NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte meets with US Vice President JD Vance. Source: NATO/Flickr
Statements by US Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth on the Ukraine war and transatlantic relations have left European leaders in shock
“If American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” US Vice President JD Vance told European leaders at last week’s Munich Security Conference. His remarks came during a draining week for those leaders, as Trump officials announced peace talks with Russian authorities—without European or Ukrainian involvement—while signaling they expect Europe to handle peacekeeping and being paid for their support in minerals from Ukraine.
Speeches by Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threw European leaders into disarray, seen as not-so-subtle indications of a cooling in transatlantic relations. These interventions attacked everything from the EU’s efforts to regulate social media platforms to its approach to far-right parties in parliamentary life. In response, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an emergency summit of select regional powers on Monday, February 17 – just a day before US and Russian representatives are expected to meet in Saudi Arabia.
While Ukrainian officials and some European leaders have insisted they will not accept any deal that excludes Ukraine’s direct involvement, their stance appears to carry little weight.
At the same time, the new US administration has increased pressure on its European allies, demanding a ramping up of their defense budgets and taking on the responsibility of a potential peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. This comes as no surprise: a number of US officials, including Donald Trump himself, have said Europe does not contribute enough to NATO and essentially freeloads off the US. Vance’s speech in Munich only reaffirmed this stance, ultimately reducing high-ranking figures to tears over the apparent breakup between allies.
While the focus of European reactions to recent US statements has been on Ukraine, many leaders have admitted that more is at stake. “Yes, it is about Ukraine – but it is also about us,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. Unfortunately, the conclusion she drew going further is upsetting: “We need an urgency mindset. We need a surge in defense. And we need both of them now.”
Unlike healthcare, education, or social programs—sectors where European governments are consistently told their budgets must remain limited—military spending is expected to face no such barriers. Many European countries have already embraced the shift, with Polish officials, for example, boasting about spending close to 5% of their GDP on defense and warning of looming “wider wars” to convince other states in the region to do the same.
Despite the apparent fracture in US-Europe relations, European leaders have shown no inclination to rethink their dependence on Washington. Instead, most have done exactly what the Trump presidency wants them to do and swiftly pledged to increase military spending. Some have even already expressed willingness to deploy troops for peacekeeping in Ukraine. What remains absent from their reactions is any consideration of a future less dictated by US interests and more aligned with the needs of the people living in Europe.
Since the beginning of the war three years ago, activists have urged Europe to reject NATO’s warmongering and prioritize peace in Ukraine alongside social justice at home. Instead, the coming surge in military budgets will almost certainly coincide with cuts to public services, further fueling the rise of the far-right—a political force that Trump officials, including Vance and Elon Musk, have (more or less) openly backed during interventions in Europe. From this perspective, unlike the conservative circles who “survived ten years of ’s scolding,” Europe’s liberal elite is unlikely to emerge from its current crisis unscathed. Whether their refusal to acknowledge the failure of their anti-people policies will push the entire region into the hands of parties like Brothers of Italy and Alternative for Germany remains to be seen.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei (C) attends Donald Trump’s inauguration as the next President of the United States in the rotunda of the United States Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Shawn Thew – Pool/Getty Images)
“Look where you brought us with your madness! You turned Argentina into a casino where the croupier is the president himself,” one opposition politician said.
Argentina’s far-right libertarian President Javier Milei faces legal challenges and calls for impeachment after a cryptocurrency he touted on social media over the weekend rapidly rose and then tanked in value.
Milei first promoted the $LIBRA coin from his personal account on X Friday night, which then skyrocketed in value to $5 apiece, according to Reuters. Within hours, however, the coin’s value plummeted to under $1. Milei deleted his initial tweet five hours after he first posted it, The New York Times reported, writing in a new post that he was “not familiar with the details of the project.”
“We just witnessed one of the fastest and largest destructions of wealth in retail trading history,” noted The Kobeissi Letter, which tracks capital markets, in a social media post. “Argentina’s memecoin, $LIBRA, erased -$4.5 billion of retail capital in seven hours. Truly destructive.”
