Megaphone Diplomacy

 

Subject: Megaphone diplomacy

Megaphone diplomacy was a term used when a state wished to emphasise its point of view, today with Elon Musks purchase of Twitter he has bought himself one almighty megaphone. Never shy of self publicity this brilliant entrepreneurial  eccentric has the talent and the ego to believe in what he does and anything he says. The success of Tesla is witness to his skill in driving forward an idea which has in a decade revolutionised the whole motor car industry much like the production line of Henry Ford did for the petrol engine. Musks willingness to ignore the traditional financial advice and borrow and pledged immense sums of money to build state of the art factories turned the relatively staid auto industry on its head.  Not to mention what he did for rocket propulsion and the method of launching rockets parts of which returned to earth and like a beautiful ballet settled back on their launch pad in a synchronised tandem.

NASSA the space agency behemoth  in the USA of course had some brilliant successes, not least putting a man on the moon with cutting edge technology but in comparison to Space X (Musks company) it all seemed clunky.  His opinions on Russia and Ukraine as well as China seem out of step with the rest of the west and now as the owner of Twitter he has a platform to blast us all with them like them or not. Those who have watched the fascist parades in Germany under the Nazi and the totalitarian parades in Russia, North Korea and China know the might of of 'collective speak' and massing citizens to march in uniform. The mind altering talent of propaganda emitted from a media platform which wishes to pursue the branding of young minds, is dangerous for democracy and illustrates the limits on free speech as a right.

Who knows what the new owner of Twitter will do with his new power, who knows what is behind the new upstarts in our broadcast medium or who their real backers are. At least with Musk, he hardly needs backers and his apparent political naivety isn't overly dangerous other than giving stalwarts in the pro Ukraine camp reason to doubt their backing.

Watching  Michael Gove trying to defend Stella Braverman on the television this morning, one wonders who to turn to for an honest opinion. Perhaps honesty is a thing of the past, like the Woolly Mammoth 🐘, extinct, excavated only by carbon dating.