Caiani, who studies international far-right movements, said Musk is helping to grow those movements by trading ideas, making personal connections and building a shared ideological framework. And people listen because of his wealth, even though he lacks the conventional legitimacy of an elected office, she said.
“It is very dangerous that a nonpolitical actor now speaks with a sort of political legitimacy,” she said. “He’s changing the paradigm of politics.”
One common thread of Musk’s advocacy is his embrace of nationalism or nativism regardless of which country he’s talking about, but especially European countries. Musk has boosted various flavors of American nationalism, German nationalism, British nationalism, Italian nationalism and Dutch nationalism.
In other words: nationalism everywhere, all at once.
“Musk is succeeding in branding himself as a kind of global spokesperson of the far right,” said Rodrigo Campos, a postdoctoral researcher in politics at the University of York in the U.K., in an email.
“There is an irony to this because far-right leaders usually want to protect the nation from outside influences, whereas Musk is a billionaire who built his wealth from transnational corporate capital — in other words, he is the product of neoliberal globalization,” Campos said.
The extent of Musk’s right-leaning support varies by country, including endorsements on X of specific political parties, statements of support for specific causes and joint appearances virtually or in person with politicians. Thus far, he has not drawn on his personal fortune as the world’s wealthiest person to help politicians in other countries the way he helped Donald Trump in the U.S. last year with more than $290 million — or at least, he hasn’t done so publicly.
Right-wing politicians and political movements benefit from Musk’s support because of his worldwide celebrity as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and because of his enormous megaphone on X, where he has 217 million followers.
And since Trump’s inauguration as president last month, Musk can also offer foreign leaders another potential line of communication to the White House. Musk has joined Trump for multiple meetings with national leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Musk has kept up his meetings with world leaders as head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including an appearance Thursday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi where the two mixed politics and business. The two men also sat for photos in the style of two equal heads of state.
While the Trump White House has let Musk police his own conflicts of interest, some Democrats have called Musk’s actions unethical.
“Musk is effectively operating as the Secretary of State, and he is meeting with a key foreign leader not to ask for concessions that would benefit Americans, but for concessions that would make him rich,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said on X.
Musk’s own nationality is complicated: He was born and raised in South Africa, he has held Canadian citizenship, and he became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
Now, Musk’s private diplomacy is meeting increased opposition from leaders in some countries who accuse him of improperly meddling in their domestic politics. French President Emmanuel Macron last month accused Musk of promoting a “new international reactionary movement.”
But even Macron may be understating the sweeping breadth of Musk’s international influence.
“The type of freelancing we’re seeing from Musk is unprecedented,” said Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a centrist think tank founded in 1910.
Feldstein said there are common threads in the politicians and parties Musk supports: They’re rooted in nativism and supportive of deregulation.
“He has exclusively thrown his support behind not just right-wing politicians but very extreme parties,” he added. Feldstein noted Musk’s vocal support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, a party so far outside the German mainstream that other political parties have so far resisted joining with it in coalitions. The party has downplayed Nazi atrocities and has used a slogan previously employed by Adolf Hitler’s Brownshirt SA paramilitaries.
Musk’s efforts with DOGE to slash government spending have drawn notice worldwide, including in Argentina, where President Javier Milei is thought to have inspired Musk, and vice versa. Musk and Milei have met on multiple occasions.
“‘DOGE’-style policies may find favour in other countries too,” said Rita Abrahamsen, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa in Canada, in an email.
Abrahamsen said that’s because radical-right politicians share a particular hostility to what they consider “managerialism”: “In their view, modern societies are ruled by a New Class of liberal managerial elites, whose power is expanding and spreading and whose interests are in furthering their own power and benefits,” she said.
Musk, like other CEOs of major corporations, has a long history of international hopscotching as he has tried to grow his businesses’ sales and supply chains. As far back as 2015, he hosted India’s Modi at a Tesla factory to talk about battery technology, and last year, he held meetings with foreign leaders about business subjects including SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service.
But Musk’s approach to foreign leaders began to take a turn about three years ago, in connection with Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.
In December 2021, he posted a meme on X mocking the then-prime minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, for going to a nightclub in violation of social distancing rules. And two months later, in February 2022, he posted and then deleted an image comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler because of Trudeau’s pandemic-related policies.