In the first 40 minutes after Milei first tweeted boosting the coin, its value rose by more than 2,000%, CoinDesk reported. However, it then began to fall as early investors sold their shares, eventually plummeting 95% from a maximum value of $4.4 billion.
Crypto experts warned the $LIBRA coin, which was developed by KIP Protocol and Hayden Davis, could be a “rug pull,” a scam in which a crypto developer launches and inflates a coin only to pull out and leave investors hanging.
“Milei’s participation in the crime of crypto fraud is extremely serious,” the Lower House bloc of the Peronist Unión por la Patria, a center-left opposition group, wrote on social media Saturday. “It’s a scandal without precedent. Our bloc of national deputies has decided to move forward with presenting an impeachment request against the president of the nation.”
Opposition lawmaker Leandro Santoro further called Milei’s actions a “scandal, which embarrasses us on an international scale” and “requires us to launch an impeachment request against the president.”
On Sunday, Socialist Party lawmaker Esteban Paulón also called for impeachment proceedings.
“If as a president of a country you propose something for private benefit there is an obvious conflict of interest.”
On Monday, Argentina’s benchmark S&P Merval had fallen by 4%, according to Reuters. The incident sparked more than 100 legal complaints, which were assigned to Federal Judge Maria Servini on Monday.
One case was brought by a coalition of lawyers involved in the Right to the City Observatory think tank as well as economist and former Argentine Central Bank President Claudio Lozano. The group accused Milei of fraud, dereliction of duty, and criminal association, according to theBuenos Aires Herald.
An official statement from the president’s office on Saturday said that Milei had met twice with the developers of $LIBRA and had decided to promote the coin “as he does daily with many entrepreneurs who want to launch a project in Argentina to create jobs and obtain investments.”
“Not having been part of any instance of the development of the cryptocurrency, after the repercussions that the launch of the project had and to avoid any speculation and not give it further dissemination, he decided to delete the post,” the statement continued, adding that the president had asked the Anti-Corruption Office to investigate whether he or anyone else in the government engaged in “improper conduct.”
However, the lawyers challenged Milei’s account, according to the Buenos Aires Herald:
In their report, the lawyers dispute Milei’s subsequent claims that he was not aware of the project’s details. They highlight that the president made his post just three minutes after $LIBRA was launched, timing that indicates he knew it was coming before it was announced. They also argue that, as an economist, it is unlikely that he did not understand the details of the project he was sharing.
In a post addressed to Milei directly, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner heavily criticized the current president for painting himself as an expert yet claiming innocence of the scheme.
“Weren’t you the ‘best president in history’? Weren’t you the ‘genius of the economy’? From self-proclaimed ‘global leader’ to CRYPTO SCAMMER,” de Kirchner wrote.
“Look where you brought us with your madness! You turned Argentina into a casino where the croupier is the president himself,” she continued. “THAT IS YOUR MARKET FREEDOM… that of the casino. Your mask has fallen off.”
While experts say impeachment efforts are unlikely to succeed, the incident could harm Milei in the upcoming midterm elections.
“It is extremely serious if confirmed, especially in terms of a president’s powers to promote something private,” left-wing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told Reuters. “If as a president of a country you propose something for private benefit there is an obvious conflict of interest.”
The scandal drew comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump, who also launched a meme coin shortly before taking office, the value of which also first rose and then fell dramatically. Milei has expressed support for Trump in the past, while Elon Musk has taken inspiration from Milei’s chainsaw-wielding approach to government for his ideologically-driven anti-government effort Department of Government Efficiency.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Badenoch (right) will give a welcome address at the conference, with her party under increasing pressure from Farage (left) and Reform UK. Composite: PA
Event co-founded by Jordan Peterson will bring together global rightwing figures including senior US Republicans
Influential rightwingers from around the world are to gather in London from Monday at a major conference to network and build connections with senior US Republicans linked to the Trump administration.
