Skip to content

Elon Musk

Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy Is A Wall Street Speculator

December 28, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , ,
Vivek Ramaswamy is the billionaire Republican politician and failed presidential candidate whom Donald Trump appointed to lead the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), alongside co-chair Elon Musk, the richest oligarch on Earth (who brands himself a libertarian anti-government crusader, while his companies receive billions in US government subsidies). Ramaswamy sparked something of a civil war among US conservatives with a puerile Twitter post lamenting how US popular culture upholds jocks over nerds.

Ghastly Glimpses Of America’s Most Rich-People-Friendly Year

December 22, 2024 Sam Pizzigati, Counter Punch. , ,
The good times — for America’s super wealthy — are now rolling way past good. Our richest have in 2024 enjoyed their best year ever. No other nation’s deepest pockets have watched their fortunes grow as large or as fast. Elon Musk, of course, perfectly embodies this unprecedented surge in the personal wealth of America’s wealthiest. Musk has entered 2024’s last two weeks with a net worth spilling past $450 billion, nearly half a trillion dollars. Over the last 12 months, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index neatly notes, Musk’s wealth has doubled.

Biden’s Last-Minute Gift To Corporate Lawbreakers

December 1, 2024 Helen Santoro, The Lever. , , , , ,
Less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the Biden Justice Department announced it could be handing corporations a get-out-of-jail-free card, even if they have committed multiple crimes, earned significant profit from their wrongdoing, and failed to self-disclose the misconduct — as long as the companies demonstrate they “acted in good faith” to try to come clean. “Those that make good faith efforts to self-report, even if they do not qualify for a [full prosecution shield], could still receive substantial benefits,” noted the Nov. 22 update.

Billionaires Take Center Stage After US Elections

November 18, 2024 Philippe Alcoy, Left Voice. , , , , ,
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its capitalist restoration, the world witnessed a veritable festival of fraudulent privatizations and appropriations of collective property by a small group of former apparatchiks, state bureaucrats, and Mafia-like businessmen. This was the great new capitalist class needed in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc to make capitalist restoration “irreversible,” as Western economists and technocrats liked to say at the time. What followed was a large-scale theft on the part of imperialist banks and Western political leaders, a process which functioned in the interests of the international capitalist class as a whole.

Why Donald Trump Won The US Election

November 8, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , ,
Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election in a landslide. Unlike in 2016, where Trump won the electoral college but lost the popular vote, this time he got 4 million more votes than his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Why was Harris defeated so thoroughly? In short, because the billionaire-funded neoliberal Democrats failed to provide an economic alternative to the billionaire-funded Republicans’ pseudo “populism”. Polls consistently showed that the economy was the number one issue in the 2024 race. Concern about the state of the economy was at the highest level since the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007-09.

France’s ‘President Of The Rich’ Macron Steals Election He Lost

September 10, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , ,
France’s leader Emmanuel Macron, a multimillionaire investment banker known popularly as the “president of the rich”, has been accused by the country’s left-wing opposition of stealing the election and carrying out a “coup”. In June and July, France held two rounds of voting. Macron lost the election, while a coalition of leftist parties came in first place. But Macron refused to allow them to form a government. Instead, Macron made a tacit alliance with the French far right to keep the left out of power, and he appointed as prime minister a conservative politician from an unpopular party that came in fourth place and earned just around 6% of the vote.

Venezuela In The Crosshairs Of Technological Imperialism

September 5, 2024 Misión Verdad Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , , ,
In August, Venezuela’s re-elected president, Nicolás Maduro, signed a decree blocking access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days. President Maduro said of its owner, tycoon Elon Musk, “He has violated the rules by inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation among Venezuelans, and has violated all Venezuelan laws.” Musk, who also owns the Starlink satellite broadband network, expressed his support for the far-right Venezuelan opposition and insulted the president, which is a sign of the determination of the new global elites to carry out regime change in Venezuela. This action was accompanied by other attempts implemented through various technological platforms such as Apple, Google, and Meta.

