Dump Twitter
The oligarchs won. When the markets closed November 6—the day Donald Trump was declared winner of the presidential election—the combined wealth of the world’s 10 richest people, nine of whom live in the United States, had surged by a combined $63.5 billion. It was, Bloomberg reported, the top 10’s biggest one-day gain in net worth since Bloomberg started tracking this multibillionaire cohort in 2012.
Never mind that 23 Nobel Prize–winning economists signed a letter last month affirming that Trump’s economic policies will be a catastrophe for the economy—something you don’t have to be a Nobel laureate to understand. Let go of any illusions you still harbor that the prosperity of the world’s richest people depends on a thriving economy. If anything, the oligarchs stand to do better when the economy (and the country) go to hell.
The single richest billionaire, and the most toxic, is Elon Musk. When Musk woke up on the morning of November 6, he was worth $263.8 billion. When he went to bed that night he was worth $290.3 billion. This one-day gain in his net worth exceeded 10 percent. Musk spent $130 million to reelect Trump and got back $26.5 billion; this may be the most profitable single investment of his storied career. And the financial returns are only beginning. Even if Musk never assumes his promised role as efficiency czar—the acronym for the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, was once a word to describe Venetian monarchs—Musk is well positioned to prosper under Trump. He can, reports Lora Kolodny on CNBC, “look forward to regulators and intelligence agencies winding down some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Tesla, SpaceX and X, formerly known as Twitter.”
Ah yes, Twitter—or X. Whatever you call it, the social media site was Musk’s primary tool to elect Trump. In Bloomberg’s Tech Daily newsletter for November 7, Kurt Wagner writes that Musk “turned his feed into a Trump-inspired billboard for his more than 200 million followers,” that it “became a major source of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories,” that Musk “re-shared posts from the former president’s supporters, not all of them accurate,” and that Musk turned X into “a much more powerful version of Truth Social.”
Even if you don’t follow Musk on Twitter, you can’t escape his politics there. After the presidential debate, which of course Kamala Harris won handily, Wagner logged onto X and found himself inundated with “Trump won” posts from various accounts that he didn’t follow, including those of Donald Trump Jr., and Libs of TikTok, which despite the name is very much on the far right. These posts were fed to Wagner by X’s algorithm, which was rigged to deliver pro-Trump messaging. Writing in Slate, Farhad Manjoo calls X a “white-supremacist hellsite.”
Which raises a question. Why is anybody who deplores Trump’s reelection and Musk’s own degradation of public discourse with racism, antisemitism, misogyny, union-busting, endorsements of violence, the spreading of hateful untruths, and all-around vulgarity still playing in Musk’s sandbox? If you hate such things, why do you still maintain an account on Twitter?
I quit the place nearly two years ago. I’d been thinking about it for five months, starting around the time Musk retweeted the vile and wholly unfounded rumor that the hammer-wielding intruder who attacked and nearly killed Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, while yelling “Where’s Nancy?” was a male prostitute with whom Paul Pelosi had gotten into a drunken fight. (He was not. The attacker, Dave DePape, was precisely the far-right whack-job hater we supposed him to be.) I also felt queasy that the place was becoming a haven for antisemitism. During the first two weeks after Musk took control of Twitter, the Anti-Defamation League found, the volume of antisemitic tweets jumped 61 percent, and a few weeks after I left, Musk confirmed my suspicions by himself posting an antisemitic tweet about George Soros. It turned out Musk was just getting started (not that this ever bothered the Musk sycophant and prize hypocrite Bill Ackman, a much more energetic crusader against antisemitism than I pretend to be). NPR’s departure from Twitter after Musk labeled it “state-affiliated media” finally persuaded me to quit in solidarity.
As a journalist, my livelihood depends to some extent on reaching readers through social media, and Twitter, even in its diminished state after Musk bought it, still seemed like the best venue. I’ve since learned that Twitter’s once vaunted reputation as a driver of traffic is fading fast; at The New Republic, it’s no longer a significant referrer. But well before I knew that, I concluded that I couldn’t live with myself if I stayed. How could I face my children? How could I explain myself to readers? After I left, evidence of the site’s toxicity continued to pile up. I would ask my liberal friends: Why are you still on Twitter, or X, or whatever it’s called? They would look at me sheepishly. I tried not to get self-righteous about it, but quietly, I was shocked.
Well, I’m done being respectful of individual choices. If you’re still on Elon Musk’s site you’re part of the problem. Don’t tell me you’re still a liberal, or even a principled conservative. Don’t tell me it’s a public utility over which Musk will eventually relinquish control, or that you’re there to make sure alternative voices remain, or that your babies need to be fed. Most especially, don’t tell me how angry you are that Donald Trump won the election.
I write this knowing full well that my own employer, The New Republic, continues to hawk its wares on Twitter. I didn’t previously bring this up with management, or even with TNR’s union, because, well, it’s awkward. I bring it up now. The New Republic is a century-old publication dedicated to liberalism. It has suffered, in the internet age, from the same commercial difficulties with which the rest of the print media must contend. It must seek out new readers as never before. But we’ve reached a point where TNR’s reputation will suffer if it continues to do business with Elon Musk. We must leave.
What’s true of The New Republic is true of other magazines dedicated to liberalism and/or the left: Mother Jones, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Washington Monthly, The Washington Spectator, Jacobin, Liberties, Democracy, The Progressive. (If there’s a single liberal magazine in America that isn’t on Twitter I don’t know it.) I’ve written or worked for some of these publications. Shame on all of us. Shame, too, on conservative publications that remain on Twitter like National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. Their opinion of Musk and Trump is higher than mine, but not by a lot. Continued association with Twitter soils them too.
Shame, too, on any individual writers, academics, book publishers, and other honorable people, many of them personal friends, who continue to post on Twitter. Everybody is asking: What can I do to defend the principles under attack right now in the United States? You can get the hell off Twitter. Remaining there hasn’t been the moral choice for some time, but it really can’t be defended now. Please make this small sacrifice. If you can’t, what use will you be when the challenges get tougher? Because believe me: They will.