Elon Musk has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Norwegian libertarian MP Marius Nilsen, who tossed the Tesla founder’s name into the mix for consideration, cited Musk’s “adamant defense of dialogue, free speech and [enabling] the possibility to express one’s views’ in a continuously more polarized world.”
Nilsen also praised Musk’s enterprises for helping to “make the world a more connected and safer place.”
Good for Elon Musk — he deserves it.
Musk sacrificed his reputation and standing with America’s liberal elites on the altar of free speech. We mustn’t forget how close our nation came to losing what law professor Jonathan Turley in a new book calls the “indispensable right,” and the critical role Musk has played in protecting that right.
This has made him a reviled target for those on the left. Politico reported on Musk’s nomination with the headline: “Musk and Assange follow Putin, Trump and Stalin as Nobel Peace Prize nominees.” I bet that wasn’t the way they reported on Barack Obama’s completely absurd winning of the peace prize in 2009, barely eight months into his presidency.
Obama was singled out by the notoriously left-leaning Nobel committee for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” even though he had done exactly nothing on the diplomatic front in his early White House months or as the junior senator from Illinois. It is gratifying that the Nobel secretary later lamented having given the prize to Obama, acknowledging that it was a polarizing mistake.
Why did liberals, once enamored of the billionaire entrepreneur, turn against Musk?
After all, long before Musk bought Twitter, his successful development of Tesla electric vehicles made him a hero to the green left. For those who believe climate change is humanity’s greatest threat, and that fossil fuels escalate that threat, the emergence of EVs was supposed to be a game-changer. Since boneheaded climate activists shot down carbon-neutral nuclear power and refused to acknowledge progress made by switching from coal to carbon-reducing fuels like natural gas, EVs were a singular breakthrough that promised to lower gasoline consumption and bend the arc of carbon emissions.
Never mind that some pesky studies showed that the environmental damage done by EVs might actually be worse than that done by internal combustion engines; EVs were the holy grail of the smart set, and pricey Teslas began to pop up in chic neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, the love affair soon turned sour. It turned out that Musk had no patience for unions. He has managed to defeat multiple efforts by the UAW to organize his manufacturing plants, earning the eternal enmity of pro-union Biden administration.
When former President Joe Biden, in his first year in office, convened an EV summit at the White House, poor Elon was left off the guest list, even though Tesla dominated the industry. The CEOs of Ford and GM, who couldn’t make a profit to save their lives on the unpopular cars the government pushed them to produce, were celebrated and consulted. They were given participation awards for going along with the mandates that elevated China’s dominance over essential products and arguably threatened Detroit with extinction.
That was the end of Musk’s establishment glory days, but things went entirely south when he dared to buy Twitter for $44 billion, and discovered that the Biden administration had pressured that social media company and others into censoring political opponents.
Musk gave journalist Matt Taibbi access to the notorious Twitter files, including emails, chat logs and screenshots, which revealed “coordination with the FBI to suppress mentions of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story and other tweets critical of Democrats.”
The Twitter files confirmed right-wing speculation that the government had censored dissonant views on how to treat COVID and other information injurious to Biden or to Democrats’ anti-Trump narratives. Musk promised to create an open forum on Twitter, welcoming voices that had been shadow-banned or silenced.
He said he bought X, as he renamed it, “because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital square.” This instantly made him a hero to free speech advocates. Putting meat on the bones, Musk fired the majority of Twitter’s content moderators, promising reduced oversight of the platform’s users.
Musk’s stewardship of X has not been without controversy; he has been accused of banning critics from the platform — including, ironically, Taibbi. Nonetheless, he should be celebrated for revealing our government’s role in suppressing free speech, which has been more recently been confirmed by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. The White House pushed him to censor information too — it is not a Musk fantasy.
The Biden White House did not just pressure social media companies to ban unwanted material. In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” They put in charge of this Orwellian effort one Nina Jankowicz, a supposed “expert” in battling disinformation. Jankowicz knew all about disinformation, having perpetrated the Russiagate hoax by supporting the veracity of the Christopher Steele dossier, an underhanded is oppo report paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. She was also among those who falsely claimed that Hunter Biden’s FBI-verified laptop was inauthentic.
The Biden White House, after searing criticism, took down the Disinformation Governance Board after only three weeks. But their clumsy censorship effort gave notice to the American people: Your government wants to control what you hear and read, and it is not to be trusted. Yes, there are kooks and blackguards on X — and on other platforms — who do not tell the truth. Better to let the American people figure it out, using their own reason and common sense, than to hand over our rights to self-interested government censors.
That’s why Musk deserves the Nobel prize.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.