The UK opposition leader, the Conservatives’ Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party, her hard-right anti-immigration rival, will compete to present themselves as the torchbearer of British conservatism.
Conservatives from Britain, continental Europe and Australia attending the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference will seize on the opportunity to meet and hear counterparts from the US, including those with links to the new Trump administration. The House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, had been due to attend in person but will now give a keynote address remotely on Monday.
Other Republicans due to speak include the US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Vivek Ramaswamy – who has worked with Elon Musk on moves to radically reshape the US government – and Kevin Roberts, the president of the US Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind the controversial “Project 2025” blueprint for Trump’s second term.
The conference, which is intended to be a gathering of influential intellectuals shaping global rightwing thinking, has a distinctly anti-environmental and socially conservative theme. It pledges to build on “our growing movement and continue the vital work of relaying the foundations of our civilisation”.
Hate speech on X was consistently 50% higher for at least eight months after tech billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media platform, new research has found.
The research looked at the prevalence of overt hate speech including a wide range of racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs.
The study, published today in PLOS ONE, was conducted by a team of researchers led by Daniel Hickney from the University of California, Berkeley.
On October 27 2022, Musk officially purchased X (then known as Twitter) for US$44 billion and became its CEO. His takeover was accompanied by promises to reduce hate speech on the platform and tackle bots and other inauthentic accounts.
But after he bought X, Musk made several changes to the platform to reduce content moderation. For example, in November 2022 he fired much of the company’s full time workforce. He also fired outsourced content moderators who tracked abuse on X, despite research showing social medial platforms with high levels of content moderation contain less hate speech.
This new study is the first to show that this wasn’t an anomaly.
Hate speech including homophobic, racist and transphobic slurs was significantly higher on X after Elon Musk bought the platform. The black lines represent standard errors. Hickey et al., 2025 / PLOS One
More than 4 million posts
The study examined 4.7 million English language posts on X from the beginning of 2022 through to June 9 2023. This period includes the ten months before Musk bought X and the eight months afterwards.
The study measured overt hate speech, the meaning of which was clear to anyone who saw it – speech attacking identity groups or using toxic language. It did not measure covert types of hate speech, such as coded language used by some extremist groups to spread hate but plausibly deny doing so.
As well as measuring the amount of hate speech on X, the study also measured how much other users engaged with this material by liking it.
The researchers’ access to X data was cut off during the study due to a policy change by the platform, replacing free access to approved academic researchers with payment options which are generally unaffordable. This significantly hampered their ability to collect sample posts. But they don’t mention whether it affected their results.
A clear increase in hate
The study found “a clear increase” in the average number of posts containing hate speech following Musk’s purchase of X. Specifically, the volume of posts containing hate speech was “consistently” 50% higher after Musk took over X compared to beforehand – a jump from an estimated average of 2,179 to 3,246 posts containing hate speech per week.
Transphobic slurs saw the highest increase, rising from an average of roughly 115 posts per week before Musk’s acquisition to an average of 418 afterwards.
The level of user engagement with posts containing hate speech also increased under Musk’s watch. For example, the weekly rate at which hate speech content was liked by users jumped by 70%.
The researchers say these results suggest either hate speech wasn’t taken down, hateful users became more active, the platform’s algorithm unintentionally promoted hate speech to users who like such content – or a combination of these possibilities.
The study also detected no decrease in the activity of inauthentic accounts on X. In fact, it found a “potential increase” in the number of bot accounts partly based on a large upswing in posts promoting cryptocurrency, which are typically associated with bots.
An important data-driving deep dive
There were a number of limitations to the study. For example, it only measured hate speech posts in English, which accounts for only 31% of posts on the platform.
Even so, the study is an important, data-driven deep dive into the state of X. It shows it is a platform where hate speech is prolific. It also shows Musk has failed to fulfil his earlier promises to address problems on X such as hate speech and bot activity.
As Musk himself said at the White House earlier this week: “Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected”.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Adam Johnson (Column, 2/3/25): “The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN ran with the framing that ‘DOGE’ was some good-faith, post-ideological effort to ‘cut costs,’ ‘find savings’ and ‘increase efficiencies.’”
