As I noted in an earlier piece, Elon Musk may have taken over Twitter, but the Left is not going to just take this lying down.

Twitter has been a cornerstone of the Left’s strategy to control The Narrative™ and the Left views Musk’s defense of free speech in a digital town square to be something of an existential threat to their monopoly on Truth™. Their power comes from owning not just the commanding heights of our society and economy, but also from owning The Truth™.

The European Union has threatened Musk directly, reminding him that they have laws in Europe that constrain free speech and the regulatory power to enforce them:

👋 @elonmusk

In Europe, the bird will fly by our 🇪🇺 rules.#DSA https://t.co/95W3qzYsal

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 28, 2022

Thierry Breton is a French business executive, politician and the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union. He met with Musk earlier in the year to share his concerns about free speech on Twitter and in this Tweet reminded him that Europe has its eyes on him. You can read about the EU’s threats in my earlier post referenced above.

Here in the US the Biden Administration has been making noise about the potential national security threat a free Twitter might pose, and now a US Senator is upping the ante. The Left is absolutely in a panic about Musk “freeing the bird,” and they have been stymied by the fact that he simply doesn’t care what they think. Musk’s superpower is his indifference to the opinions of jerks, or anybody else.

We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting U.S. politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform.

There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 31, 2022

Sounds dire, doesn’t it?

What Senator Murphy doesn’t tell you is that Saudi Arabia neither owns Twitter (Elon Musk does), nor does its investment in the deal change a thing from last week or last year.

Saudi Arabia’s had a stake in Twitter all along. The exact same size as now. They no more control Twitter today than they did before. Murphy didn’t care about that then, and he doesn’t really care about it now. He cares about Musk allowing conservatives a say on social media.

Murphy is doing nothing other than taking the same shot across the bow that the EU did last week. He is reminding Musk that no matter how large a player in the economy he is–and he is a big player indeed–the US government and its allies are bigger yet. He is simply saying: we can crush you if we so choose, so play ball.

Musk has become enemy #1 for the transnational elite. Ironically, I am pretty sure he never expected that to happen, because he clearly is only vaguely aware of politics and the culture, and only vaguely cares about any of that except when either becomes an obstacle to his objectives or his personal interests.

As one wag put it on Twitter, if Twitter hadn’t stopped the Babylon Bee from tweeting, history would have been different. Musk thought the Bee was funny and was surprised to see them silenced. He got so irked by the censorship at Twitter that he simply decided to buy it. He looked around, decided Twitter was doing a bad thing, and did something about it.

Going to be wild if the banning of the Babylon Bee ends up being a turning point in western civilization

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) October 27, 2022

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was driven by exactly the same sort of impulse as his quixotic quest to turn the human race into a multi planetary species. He thinks it is a great idea and believes he has the power to accomplish it. With Twitter he thinks that censorship is a terrible thing for humanity, so he decided to loosen it up where he could.

Nothing complicated about it. Musk is, if nothing else, very open about what he does and why. He is quirky that way. He just says and does what he thinks. It’s why people think he has Aspergers Syndrome–he has no filter. I am no doctor so I can’t comment on that, but I sure admire his ability to just say and do what he thinks is correct.

In almost any other case I would put my money on the Establishment™ over any individual, but I am agnostic about whether Musk can be intimidated by the jerks who run the world.

Not because Musk is obscenely wealthy, although the money is a great tool for him to do great things.

Rather I think Musk might win because the Establishment™ needs things from him like Starlink and SpaceX. And, frankly, I think Musk looks at these transnational elites as arrogant putzes who really don’t deserve the power they have. He isn’t going to just bow down to them because they want him to. He isn’t easily intimidated.

For God’s sake, the man shot a car into space because he thought it was funny. Who else would do that?

So far Musk has been uncancelable. And with the coming of a Republican majority in Congress it will be harder still to go after him, not because Musk is in the pocket of Republicans–he isn’t, really–but because their interests on this matter align and today’s Republicans are decoupling from the Elite™.

It’s going to be a wild ride.