Musk-Trump: a conflict in the right-wing constellation

The clash between Elon Musk and Donald Trump — two immense egos who were once allies — is not just an episode of a rupture between two people. It is also a symptom of a divergence in the political-intellectual constellation that challenges the foundations of democratic liberalism, this “reactionary international”, as Emmanuel Macron put it.

It is not, in fact, a cohesive bloc. It has at least three major ideological groups: the Christian ultraconservatives, the identitarian populists and the techno-libertarians. They all converge, however, in rejecting the legacy of the Enlightenment — of universal reason, of equal rights, of science as the basis for political decision-making.

Musk embodies the techno-libertarian wing. He believes in a technological meritocracy that is averse to the State. He sees absolute freedom of expression as a tool for both emancipation and total deregulation. Trump embodies populist, nationalist and authoritarian resentment. He mobilizes his huge supporters against cultural elites, immigrants and civil rights, and uses the State to impose conservative morality (despite his history of private “vices”).

The tension between the two shows how this new radical right is not monolithic. It is even contradictory. Catholic integralists are suspicious of transhumanism and the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley, for example, and identitarian populists defend a strong state, which libertarians despise.

But they all intend to rewrite the foundations of life together. They use social networks (controlled by themselves, in some cases, like Musk), video platforms, ideological think tanks, university influence, and disinformation channels.

The Musk-Trump conflict can be read as an internal struggle for the future of this new right. Will it be led by a crude, nationalist populism that relies on resentment and isolation? Or by a hyper-individualist technological elite that dreams of private cities, digital currencies and escape to Mars?

The challenge they all pose is not just political, it is civilizational. And the question is whether democracies will be up to the task of responding to them — or whether they will watch, helplessly, as the liberal order that has sustained them since 1945 is fragmented.