Elon Musk Calls For A Dictator To Take Over The U.S.

That is not an exaggeration

On June 12, David Sacks, founder of getcallin, a podcasting site, posted an article by Zerohedge.com. This article was about Chuck Grassly’s claim that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden (who Washington Examiner claims is Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky) also allegedly has secret recordings of Biden as an “insurance policy.”

I’m not familiar with Zerohedge.com, so for all I know they could be a perfectly centrist publication, but certain editorializing within the article gives the impression that this is both a right-wing news site and also one that isn’t really meant to be taken seriously. The final line of the article is particularly ridiculous: “Meanwhile, and we’re sure it’s unrelated, Biden had to cancel meetings today to take care of a sudden ‘root canal’” followed by this meme

Along with the article, David Sacks wrote in his tweet: “In the days of the Roman Republic, Senatorial families were oft paid patronage by foreign kings. A family which had fallen on hard times was not expensive to retain yet could yield immense returns when Rome was persuaded to intervene on the king’s behalf.”

So, right-wing guy posting on Twitter about Joe and Hunter Biden and the whole Burisma situation and comparing modern day society and politics to Ancient Rome to top it off. Okay, nothing new there. But he followed it up with a self-reply, stating “‘a city for sale and doomed to quick destruction, if it should find a buyer,’” a quote describing the late Roman Republic attributed to Jugurtha, the king of Numidia in modern day Tunisia. This was posted along with an image of a Wikipedia exerpt, stating:

Jugurtha, who used his time in Spain to make several influential Roman contacts. Under Scipio Aemilianus at the siege of Numantia (134–133 BC), serving along side Gaius Marius, Jugurtha learned of the Romans’ weakness for bribes and that powerful friends in Rome can go a long way. He famously described Rome as “urbem venalem et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit” (“a city for sale and doomed to quick destruction, if it should find a buyer,” Sallust, Jug. 35.10).

None of this is really something I’d be so concerned over. Right-wing guys posting about how America today is just like the fall of Rome (or in this case, the fall of the Republic) is nothing new. But then, Twitter’s owner and the richest man alive who has something of a cult following decided to chime in with a single message. “Perhaps we just need a modern day Sulla,” followed by a link to the Brittanica.com biography of Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Now, I, myself, am a big fan of history. I enjoy studying history and know quite a bit about it. I happened to have some pre-existing knowledge of Sulla, so the fact that Elon Musk would be so open about wanting a literal dictator to take over the United States took me by surprise, though given Elon’s previous posting history, it shouldn’t have.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was a general who, in the midst of losing out to his rival in politics and being declared an enemy of the people and stripped of his command, took his army and marched on Rome establishing himself as dictator. If that sounds familiar to you, that’s because Sulla’s actions DIRECTLY inspired Julius Caesar to think he could do the same, resulting in the fall of the Republic and the establishment of an autocracy.

During Sulla’s rule, he persecuted all his political opponents. Using a practice called “proscriptions” in which a list of names would be posted in the morning, and anyone on that list would be declared an outlaw with a bounty on their head and a penalty for anyone harboring them. In addition, all of their wealth and property would be confiscated and their sons and grandsons banned from holding public office.

This vicious practice traumatized the upper classes of Rome, and allowed Sulla to rule with an iron fist. It would later be used by Mark Antony and Octavian (later Augustus) Caesar before they teamed up to take on the Senate as a way of dealing with inconvenient political opponents and raising money for their war efforts.

Now, to be charitable to Elon Musk, let’s say that what he meant when he said “we needed a Sulla” was about his reforms. Sulla did reform a lot to improve the efficiency of Rome’s systems, and after his reforms had been put in place and his political opponents killed he resigned and lived out the rest of his days writing his memoirs.

Elon sees corruption in the Biden family and the government in general and thinks that we need a strong leader to take power and purge the corruption before leaving willingly. Let’s ignore the fact that this is absolutely NOT what Sulla did - he empowered the corrupt Senate at the expense of the plebians — and just focus on the abstract of Elon’s statement.

Being charitable, there is still no way to see what Elon said as anything besides a call for a dictatorship. A temporary one, sure, but a dictatorship none the less. He’s talking about investing obscene amounts of power in a single person to do what they want with it, and he expects that person to simply crack down on corruption, make a few reforms, and then leave willingly?

What will stop that crackdown on corruption from being directed only at the dictator’s political opponents? What will stop the dictator’s reforms from simply being for the purposes of massively strengthening their political faction in the future when democracy returns? How would we even ensure that this person steps down willingly? Are we just meant to trust that the person who leads this dictatorship is going to be a good and honest person?

Perhaps Elon doesn’t mean a literal dictatorship but merely a strong president to be elected… so just… a president willing to get his hands dirty (like LBJ)? In that case, why bring up Sulla, who is literally most known for being a literal military dictator who brutally purged his opponents and strengthened the corrupt Senate at the expense of the people?

Ultimately, I can’t read Elon’s mind. Perhaps he just did what he often does and tweeted something impulsively without thinking about the implications. Yet even if that’s the case, this still showcases a swing in Conservative rhetoric from being about “freedom” (which was always a rhetorical smokescreen) to their rhetoric embracing strongmen, authoritarianism, and Fascism in the war against the Democrats and woke degeneracy. Whether or not Elon comprehends the implications of what he said, other people do and other people like it and want to see a dictator who shares their views takeover and enforce their vision.

The reason I care about this is, of course, the fact that Elon currently owns Twitter and has demonstrably used it to promote right-wing content consistent with his views. He is also the richest man in the world living in a country where the corrosive influence of big money is well-known. Not to mention, he has cultivated a massive fan base by acting like he’s the real life Tony Stark while also cultivating an image as someone who’s “just like you guys” with his memes. A lot of people take Elon Musk seriously, even those who don’t still use Twitter. If the owner of Twitter begins expressing a desire for dictatorship, that is a huge deal.

Let’s think for a minute about what happens if we actually get an honest dictator who steps down when they feel they’ve finished the job just like Lucius Cornelius Sulla did all those thousands of years ago. What happens next?

I can tell you what would happen after that because it already happened before. Ambitious people look at what has happened and take note. They see that the institutions which looked unbreakable before are actually quite breakable and they start hatching ideas. They poke and prod and push against the institutions until they destroy them and establish themselves as the supreme power in place of these institutions.

That is what happened after Sulla left office. The Republic chugged along a couple more decades until an ambitious politician and general named Julius Caesar looked back on Sulla’s previous actions and got the idea to march on Rome himself.

When you break the democratic institutions once, you show any wannabe tyrant that they can do it, too.