England Alone

 Not content with hijacking American democracy, Elon Musk increasingly seems bent on destroying democracy all over the world. I don't know how else to read his increasingly flagrant meddling in the politics of other nations in order to back far-right authoritarians. Exhibit A this week would be his eerie endorsement of the extreme right AfD party in Germany. Even after this, of course, Musk will still have his defenders—particularly in the Bay Area ("power has never lacked eulogists," as Elias Canetti once wrote (Stewart trans.))—but there's really no two ways to read that one. Endorsing a neo-fascist party—in Germany, of all places—is a dead give-away. 

Some have expressed consternation that he made this choice, but it really shouldn't surprise us. Musk has generated a series of related controversies over the past few years in which he appeared to endorse Hitler apologetics and to embrace antisemitic conspiracy theories. His open backing of AfD fits the same mould. Add to this the fact that Musk's foreign policy positions all eerily align with those of authoritarian nations, like Xi's People's Republic of China (viz Musk on Taiwan) and Vladimir Putin's Russia—and it really does appear he is on a worldwide crusade to quell restive liberal democracies that stand in the way of his ambitions. 

What's particularly disturbing about all this is that it comes at a time when democracies seem to already be on the ropes. The liberal order looks more imperiled today than it has at any time since the 1930s. South Korea recently faced political chaos and a momentary descent into martial law. The victory of anti-incumbent politics in Japan, meanwhile, hardly spells doom for their political system—but it does point to a new degree of instability that all the parliamentary countries are facing. The French and German governing coalitions have similarly collapsed in recent months. Canada's liberal incumbent government is facing turmoil and increasing pubic opposition. 

Part of what worries me about this state of affairs is that many of the democracies around the world are founded on the American model. And if the United States ceases to become a model of a working liberal democracy—as the re-election of Trump and the rise to power of his leading henchman, Musk, portend—it's logical to think it would cause more instability in many of the democratic systems that the United States helped to found—and give a green light to bad actors in those countries who reject the liberal model: South Korea, Japan, and Germany all come to mind. And we are now witnessing some of that instability already. 

If the United States stops promoting democracy or providing an available model of its use, that is to say—then who exactly will defend it? Only one other country comes to mind: the UK.

It may seem a dismal prospect to rest all of humanity's hopes for the preservation of a liberal parliamentary order—founded in the rule of law—on one island nation. But—the truth is—humanity has been in exactly that position before—and yet, somehow, liberalism prevailed. There was a period in the early phase of the Second World War, after all—before the U.S. had entered the conflict, after Stalin had inked his alliance with Hitler through the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and after Hitler had conquered most of Western Europe through the blitzkrieg. The UK, at that moment, stood alone. 

Of course, Musk seems to sense this too—and so, he is now coming for the UK as well. The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk is in conversation with the far-right provocateur and Brexit architect Nigel Farage to promote his anti-immigrant populist party and unseat the UK's current Labour government. The sums that have been floated as potential donations are mind-boggling. Elon Musk seems to believe, increasingly, that he can simply use his control of a major social media platform and his astronomical wealth to buy democracies, whenever they engage in forms of political speech he doesn't like. 

If America falls to the neo-fascist authoritarians, that will be bad news for people like me, who live here and believe in this country and care about its future. It might also spell doom for some electoral democracies based on the U.S. model.

But it might not doom the future of liberalism for all humanity. As I say, I have hope that the UK would continue to fight on for the sake of parliamentary systems everywhere and the rule of law, even if the US falls. 

But if the UK too falls to the likes of Elon—then all really might be lost. If they fall, we really all will fall. It all comes down, then, just as it did in the '30s, to England alone. That is where the fate of parliamentary democracy and the liberal order will be decided. And so, it's clear where I have to stand. As Edward Thomas once wrote: "with the best and meanest [...] / I am one in crying, 'God save England,' lest / We lose what never slaves or cattle blessed."