Musk: Alex Gibney Talks Elon Musk’s Global Right-Wing Agenda: Venice

Elon Musk took the spotlight at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday. Well, not in person! But he and his influence took center stage as filmmaker Alex Gibney discussed his new doc, simply called Musk, during a press conference around lunchtime.

The film about the owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, world-premiering in the Italian fest’s Venice Open – Out of Competition program, comes from producers Jigsaw Productions (Gibney, Jessie Deeter, Erin Edeiken), Closer Media (Zhang Xin), Anonymous Content (Nick Shumaker, Jessica Grimshaw) and Double Agent (Dana O’Keefe).

Despite its 225-minute running time, the Venice synopsis of the doc is brief and to the point: “An incisive look behind the legend of Elon Musk, the world’s most heralded ‘inventorentrepreneur’ who exerts an enormous influence on the world in which we all live.”

Gibney shared how the doc team reached out to Musk for the film, without success, and how the focus of the project changed once the tech mogul “got wrapped into Donald Trump” and his story. The result is a mix of “the reality of what he has done and the unreality of his narrative,” the filmmaker said. “In the service of that, we created this formulation that came out of Musk’s own ideas about the notion that we’re living in a simulation or in some kind of existential video game, to convey in formal terms, through a kind of avatar, which speaks with Musk’s actual words, and video game imagery” both sides, the reality and the unreality.

Of course, a member of the press asked if Gibney is concerned about a potential legal backlash by Musk. “We consulted our lawyers, and they gave us a sign-off to go forward,” when the doc team decided to use Musk’s words and visualize the mogul as an avatar, he replied.

Asked if there has been any retaliation against the filmmakers, the director shared that he encountered a “tremendous sense of fear of talking, really almost existential fear,” among many of the people that the film team reached out to.

So, how dangerous is Musk, especially for the future of democracy? “Extremely,” Gibney concluded. “Very dangerous.”

A couple of questions focused on the tech mogul’s support for political parties on the right flank of the political spectrum in such countries as Germany, where the far-right AfD just won a regional election in Saxony-Anhalt this weekend. In fact, Musk congratulated the party on the victory via a “Well done!” on his X. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in the region, thanked the billionaire in return, posting: “Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time — including here in Germany. If we take responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. Germany would once again be a place worth investing in.”

So, what does this all mean? “I hope I showed in the film that he’s involved in right-wing political parties all over the globe – in Germany, in the United Kingdom, in Brazil, in Turkey, and I think there are a number of reasons for that,” Gibney told the Venice press conference. “That seems to be his ideology at the moment. But in addition to that, many of these right-wing governments tend to be more pliable, and it’s easier to buy the results you want for administrations that are utterly corrupt and venal and have no sense of restraint or internal checks and balances.”

Gibney’s takeaway: “So, I think he’s pursuing a global right-wing agenda, both for ideological and for very practical and monetary reasons.”

Suggesting that these players are “more pliable,” the filmmaker emphasized the “crony capitalist aspect to his political aspirations” during the press conference. “With Trump suddenly, and with many other right-wing leaders around the world, he sees the possibility of being able to buy influence that’s unprecedented, because they’re much more amenable to the crony capitalist idea.” Gigney’s conclusion was that Musk is “always pragmatic” and “moves where the money is.”

Gibney was joined during the press conference by political commentator and author Ashley St. Clair, who has a baby with Musk, and technology journalist and author Zoë Schiffer. The latter pointed out that at his companies, Musk tends to ensure “loyalty” at the highest levels,” while treating other people “pretty harshly.” At X, “he has tweaked the algorithm both to suppress mainstream journalism and to augment some of the more inflammatory comments and voices on that platform,” she said.

St. Clair mentioned her past claim that “I was offered the opportunity not to speak for $40 million” in the form of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) when she had her baby with Musk. “I got involved with Republican politics when I was 18, after I met Charlie Kirk, and there was an air of ignorance,” she explained. “But that ignorance does not excuse any role in that. I hope the risk that I’m taking now in speaking out and trying to fight back at least helps a little bit.”

She also shared her take on his work with X and political parties around the globe. “His most complicated relationship is with the truth,” she said. “He is stoking flames that don’t exist in the real world, and he is creating something that is causing real-world effects. … I do believe that he is causing deliberate division that may be catastrophic if it’s not regulated or tamed, or if we don’t do our part in putting it down.”

Gibney and St. Clair both mentioned what the former called Musk’s “very difficult and traumatic childhood” as a potential driver for him and his focus. “I think to some extent he’s now playing out that trauma on the rest of us.”

All in all, he called Musk “a cautionary tale” that tries, among a “bewildering world of inputs” in the social media age, to stitch together a narrative to show the forest amid all the trees.

In a director’s statement on the Venice website, Gibney shares: “In Musk, I chose to re-tell a familiar biographical tale but to forgo the master. Instead, I explored it from different angles that showed the master shot to be an illusion, and revealed a more disturbing truth. Musk reframes the story of the tech titan as the 21st century reincarnation of the confidence man. By subverting Musk’s favorite tropes of video gaming and simulations, the film conveys the dangers of becoming like the Game Master in Ready Player One. It’s a tale of power and its abuse.”