to believe the myth more than we wanted to face the reality.

We wanted the genius inventor, the saviour of humanity, the real-life superhero. What we got was a damaged man with too much money and not enough wisdom, leading a cult of the desperate and deluded toward a future that exists only in his increasingly unhinged tweets.

The cult of Elon Musk, in the end, is a symptom of our civilizational exhaustion. Unable to imagine real solutions to our problems, we have outsourced hope to a billionaire who promises to solve everything with technology and memes. It is the ultimate abdication of democratic responsibility, the triumph of plutocracy disguised as innovation. Unless we find the courage to reject both the man and the myth, we will continue descending into a future where reality itself is subject to the whims of whoever can afford to buy it.