Every time Elon Musk opens his mouth, the rule of law dies a little. Latest exploit: attacking the judges of Rome who, with the insolence typical of legality, dared to cancel the detention of some migrants. But being one of the richest men in the world is not enough to earn the right to insult Italian judges and issue sentences on legal decisions that he probably doesn’t even understand. “These judges must go,” declared our billionaire on This time, the judges of the Rome court are in the crosshairs, who dared to cancel the detention of seven migrants transferred to Albania and send the matter back to the European Court of Justice for clarification. But what could Elon Musk possibly know about Italy’s complex immigration laws or the weight of European directives? Nothing, probably.
It’s not the first time that Musk has improvised himself as a defender of “justice” — or rather, justice as he likes it. When minister Matteo Salvini ended up on trial for the Open Arms case, the good Elon was quick to defend him publicly, writing that “it is scandalous that he is on trial for enforcing the law.” And when someone dared to argue back, he went further, calling a judge “crazy” and even suggesting that he should go to prison for six years. In Musk’s black and white world, the judiciary is not there to deliver justice, but to take it out on anyone who dares to contradict it.
Musk does not reserve this overbearing intrusion into Italian politics and its delicate legal balances only for Italy. Last year he attacked German NGOs active in the Mediterranean, accusing them of “picking up illegal immigrants to dump them in Italy” and questioning the very point of the rescue missions. The answer from the German Foreign Ministry, simple and clear: “Yes, and it’s called saving lives.” But when Musk gets it into his head to talk about migration, humanity and rights seem like negligible details. What matters is his desire to create “order”, with migrants on one side and the rich and orderly world on the other.
The affinity between Musk and the Italian right, in particular the Melonian one, is no secret. Last year he was a guest at the Atreju party, where he arrived with one of eleven children (he had in the most varied ways, including a rented womb) in his arms and invited «Italians and other industrialized countries to have children or the culture of Italy, Japan and France will disappear.” For Musk, the demographic decline is a problem to be solved between “real humans”, with all due respect to those fleeing poverty and conflicts. Between a jab at environmentalists and one against the European Commission, the billionaire took his leave with a patriotic “long live humans”, as if only his people could boast of belonging to the species.
It is therefore surprising that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was quick to define Musk as “an added value in this time”. And to reiterate how important it is to have an interlocutor like him, forgetting, perhaps, that there are many who consider Musk a billionaire with a penchant for global control, from the airwaves to social media up to space.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of reactions. “Go and build your regimes in space” wrote the MEP Sandro Gozi, defending the independence of the judiciary and recalling that neither Italy nor Europe takes lessons in democracy from anyone, much less from Musk. Riccardo Magi, from +Europa, also made himself heard: «Who knows if the patriots Meloni and Salvini will defend Italian sovereignty from the interference of the American billionaire Elon Musk, who is asking the judges of a sovereign country to leave?» And again: «Maybe he thinks he is intimidating Italian judges, but Italy is not yet Hungary or Putin’s Russia, much less Trump’s USA with justice subjected to political power».
And then there is the intervention of the CSM, with councilor Ernesto Carbone, who warns: «Elon Musk’s words against Italian judges are dangerous. These new oligarchs who exploit new worlds (such as space, ether, social media and new technologies) to control world politics are a danger to democracy.” Musk, with his infinite wallet and even bigger ego, is undermining a fundamental principle: the judiciary cannot be touched, neither in Italy nor in Europe.
The question is: are we willing to tolerate a man who escapes any institutional control telling us how we should manage our laws? What if we sent him into space, aboard one of his rockets?
