But that is not the point. Contrary to what his critics believe, Musk is not issuing a voting directive. He is offering a dispassionate assessment of the state of decline in European countries. As the classical liberal essayist Ferghane Azihari explains, any economic differences Musk may have with Le Pen are, in this case, entirely irrelevant: "Bad economic policies can indeed undermine a country's prosperity for years, even decades. But these setbacks are far more reversible than a shift in civilization." And that is precisely what Musk has understood.
Like so many other Americans, he cannot help but observe that the France they love, the homeland of Molière and Hugo, of Notre-Dame de Paris and Mont Saint-Michel, has now surrendered to hordes from its former colonies, who regularly ransack the City of Light, loot and rape, and could not care less about everything that has made this beautiful country great: men's rights and beautiful women, free-thinking and fine wine. And he draws the rather simplistic conclusion that voting for the Rassemblement National (RN) candidate may be the only way, perhaps, to try to halt the infernal machinery of civilizational collapse.
Short Memories, Loud Outrage on X
Unsurprisingly, the first to speak out against Musk's supportive post came from the left. Writing on X, the very platform Musk owns, Antoine Léaument, a member of parliament from La France Insoumise, called on ARCOM, the independent French media regulatory authority, to "stop this", arguing that it constituted intolerable foreign interference.
Macronist Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Nathalie Loiseau came to his defense. "Take a good look at who Marine Le Pen's favorite is: Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, the champion of profit at any cost, the man who flouts European laws and supports the most extremist parties across Europe, the one who has reconciled with Trump", the elected official denounced, also using the platform Musk now controls.
But these good people have short memories. On other occasions, they applauded stances of equal significance. Macronist MEP Nathalie Loiseau seems to have forgotten that Barack Obama officially endorsed Emmanuel Macron in his bid for power, a harmless and inconsequential intervention, after all, coming from nothing more than the president of the United States. She also seems to have forgotten her own statements from 2025, when she declared herself proud to exercise her influence "within one of Europe's best think tanks, the ECFR", an organization funded in part by George Soros's Open Society Foundations. Let us not confuse the two. The Hungarian-American businessman never interferes: he works for a good cause. Loiseau added: "Being a member of the ECFR is an opportunity for me to spread French ideas throughout Europe." But the idea of interfering is, apparently, far from her mind.
This vague concept, now rebranded as "domestic interference", is invoked solely to serve the interests of whoever happens to be using it. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, an RN lawmaker who sat on the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Foreign Interference, notes that lawmakers at the time focused primarily on interference by China and Russia, while Qatar's role in French politics and business was deliberately sidelined. US interference fared no better: Macron supporters on the commission dismissed it as "on the fringes", for good reason, given the murky ties between American companies and French officials eager to see the country's industrial gems sold off, ties better kept out of the spotlight.
There is no foreign interference in Musk's post. The French law of 25 July 2024 defines interference as "acting on behalf of a foreign power in a covert manner", and Musk conceals nothing. He speaks for no one but himself, publicly and openly, on a platform whose algorithm code is open-source and accessible on GitHub, making it difficult to speak of covert manipulation under these circumstances. His remarks are therefore protected, under the right to political freedom of expression, by both Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, according to a 1976 court ruling, extends even to ideas that "offend, shock, or cause unease".
In France, the RN is somewhat embarrassed by this cumbersome support, though there is little reason to make a fuss over it. There is no need to boast about the endorsement, but no need to deny it either. After all, it is Elon Musk who, through his acquisition of Twitter, has given France's leading opposition party the chance to reach millions of French people every day with a narrative that offers an alternative to that of the mainstream media.