Having spent nearly $300 million to purchase the US presidency for Donald Trump, Elon Musk now feels entitled to do with it as he pleases. Just how radically Musk plans to remake the country was conveyed to the American people only after the election, when Musk stood behind the presidential seal on Inauguration Day and gave a Nazi salute. Then did it again. Maybe that sort of thing was OK to do in apartheid South Africa, where Musk grew up, but it’s jarring to see here in the United States.
Reporters initially struggled to meet the moment (FAIR.org, 2/4/25), downplaying Musk’s salute (the Washington Post described a “high-energy speech“), as well as his broader agenda, which Musk now openly declares a “revolution,” and consists of an unelected billionaire wresting control of nearly the entire executive branch of government. Early media reports went along with Musk’s “efficiency” mantra (Column, 2/3/25), but more recently reporters have started to find their footing, and the dangers of Musk’s project are being conveyed. Sort of.
“Reporters on the battlefield are doing what they can” to expose the radical nature of Trump’s second term, writes media columnist Oliver Darcy (Status, 2/5/25). “The news generals back in the command center, however, are largely abdicating their duties.”
‘Musk’s audacious goal’
Nowhere is this discrepancy more apparent than at the Washington Post, a newspaper famed for opposing a prior Republican president with an expansive view of executive power. These days, however, even as Post reporters like Jeff Stein are busy breaking stories (e.g., 1/28/25, 2/8/25) about the Trump power grab, the paper’s higher-ups are careful not to offend the president or Musk. The Post is even, incredibly, calling on the Constitution-defying billionaire duo to push further.
As Elon Musk seizes extraconstitutional control of the federal budget, Washington Post editors (2/7/25) urge him to use that power to go after Social Security and Medicare.
“To have any chance of achieving Musk’s audacious goal of $2 trillion in cuts,” the Post editorial board (2/7/25) wrote, “Trump will need to work with elected representatives in Congress to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare before they become insolvent.”
While claiming it wants Trump to “erect guardrails” for Musk, the Post urges the president to abandon one of the only guardrails he established—the cutting of Social Security and Medicare, which Trump repeatedly said he wouldn’t do, but recently started waffling on.
To be clear, the Post has long called for cutting so-called entitlements (FAIR.org, 11/1/11, 6/15/23). But to do so at this moment—by encouraging a coup attempt to push further—is quite extraordinary.
The Post’s move comes as its billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is lavishing praise and millions of dollars on Trump and his family, while coaching his paper to take a less critical approach in its coverage (FAIR.org, 1/22/25). Bezos’s ingratiation toward Trump started prior to the election, when Bezos personally spiked the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (FAIR.org, 10/30/24).
Good news for X from Amazon
The Washington Post (2/4/25) reports on “divergent views among Jewish leaders in how to respond to Musk”: Some object to his ” Nazi-esque salute and Holocaust jokes,” others appreciate his censorship of criticism of Israel.
Bezos has also been busy making nice with Musk, his longtime rival for most powerful man on Earth and in space. On both fronts, Musk now has a decided edge, aided by his control over much of the US government, which both men’s sprawling empires rely on for billions of dollars in contracts.
With Musk’s hand on the public-money spigot, Bezos apparently did him a favor. After Musk openly heiled Hitler, Jewish leaders renewed calls to boycott Musk’s social media platform, X (Washington Post, 2/4/25). “To advertisers—including Google, Amazon and the ADL: Pull your ads now,” the Jewish leaders wrote. “The pressure is working. X’s financial difficulties prove it.”
But the boycott’s pressure was countered by Bezos’s company. “[X] got good news last week, with Amazon reportedly planning to hike its advertising on the site,” the Post (2/4/25) reported, without mentioning Bezos.
While X’s finances “were once so bad that Musk floated the idea of filing for bankruptcy,” things are suddenly looking up, the Financial Times (2/12/25) reported:
Musk famously admitted to overpaying for Twitter after he bought the social media platform known now as X for $44 billion in 2022. But the billionaire’s foray into government has coincided with a turnaround in X’s fortunes, as advertisers, including Amazon, flock back to the platform.
‘Lemmings leaping in unison’
Kathleen Parker (Washington Post, 1/24/25) likened those who condemned Musk’s Nazi gesture to “lemmings leaping in unison from a cliff”—because it’s suicidal to notice fascism in high places?
It wasn’t just Bezos’s company that threw Musk a lifeline, but also his newspaper. An initial Post headline (1/20/25), which omitted mention of Musk’s Nazi salute, read “Elon Musk Gives Exuberant Speech at Inauguration.” The following day, Post columnist Megan McArdle, echoing the ADL, downgraded Musk’s salute to an “awkward gesture,” the same phrase Post columnist Kathleen Parker used to dismiss those who saw something more sinister as “lemmings leaping in unison from a cliff” (Washington Post, 1/24/25).
Interestingly, one of the most vociferous “lemmings” was Post columnist Catherine Rampell, who brilliantly called out Musk’s Nazi salute, but on CNN, and noticeably not in the Post, except once in passing (1/30/25).
Musk responded to Rampell’s CNN appearance by threatening to sue her in a post (1/27/25) to his over 200 million X followers.
I noted at the top that Musk spent nearly $300 million to elect Trump, but that’s only part of the story. Musk also provided inestimable support by transforming X into a pro-Trump bullhorn. Personally, when I logged onto X during the campaign, I routinely saw Musk’s pro-Trump tweets at the top of my feed, even though I didn’t follow Musk at the time.
Since the election, Musk ’s gifts to Trump have continued. X recently agreed to pay Trump $10 million to settle Trump’s 2021 lawsuit against the company, even though the case was dismissed in 2022. Trump was still appealing the ruling two-and-a-half years later when a deal was cut. “The settlement talks with X began after the election and were more informal, with both Trump and Musk personally involved in hammering out the $10 million number,” the Wall Street Journal (2/13/25) reported.
‘Cheering for change’
New York Times (2/11/25): Many of the federal agencies targeted by Musk “were leading investigations, enforcement matters or lawsuits pending against Mr. Musk’s companies.”
It’s quite something for Elon Musk—the world’s richest human and one of the largest government contractors—to gleefully slash public spending benefiting others. Especially when, by one measure, “virtually all of his net worth can be pinned to government help,” CNN (11/20/24) reported.
While Musk claims to wield a populist’s pitchfork as he attacks “the bureaucracy,” a closer look reveals the work of an oligarch’s scalpel. Musk’s coup team—called DOGE, and consisting mostly of twentysomething male engineers, several of whom appear to share Musk’s racist ideology (New York Times, 2/7/25)—is targeting the federal agencies investigating Musk’s companies, which in addition to X, include Tesla and SpaceX.
“President Trump has been in office less than a month, and Elon Musk’s vast business empire is already benefiting—or is now in a decidedly better position to benefit,” read the opening lines of a New York Times story (2/11/25):
At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by [Trump’s] moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies.
While Trump claims Musk is “not gaining anything” from the arrangement, and Musk says the same, Wall Street sees things differently. Even as Musk says he’s turning his “efficiency” revolution to the Pentagon—the only federal agency never to pass an audit, and where any honest attempt to rein in government spending would begin—stocks for armsmaking companies associated with Musk are surging, while those without ties to him languish. “Palantir, as well as Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI and robotics and AI specialist Anduril Industries, are cheering for change,” the Wall Street Journal (2/10/25) reported.
In other words, having seized control of the levers of government, an oligarch will now be directing funding to himself and his cronies. That’s Wall Street’s view, anyhow.
It seems to be Bezos’s as well. With Amazon and Blue Origin, Bezos’s space company, competing for billions in government contracts, it makes perfect business sense for Bezos to cozy up to Musk and Trump. From a journalistic perspective, however, it’s nothing short of a disaster, one that’s playing out daily in the pages of the WashingtonPost.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
