Elon Musk is an utterly deplorable human being. He has unashamedlyflashed an apparent Nazi salute;encouragedrightwing extremists in Germany and elsewhere;falsely claimedthere is a “genocide” in South Africaagainst white farmers; callouslycelebrated the dismantling of USAID, whose shuttering will lead tothe deaths of millions, according to a study published in the Lancet this week; andincreased misinformation and empowered extremistson his Twitter/X platform while advancing his sham “I am a free speech absolutist” claims. And so much more.
So the news that Donald Trump “will take a look” at deporting his billionaire former “first buddy” Musk has many smirking and shrugging: “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
I like a good comeuppance, but this doesn’t please me at all. It sends a chill down the spine. It is the use of law enforcement agencies as a tool to chill debate, to silence disagreement and dissent, and to punish political opposition. Democracy isdimming fastin the United States, but threats to deport US citizens for disagreeing with the governing administration’s policies are the domain of authoritarian regimes such asBelarusorCameroon.
Coming just hours after his officialsraised the possibilityof stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York who was naturalised in 2018, of his US citizenship, Trump’s threat should have all of America – a country of immigrants – appalled, afraid and up in arms. As theGuardian reportedon Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared to pave the way for an investigation into Mamdani’s status after Andy Ogles, a rightwing Republican congressman for Tennessee, called for his citizenship to be revoked on the grounds that he might have concealed his support for “terrorism” during the naturalization process. Trump has branded Mamdani “a pure communist” and said “we don’t need a communist in this country”.
Mamdani has not broken any laws. His sin? Running for office.
In his threats against Mamdani and Musk, the president comes across like the notorious Republican senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. McCarthy was, according to the Harvard law dean Ervin Griswold, “judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one”. Trump’s threats to Musk and Mamdani are a departure from the administration’s modus operandi of targeting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on US college campuses. It is now targeting people it disagrees with on any issue. The threats are not based on any generally applicable laws but on the whim of the president or other administration leaders. It is an escalation of the assault on civil liberties using government entities to arbitrarily investigate and potentially punish critics.
Over the past four weeks Musk’s sin has been to vehemently oppose Trump’ssweeping spending bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination”. Musk is of course not concerned about the bill’sslashing of health insurance, food stamps and other aid for the poor, but that it does not slash enough and that its cuts to green energy tax credits maycost his company, Tesla, about $1.2bn.
But Musk is a US citizen with the right to oppose a piece of legislation without threats from the highest office in the land and the fear of deportation. When Musk poured$288m of his moneyinto Trump and other Republicans’ 2024 candidacies, no one raised a hand to question his credentials as an American. Instead, the administration gave him therun of the White Houseincluding midnight ice cream binges and a job asa glorified bean counterat DOGE.
The hypocrisy and the corruption embedded within Trump’s deportation threats is mind-boggling but unsurprising given his track record. The consequence, like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, is a climate of fear and a chilling of political discourse and action. Proud Americans who arrived here recently, such as Mamdani, are fearful of running for office, of speaking their minds in true American tradition, despite having the same responsibilities and privileges as every other American conferred on them. Trump’s threat does to Musk what it does to every immigrant: it shuts them up, it holds over their head the possibility of made-up charges and deportation to El Salvador or some other country.
Musk and his like were chortling when the Columbia University activistMahmoud Khalilwas cruelly detained for months. It is in the nature of those who like to tweet about freedom but do not think about it deeply enough, such as Musk, to not realize that their silence when the rights of a Khalil or a Mamdani are trampled upon will come back to haunt them. The Republican rump is silent today as Musk is threatened with deportation, just as it has been when masked men have come for Khalil and others who dared exercise their first amendment rights.
There will be silence when they come for theRepublicans. That’s because we will all be gone by then, after no one else said a thing.
Justice Malala is a political commentator and author of The Plot To Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation