{"id":226587,"date":"2025-01-29T04:03:12","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T04:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/29\/how-elon-musk-is-using-start-up-tactics-to-disrupt-european-politics\/"},"modified":"2025-01-29T04:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T04:03:12","slug":"how-elon-musk-is-using-start-up-tactics-to-disrupt-european-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/29\/how-elon-musk-is-using-start-up-tactics-to-disrupt-european-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"How Elon Musk is Using Start-Up Tactics to Disrupt European Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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They are ripe for disruption.<\/p>\n

Well before Mr. Musk first backed the AfD, it had become the second most-popular party in Germany. The Social Democrats, the country\u2019s oldest party which once routinely won more than 40 percent of the vote, are polling at a historic low of 16 percent ahead of next month\u2019s election. The Christian Democrats are favored to win, but are on course to do so with less than a third of the vote. And Britain\u2019s Labour Party, which returned to power last June with only a third of the vote, has slumped to a 20 percent approval rating<\/a> in polls.<\/p>\n

In both countries, voters are upset about years of stagnant growth, declining public services, rising immigration and a generalized sense that their children will be worse off than they are. They feel that their governments have failed to tackle these problems \u2014 and that whomever they elect among the traditional parties, the outcome barely changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusk is using the existing party system, showing its complicity and its hollowness\u201d to channel voters\u2019 anger, said Quinn Slobodian, a professor of international history at Boston University and the author of \u201cCrack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s sort of hacking the democratic process as it exists now and showing us where the vulnerabilities are,\u201d he added. \u201cThe question is whether or not we know how to fix them, or if it\u2019s such a problematic virus bug that it\u2019s going to spread through the whole system.\u201d<\/p>\n