Tech Billionaires and Political Power: The stakes of Trump and Musk's relationship

THE unravelling of the relationship between President Donald J Trump and the tech billionaire Elon Musk has raised to global significance the old age yet urgent question.

What, if anything, will possibly trigger the avalanche or sequence of dialectical events that would definitively spell the end of the empire?

Keen observers have long theorised that the factors that could herald the Thucydides transition of these times would not result from a military invasion of the United States by a foreign power. By all indications, the factors would be internal, which by the sheer scale of their social depth and intractability and indeed the many dimensions of their complexities, would result in its implosion.

Donald J Trump may be the last Emperor of the US hegemony, to the catatonic shock of the believers of its invincibility.

And it came from an unexpected angle. The billionaires who have been plotting to have dominion over the machinery that rules over the empire have lost patience with the cycles that define democratic biorhythms and their contrived pretences of socio-political civility.

The stakes are high, and the battle lines drawn are the hard ones, fixed and immutable. It is the people’s power through their sovereign vote against techno fascism, a form of rulership by the technology billionaires, or what Naomi Klein refers to as corporate Zionism.

If Trump blinks, for whatever reason, deducted or speculated, the empire will meet its spectacular demise at the sphincter of fascism, plunged deep in its heart by the richest man in the world.

If Musk blinks, however, the power of the people’s will and the continuity of the values that sustain their sovereignty will forever spell the indomitable and victorious spirit of their foremothers and forefathers who sacrificed everything for the legacies they so delicately enjoy.

The consequences for so many parts of the globe are dire for some and desperate for others in equal measure. South Africa is a case in point. Musk portended a lot of promise for far-right and fascist tendencies in South Africa. The expectation was that the SpaceX and Tesla mogul would forever inhabit the gilded hallways of the White House and whose influence will be brought to prevail on whoever would be temporarily residing there, according to his dictates.

This would have allowed Musk to go to any country and threaten them at will, at the back of US military might and the power of unilateral sanctions against anyone, rightly or wrongly. Musk cannot lose this battle.

Being out of the White House, and in mortal combat with the main principal at the Oval Office, what possibility is there that Musk would influence the politics of South Africa as he wishes? The stakes are really, really high.

And his vassals in the Republic of South Africa who have been advocating for regime change by alleging genocide against caucasian South Africans in general or that section of them who are farmers, would, as an existential necessity, revise their strategic imperatives in the light of these developments.

All the trips to the US, both announced and those undertaken at pains of secrecy, had a singular objective. That is, to persuade the entire Christian Nationalistic movements of the United States, the fascist right movements, tech billionaires and above all, the ruling Republican Party, of the delegitimacy of the South African government. Or to be absolutely correct, the ANC’s role in it.

The playbook was somewhat simple. Claim genocide against white farmers. Derecognise the current genocidal construct, recently graduated from being a xenophobic lot. Facilitate the establishment of a forever transitional government that would exclude either the EFF and MKP or both.

The script best suited for regime change artistes like USAID became too convoluted for Trump, and he abandoned his part in it midplay. Notwithstanding a second contingency of so-called ‘genocide refugees’ said to have quietly arrived in the US sometime last week, this raging battle for the God complex will snap the refugee scam rather abruptly.

Peter Thiel and his CIA co-investors in SpaceX, are truly invested in the Starlink proposition. It is of critical importance that the South African project, and its broader global and strategic advantages, should be brought to early fruition. It is entirely dependent on two things to succeed. The might of the US state and the surrealistic role of the ANC or GNU as the case may be. Musk is fast losing Trump.

And Musk may find it inordinately difficult to bring to submission the South African political machinery for the Starlink project to be accepted without contestation.

Like I said… The stakes are way too high.