In a “slash and burn” rampage, multi-billionaire and Donald Trump appointee Elon Musk is spearheading job cuts and closures across United States government departments.
According to a New York Times report, Trump’s administration told federal government agencies on February 13 to “cut most of the 200,000 workers who are on ‘probation’ or new enough to their jobs that they don’t have permanent status”.
“It’s part of an effort to cut deep — and to empower Elon Musk at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] to shape what remains in the aftermath,” said the NYT.
Musk — who gave the Roman salute (used by the Nazis) at Trump’s inauguration night celebration and has an office in the White House — says some government agencies should “die” or be “deleted”.
As head of DOGE — which has been created and funded by presidential fiat — Musk has tasked mostly young male technocrats from Silicon Valley to do his dirty work.
Musk’s net worth, according to Forbes, is just under US$340 billion, and he is the richest man in the world.
DOGE’s budget — and the extent of its powers — are unknown and there is no legal basis for its actions.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been stood down or sacked across all states. Musk’s underlings have also accessed and taken over the computer systems in many agencies.
Much of the work done by federal agencies (however inadequately) is for the public’s benefit. Musk says he is rooting out “corruption and greed”, however scant evidence for this has been released.
Republicans in control of the Senate and Congress have shown no interest in overseeing DOGE’s activities.
Trump asserts that he does not have to abide by court rulings, and quoted Napoleon Bonaparte on February 15, saying: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”
While some Democrats see Musk as the “man behind the president”, in fact Musk has Trump’s full support. At a media conference with Trump in the Oval Office, Musk did most of the talking. However, Trump made it clear that he approves of his actions.
Who is Elon Musk?
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, under the racist Apartheid system. His father was a wealthy engineer and property developer, and he grew up in an exclusive white enclave.
Musk’s grandfather on his mother’s side was reportedly a supporter of a pro-Hitler group in Canada and after WWII moved to South Africa with his family. Musk’s mother was two years old at the time.
Musk left South Africa and moved to Canada soon after he graduated from high school, avoiding army conscription. His mother, now divorced, also lived there.
Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and eventually moved to Silicon Valley. Like other foreign students and business investors, he was given special visas — which Trump’s backers want to get rid of.
Musk co-founded PayPal and used his wealth to invest in other tech startups and Tesla.
According to Democracy Now!, financier Peter Thiel, one of Musk’s PayPal co-founders and a major Republican Party donor, was brought by his father from Germany to be schooled in a German community in South African-occupied Namibia, where people still greeted each other with “Heil Hitler”.
US Vice President JD Vance worked for Thiel’s hedge fund and Thiel bankrolled Vance’s 2022 campaign for the Senate.
Pay Pal’s former chief financial officer, Roelof Botha, is the grandson of Pik Botha, a foreign minister in the Apartheid regime.
Former PayPal chief operating officer and venture capitalist David Sacks has been appointed Trump’s Artificial Intelligence and Crypto “Czar”.
Musk is being sued for racial discrimination by Black employees at his Tesla electric vehicle assembly plant in California.
Musk was previously a registered independent and donated to both major parties. However, he gave more than US$250 million to back Trump in the final year of his presidential campaign.
Despite legal challenges mounting, Musk and Trump are defiantly pursuing their agenda.
Trump targets South Africa
Soon after Trump’s election, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a new land reform into law. The law is intended to (belatedly) address the land theft that took place under Apartheid, when the Black majority was dispossessed under white-minority rule.
Land redistribution was a fundamental principle of the African National Congress during the struggle against Apartheid, codified in its Freedom Charter.
When Ramaphosa signed the expropriation bill into law, Musk and Trump exploded.
While the US media focused on Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada, China and other countries, Trump cut financial aid to South Africa, claiming that it was pursuing “unjust and immoral practices” against the white minority Afrikaner community. This charge amounts to a form of “reverse discrimination” against whites, which plays well to Trump’s base.
Trump extended a welcoming hand to Afrikaners to come to the US with legal refugee status.
In his speech, he also referred to South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
There are fears that Trump may take this opportunity to end South Africa’s preferential access to the US market through its special US-Africa trade program, known as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not attend the G20 meeting of foreign ministers that took place on February 20–21 in Johannesburg, saying, “My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.”
Orbán’s playbook
Since 2010, far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has worked systematically to undermine the country’s democratic institutions, such as the judiciary, and weaken press freedoms.
As a result, Hungary has become an authoritarian state with a democratic veneer, which Trump praises.
Orbán has also advanced his autocratic agenda across Europe.
The far right has grown in most European countries, including Germany, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) doubled its vote share, coming second in the February 23 snap election. Musk called for a vote for the AfD on his social media platform, X.
Trump — like Orbán — intends to use the levers of power to go after his internal enemies and remake the state. In his first weeks in office, he made big strides towards doing so.
During his first term, Trump did not fully understand his powers and had advisors from the establishment Republican Party working for him and keeping him in check. This time, Trump plans to do whatever he wants and is supported by the architects of the nefarious Project 2025.
The most extreme elements of the US far right are leading major agencies. They don’t need to be told what to do. They have a mission. All institutions must follow the president’s executive orders or be dismantled.
Not surprisingly, one of Trump’s first actions was to pardon the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists, who had sought to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Trump is also pushing to end any mention of “diversity, equity and inclusion”. In other words, to roll back civil rights, attack women’s rights and promote white privilege.
The aim is clear: to remake the government as an autocracy with a democratic veneer.
Stopping Trump and Musk
Protests have proliferated since the inauguration, including the National Day Without Immigrants, organised by immigrants’ rights groups on February 3.
Protests took place in all 50 states against federal public sector sackings on February 14.
However, generally, resistance has been weak. Most people are still in shock and wondering if Trump and Musk can be stopped.
Federal workers rally against Musk and DOGE as their jobs are eliminated. Top officials refuse orders they consider illegal.
Establishment Democrats cry foul, but Democratic leader in the House of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries says there is nothing he can do, because Republicans oversee the Senate, House and White House.
Meanwhile, independent Senator Bernie Sanders kicked off his coast-to-coast National Tour to Fight Oligarchy on February 21, speaking to packed venues in Nebraska and Iowa, and sharing the stage with local rank-and-file unionists.
Unless and until there are calls for civil disobedience, strikes and mass actions to fight back, Trump’s government and its appointees will have the advantage.
The big challenge is to build a mass working-class party or a viable progressive populist third party. There must be no looking back to the Democrats or pro-capitalist liberals for leadership.
Until that happens, billionaires like Musk will continue to be given powers by presidents like Trump to remake the government and its institutions.
Wall Street and the ruling class are happy with Trump. Only fear of popular rebellion can change that.