00:00I think there's too much bureaucracy from Brussels, too much control from sort of global elite.
00:18Elon Musk has become a major critic of Europe and the European Union and a major booster of Europe's far right.
00:25Like at this surprise appearance he made at an election rally for Germany's far-right AFD party.
00:32Fight for a great future for Germany. Fight for a great future.
00:35We wanted to know more about what Elon Musk has been saying about Europe since Donald Trump's re-election last November.
00:43So we got together with other European public broadcasters to take a systematic look at what he posts online.
00:49Specifically on X, the platform he bought in 2022 and where he now has 220 million followers.
00:58We counted his tweets, more than 15,000 between Trump's re-election and early April.
01:04That is an average of 100 a day.
01:06Musk tweets about tech, his companies, his work for the White House and Europe.
01:11Musk posted more than 1,300 tweets and retweets about Europe over the five-month period.
01:17His message, a twist on Donald Trump's favorite slogan, from MAGA to MEGA, make Europe great again.
01:25His favorite themes, criticism of European institutions and governments, their progressive politics, European democracy, European diplomacy, and above all, Europe's supposedly lax policies on immigration.
01:39Musk has also taken his anti-immigration message directly to Europe's far-right parties who share it, like Italy's League party.
01:50The mass immigration is insane and will lead to the destruction of any country that allows unfettered mass immigration.
02:00That country will simply cease to exist.
02:01The two countries Musk has targeted the most are the UK with 593 tweets and Germany with 193.
02:10In the UK, he has defended anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson.
02:14And in Germany, he posted more than 50 messages backing the far-right AFD, saying multiple times, only AFD can save Germany, and retweeting far-right influencers like Naomi Seibt.
02:27And if you know anything about Germany, you probably know that we are the epitome, the meme nation of bureaucratic overspending.
02:37Seibt is a former YouTuber known for her skepticism on climate change and COVID.
02:43Musk has retweeted her at least 30 times.
02:45Some of these accounts that before were thought of as more fringe are now on Elon Musk's ex-account, and he's retweeting them.
02:54And they're really getting a lot more attention, a lot more visibility, and a lot more legitimacy.
02:59As well as his tweets targeting Europe and its institutions, we tracked Musk's tweets that were pro-Russia and against Ukraine.
03:07He tweeted or retweeted 342 messages that expressed support for Russia or criticism of Ukraine.
03:13There was a peak after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's humiliating visit to the White House in February.
03:20Musk wrote,
03:21Zelensky destroyed himself in the eyes of the American people.
03:25He posted three U.S. flags when Trump said Zelensky had disrespected the U.S.
03:32And he retweeted influencers like Mario Naufal, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and one of the pro-Russian and far-right influencers Musk often retweets.
03:42Elon Musk has a real concern with Ukraine, a negative concern, because he has a ideological proximity, especially ideological, on some elements with Russia.
03:55Now, 15,000 tweets is a huge amount to sort through.
03:59We asked our team of journalists if they could do it.
04:02It is possible it takes an army of journalists.
04:07Now, we don't have an army of journalists, but we do have data journalists, Ershad Alijani and Kwong Pham.
04:13We categorized his posts into original posts, reposts, replies and quotes.
04:17This was very useful to understand whose ideas drive Musk the most.
04:22Musk's tweets are often just emojis.
04:24Ershad used the Python coding language to link Musk's tweets to what he was reacting to.
04:30From this, we came to this.
04:35Actually, it was a support for a far-right rally in the U.K.
04:40Ershad downloaded the videos and photos Musk shared, more than 3,000 videos in five months, and nearly 2,000 photos.
04:48Ershad then put all of that into a super column.
04:51Our super column contains more than 6 million characters.
04:55It is impossible for a human being to treat such a large mass of data.
04:58Kwong turned to AI, writing code that asked ChatGPT to analyze each and every tweet.
05:05Here is the prompt we sent to ChatGPT.
05:10We asked him to analyze the tweets according to the following instructions.
05:13I will find the tweets that criticize the European migration policy.
05:19It is important to note that we have controlled the work of ChatGPT.
05:23First, we asked him to justify his choices.
05:27For the last control, we have manually verified the results of ChatGPT.
05:32Since April, Musk has stepped back from his work for the Trump administration to focus on his companies.
05:38But on X, he continues to be a key amplifier of messages from the far-right in the U.S. and in Europe.
05:48That's it for this week.
05:49As always, you can find more reports from our observers on our website, observers.france24.com.
05:53I'll see you next time.
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