US tech giants line up behind Donald Trump

With just a few days to go before his inauguration, the big bosses of American tech are lining up behind Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the boss of X, Tesla and Space X, has openly supported the Republican candidate’s campaign, and has been appointed Minister of ‘Government Efficiency’ in his future government. More surprising is the about-turn by Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta, who announced on 7 January that he was doing away with fact-checking on his social networks, in the name of freedom of expression. The same man who suspended Trump’s account in 2021 after the invasion of the Capitol. Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, financed Trump’s inauguration ceremony after refusing to allow his newspaper to support the Democratic candidate on the pretext of political neutrality. Censorship of the kind that cartoonist Ann Telnaes recently paid the price for.

Over and above the ideological aspect of this movement, which is obvious in the case of Elon Musk, who espouses a libertarian political vision that is close to the fer right (which he readily supports in Germany and the UK) and dangerous for democracy*, it is above all billions of dollars in profits that are at stake.

*Like other media and NGOs, Cartooning for Peace has decided to leave the social media X (Twitter), via the HelloQuitX campaign.

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