The year 2022 was also when Musk suggested that Ukraine cede territory to end Russia’s invasion, angering many Ukrainians and their supporters, and when he received an honorary medal from Brazil’s then-president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. (Bolsonaro, under indictment for an alleged coup attempt, told The New York Times last month that he was now counting on Musk and Trump to help him avoid prison in Brazil and make a political comeback.)
But something changed again in the second half of 2023, when Musk began speaking up more forcefully about elections in other countries — in particular in Europe, where he condemned changing demographics and the arrival of foreign-born migrants as precursors to a “civil war.”
In August 2023, he complimented Hungary’s Orban for trying to raise birth rates. In September, he shared a social media post from a far-right Italian account that had equated admitting migrants to “European suicide.” In November, he commented positively on a Tucker Carlson interview with Spanish far-right leader Santiago Abascal, including on the topic of birth rates, saying, “Many interesting topics.” Also in November, he said Ireland’s then-prime minister, Leo Varadkar, “hates the Irish people,” citing a disagreement about hate speech laws. Varadkar, a center-right politician, advocated making it easier to prosecute people for online incitement to hatred.
And in December 2023, Musk traveled to Rome for an international gathering of conservative politicians, the annual Atreju conference, where Musk urged those in attendance to “make more Italians to save Italy’s culture.”
Then, after Trump’s election victory in November, Musk appeared to be newly emboldened, courting even more transnational right-wing figures including activists in the United Kingdom.
In most cases, Musk’s advocacy appears to be unrelated to his business interests or even contrary to them. He and Germany’s AfD, for example, have a clear disagreement on renewable energy, similar to the disagreement between Musk and Trump on the same subject.
Abascal, the leader of the Spanish party Vox, defended Musk in a news conference before attending Trump’s inauguration last month.
“Now I see a lot of concern about the alleged influence of Elon Musk, who simply expresses his opinion and allows others to do the same. Since when is that prohibited?” Abascal said, according to La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper.
Musk’s attention isn’t solely focused on Europe. The 18 countries where he has expressed support for right-wing movements or policies are spread over six continents — all except Antarctica.
In Africa, Musk has boosted far-right politics in South Africa, where he has feuded off and on with South Africa’s government, including President Cyril Ramaphosa. While there isn’t a sizable right-wing political movement in South Africa compared to many other nations, Musk has zeroed in on several positions and policies supported by the opposition to South Africa’s majority party.
Specifically, Musk has shared the idea that white farmers in the country are the victims of a white genocide campaign, a concept that has been previously disputed by U.S. and South African officials. Musk has also echoed opposition criticism of recent land use laws in the country that allow for the government to expropriate land — sometimes without compensation — when it is unused or there’s public interest in its redistribution, calling the laws “openly racist.” On Feb. 7, Trump signed an executive order cutting off aid to South Africa after he expressed similar criticism to Musk’s, calling the land laws “A massive Human Rights VIOLATION.”
While American conservatives, including Trump, have been deeply critical of China’s government, Musk has largely been silent about domestic politics inside China, where Tesla has extensive operations and sales that could easily be affected by his relations with the government. He has met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other high-ranking officials.
On the other hand, Musk has been so active in commenting on Latin American politics, including in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador and Venezuela, that a columnist for Connectas, a regional news outlet, called Musk a “superhero of the Latin American right.” Musk has posted in support of candidates in each of those countries including El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who, like Musk, is a noted fan of cryptocurrency. On Feb. 4, Trump expressed openness to an offer from Bukele to house people deported from the U.S. and convicted American prisoners in Salvadoran prisons.
That turn toward international politics coincided with Musk’s first year owning X, formerly Twitter, a platform that not only allows him to sway public opinion globally but also exposes him to global disputes.
Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, said there’s a limited history of such extensive private diplomacy. He noted that the Rev. Jesse Jackson undertook a series of freelance diplomatic trips in 1984, but with the humanitarian purpose of negotiating the release of Americans held in places such as Syria and Cuba.
Now that Musk is also a member of Trump’s inner circle, his advocacy abroad adds to the confusion of the current administration, O’Hanlon said.
“It’s just one more thing in the Trump world that’s much more confusing and disruptive than in most presidencies,” he said.
Feldstein, of the Carnegie Endowment, said he doesn’t see an overarching goal in Musk’s international politicking.
“I think we have to be careful not to attribute some sort of grand strategy to what Musk is doing,” he said. “Frankly, I think he’s an impulsive individual.”