Petro opens another front and attacks Elon Musk: why he linked him to Nazism

During his speech at the National Meeting of Alternative, Community and Digital Media held in Armenia, Quindío, the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, sent a controversial message to Elon Musk, majority shareholder of Social network X (formerly Twitter) and recognized, recently, for his activism on behalf of Donald Trump.

The President’s intervention.

“Now the networks are bought by the richest people in the world, as they did here in Colombia. Now where I speak, there is a man who is pro-Nazi, Elon Musk, or whatever he calls himself,” he said while showing his cell phone to the public, and continued.

“At any moment he closes my account. So, Augusto Pinochet’s thesis: ‘Silence before barbarism’, applies (…) It is that if the communication power of humanity and Colombia remains in the hands of economic power, we are on the threshold of barbarism.”. He also assured: “aNow it is you, not Twitter, who are in the hands of a Nazi”.

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To conclude, He expressed that he saw himself as an alternative communication channel, since he uses social network X to interact with citizens. And he assured that, despite the criticism, he will not stop posting on that social network.

The reactions

Reactions to the president’s controversial statements were not long in coming. Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal made a post via X in which he stated: “Petro, in the same style as the narco-dictator Maduro and Lula, hunting for a fight with Elon Musk. Are you planning to close X? Social networks are no longer useful to you because today the whole truth of how they financed your campaign is known through them“.

A few weeks ago, the leader of the Venezuelan regime, Nicolás Maduro ordered the X social network to be blocked for 10 days in his country, accusing it of promoting ‘hate campaigns’ to support an attempted coup against him, after the controversial elections that led to his re-election.

“Elon Musk and X out of Latin America!“Maduro said in his speech.

On the other hand, the situation in Brazil is more complex. On August 30, Judge Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the nationwide suspension of X following a legal battle between Musk and Moraes.

Musk said X would stop complying with Moraes’ court orders to suspend certain accounts that the judge said did not meet ethical and legal standards for what could be posted online in Brazil.

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Some time later, Moraes threatened to arrest X’s employees, and in response, Musk withdrew the X team from Brazil. Moraes responded by blocking X.

Finally, Lula da Silva shared a list of his accounts on other platforms on the social network. The list began with Bluesky, the platform to which many of X’s users moved.

Despite the comparison, Gustavo Petro has not announced any closure or withdrawal of X from the country.

Another segment of the president’s speech was highly criticized. At one point, Petro said: “They don’t kill the journalist who kneels, they don’t kill the journalist who only parrots the ideology of the owners of capital, who are their bosses. No, they kill the one who criticizes, they kill the one who reveals the nakedness of power because he finds out how we are governed by drug trafficking mafias.“.

In response, Senator Cabal spoke out again: “Despicable statement by Petro. Is he indicating that there are journalists’ deaths that are worth more or less than those of others? The press that publicized him and allowed him to speak to the country is now under his accusing finger.“.

The senator also insisted on questioning Gustavo Petro’s permanence on social media. “And what are you doing on the network of someone you say is pro-Nazi?”

PORTFOLIO