Musk-Bannon war elevates to Defcon 1: is it really possible to take down Elon?

Steve Bannon has escalated his fight against Elon Musk once again, calling him “racist” and “truly evil.” But is it even possible for him to dethrone a tech billionaire who’s now extremely close to US President-elect Donald Trump?

In an interview with the Corriere della Sera daily in Italy, Bannon, the MAGA movement flagbearer, again criticized Musk for his support of some forms of immigration.

Musk has expressed support for H-1B visas which allow US firms to hire skilled professionals from abroad. But that hasn’t been taken well by the MAGA crowd, opposed to nearly all forms of immigration. Now, the civil war has taken it up another notch.

“This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords. They use it to their advantage. The people are furious,” said Bannon, adding that Musk’s “sole objective is to become a trillionaire” and calling him a proponent of “techno-feudalism on a global scale.”

Bannon went on to also call Musk a “truly evil, a very bad guy,” and mused that the billionaire should go back to South Africa where, of course, he was born before emigrating to the US: “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

Bannon is now promising to take Musk down. In fact, Trump’s former adviser is pretty specific: “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day.” But, given the circumstances, is that realistic at all?

Attacks aren’t new, they haven’t hurt Musk

Sure, just as we have already pointed out recently, the MAGA people, including, obviously, Bannon, can be pretty sharp in their observations about the tech world.

Bannon isn’t wrong when he says this about Musk: “He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money. His aggregation of wealth, and then – through wealth – power: that’s what he’s focused on.”

But that doesn’t mean Musk – or Trump who seems to support the billionaire’s views on immigration – will now suddenly cave in and get out of the White House.

Besides, Bannon has been attacking Musk for ages. In early 2023, he called Musk a “traitor” to America. A few months later, he slammed Musk as a “total and complete phony” who is “owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Chinese Communist Party.

But did those attacks stop Elon in any way? Not at all – Musk’s wealth grew, and he’s so close to Trump, the MAGA figurehead, that he’s now leading the unofficial but important “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Moreover, even if Musk is thin-skinned (he recently told his critics to “f**k themselves in the face”), it’d be fair to say that he has enough money to stave off any sort of attack.

Finally, all this might just be a game Trump is even fueling – simply by not shutting down the public brawling. That’s because Bannon’s statements about Musk can be contradictory.

One day, he cries foul and says that 76% of engineers in Silicon Valley are not Americans, but then he tells Bloomberg that Musk’s wealth and influence are actually valuable weapons to spread MAGA far-right populism in Europe.

“Musk just spent a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Trump,” said Bannon.

“If he puts the same amount of money into all of Europe that he put behind Trump, he will flip every nation to a populist agenda. There’s not a centrist left-wing government in Europe that will be able to withstand that onslaught.”

An “impossible” coalition

Then again, Bannon is certainly not the only individual around Trump holding a grudge against Musk.

The old guard of the Republican Party is reportedly unsettled, and Maggie Haberman, the veteran New York Times reporter, said last week on the podcast “On with Kara Swisher” that even Trump privately complains that Musk “is around a lot.”

Slavoj Zizek, a famous philosopher, wrote last week that Trump was facing an “impossible” coalition between digital feudal masters and exploited workers: “One that will inevitably collapse.”

One could even call Musk Trump’s Rasputin, who was one of the most powerful figures in Russian Czar Nicholas’ inner circle. Rasputin’s power eventually irritated the nobility and pushed it to plot his assassination. The czar, some observers said at the time, was even relieved.

Bannon says he has a plan for a broader effort to limit Musk’s ability to shape Trump’s agenda. It’s unclear what the idea is but Bannon does have clout within America’s right – millions are listening to his “War Room” podcast six days a week.

Even if the spat produces no clear winner, some say a collision was always inevitable. Slavoj Zizek, a famous philosopher, wrote last week that Trump was facing an “impossible” coalition between digital feudal masters and exploited workers: “One that will inevitably collapse.”

In recent months, various analyses revealed that Musk – who spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump – has a wider and deeper range of potential conflicts of interest with the federal government than anyone before him.