‘Teslastoppen’ Elon Musk’s Water War In The Heart Of Europe

April 27, 2024 Aris Dimitrakopoulos, Unicorn Riot. , , , , ,
“Welcome to the Utopian Gigafactory,” reads a banner hung across a path in a Brandenburg Forest outside Berlin, Germany. At the end of the path, Tesla’s -very real- Gigafactory is visible behind the trees. The banner has been hung by activists of the “Teslastoppen” (Stop Tesla) initiative, who have occupied part of the forest since late February, aiming to prevent Tesla from expanding its only European Gigafactory. The occupation consists of approximately 100 activists, rotating between Berlin and Gruheide,  who have set up around a dozen treehouses and platforms suspended with ropes between trees, several meters up in the air.

US TikTok Ban Aims To Weaken China And Protect Tech Monopolies

March 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , ,
The US government has for years threatened to ban TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the country. It’s now looking like this might actually happen. This March, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”. This bill states that it “prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)”. It passed with an overwhelming majority of 352 votes in favor and just 65 votes against.

America’s Richest Men Ask The Courts To Make Unions Illegal

February 25, 2024 Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect. , , , , , , , , , ,
Fourscore and seven years ago—1937, to be exact—our fathers on the Supreme Court (well, five of them, which was just enough) brought forth a new nation: New Deal America. In that year, the justices ruled that the most fundamental legislative works of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency—Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—were constitutional. So said the Court; so said, in the NLRA case, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the decision’s author, who had been the Republican candidate for president in 1916.

Global 1% Own 43% Of Financial Assets

January 18, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , ,
The world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and the wealth of the top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity – nearly 5 billion people – collectively got poorer, according to a report by Oxfam, a leading international humanitarian organization. Oxfam published the study, “Inequality Inc.”, to coincide with the World Economic Forum meeting of corporate oligarchs and Western government officials in Davos, Switzerland this January. The five richest people on Earth in 2023 were Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett. Their combined wealth skyrocketed from $340 billion in 2020 to $869 billion just three years later.

NLRB Accuses SpaceX Of Illegally Firing Workers For Criticizing Elon Musk

January 6, 2024 Mariella Moon, Engadget. , , ,
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed a complaint against SpaceX, accusing it of unlawfully firing eight employees involved in writing a letter that called Elon Musk's behavior on social media "a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment." According to the filing, the company committed an unfair labor practice when it fired the workers for "engaging in protected concerted activity at work." It also accused SpaceX of interrogating at least one employee about the letter, as well as about the identities of their colleagues and the nature of their "concerted protected activity."

Elon Musk’s Swedish Problem

December 21, 2023 Les Leopold, Portside. , , ,
Unfortunately for Elon Musk, the lord and master of the Tesla electric automobile company, the Swedish peasants have grabbed their pitchforks. One hundred twenty Tesla mechanics in seven service centers are demanding a collective agreement with the company, one that aligns with all other labor-management agreements in this heavily unionized country. Approximately 90% of the Swedish workforce falls under such agreements. Musk isn’t having any of it. How dare a union tell him what he can and cannot do with his workers! For the first time in his life, however, he may be learning a lesson in labor solidarity. The 120 peasant-mechanics are not alone.

Next On UAW’s To-Do List: Adding Members At Nonunion Factories

November 29, 2023 Marick Masters and Raymond Gibney, Jr., Scheer Post. , , , , ,
Having negotiated “record contracts” with the Big Three – and seen the bulk of its rank-and-file members approve them – the United Auto Workers says its work isn’t done. The union intends to try once more to persuade the rest of the U.S. auto industry’s workers to join the union. “We’re going to organize like we’ve never organized before,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. As labor scholars who have studied union finances, we believe this is a formidable objective. On top of the intense corporate resistance from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, there’s the high cost of waging expensive campaigns in states like Tennessee and Alabama, which have “right-to-work” laws designed to discourage labor organizing.

Musk’s Lawsuit Is About Destroying Free Speech

November 24, 2023 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
He wasn’t bluffing. After threatening to sue liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America (CNBC, 11/18/23), Twitter’s principal owner Elon Musk did just that, arguing in papers filed in a Texas court that the group “manipulated” data in an effort to “destroy” the social media platform, causing major advertisers to pull back (BBC, 11/20/23). The world’s richest human was responding to an MMFA report (11/16/23) about Twitter—which Musk has rebranded as X since purchasing the once publicly traded company—and its promotion of far-right, antisemitic content. It said that while “Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the social media network has been “placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.”
«12»

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.