Gates v. Musk: when oligarchs cannibalize
Journalists keep missing the point, insisting that there are good billionaires and bad billionaires
In an interview last week, a journalist asked Bill Gates about his similarities to Elon Musk. Gates responded passionately, insisting that he is “ultra-different.” And ultra- better.
As Gates told “The Sunday Times,”
I’m ultra-different. It’s really insane that he can destabilise the political situations in countries. I think in the US foreigners aren’t allowed to give money; other countries maybe should adopt safeguards to make sure super-rich foreigners aren’t distorting their elections.… I mean, this is insane shit. You are for the AfD [the far-right political party in Germany]…If someone is super-smart, and he is, they should think how they can help out. But this is populist stirring.
Liberal-centrist legacy news outlets jumped on the comments, issuing a stream of nearly identical stories. Consider these headlines from The Daily Beast, The Guardian, The Independent, Business Insider, Quartz, and Newsweek.
Bill Gates Rips Into Elon Musk for His Right-Wing Pivot: ‘Insane S***’—
Bill Gates calls Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians abroad ‘insane shit’”—-
Bill Gates Blasts Elon Musk: 'Really Insane’
Bill Gates says he thinks it's 'insane' that Elon Musk is allowed to 'destabilize' politics in other countries
Fellow American billionaire calls Elon Musk’s political activities ‘insane s***’
'This is insane s—t': Bill Gates blasts Elon Musk's meddling in global politics
This reporting presents Bill Gates as a champion of democracy, standing up to the oligarchs running the far-right. And the message is being received—and amplified. On social media, one political commentator praised Gates as a model of “the resilience needed in the age of Trump.”
The hero worshiping narratives are odd—-because they are so clearly at odds with reality. As I reported last week, Gates is in no way a critic or opponent of Trump. He’s actually a fan.
He has already several times used his public platform to praise Donald Trump, the effect of which is to normalize and legitimize the political right’s full-scale attack on democracy. If Gates really were a champion of democracy, wouldn’t he be using his global influence to challenge and confront the Trump administration, rather than laud it? How is it that Gates can find no words of criticism for Trump?
Another non-sequitur—and point of hypocrisy—is that Gates practices the same kind of behavior that he accuses Musk of; if anything, Gates created the template of “super-rich foreigners” buying political influence. It’s not just me saying this. Take these two examples:
—In a story co-reported by Politico and Welt titled “How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight,” journalists interrogated the mechanics of the foundation’s political power on the world stage. As one example: “In Germany, the Gates Foundation spent €5.7 million, about $5.73 million, in 2021 lobbying various agencies and officials in part to increase German support for the global vaccine effort. The foundation relied on 28 staff members registered to lobby in the German Parliament as well as specialists hired from the Brunswick Group, an advisory and consulting group.” Around the world, the foundation used its muscle to pressure governments to pour enormous sums of taxpayer dollars into a Gates-led COVID response effort—which failed spectacularly, leaving the poorest people on Earth unvaccinated.
—Over the last two-decades, Bill Gates has successfully used his wealth—through philanthropy—to assert himself as one of the most influential political voices in agricultural development across Africa. By funding advocacy groups, universities, think tanks, and newsrooms—-and by meeting directly with elected leaders across Africa—-Gates has helped to steer agricultural development toward his own solutions, including the expanded use of agrochemicals. His plan has not worked. Independent experts show that hunger has actually increased, not decreased, in many countries where Gates works. And the foundation’s own intended beneficiaries are now calling on the foundation to pay reparations for all the damage it has done.
These are two of endless examples of Bill Gates using his extraordinary wealth—-he controls the $76-billion Gates Foundation and also a private fortune estimated at between $109 and $166 —to bully his narrow political ideas into reality, in democratic nations around the world. Just because Gates ferociously brands his influence as philanthropy doesn’t mean it is. No one elected or appointed Gates to be a leader—on any topic. His influence can be explained, very simply, by his massive private wealth. And there is a word for this model of power, where the richest guy gets the loudest voice.
To the extent that Musk is taking oligarchy to new heights (certainly a new level of recognition), it is in part because he’s standing on shoulders of giants like Bill Gates, who has, for decades, normalized and legitimized the role of billionaires in politics. Gates is the OG tech-billionaire oligarch. And his legacy includes birthing an odious new class of oligarchs like Elon Musk.
So how did the news media get so confused? At what point did so many journalists decide that Bill Gates is such a good guy? Why is Bill Gates’s political influence celebrated as philanthropy and humanitarianism—-instead of interrogated as oligarchy?
The most poignant, or painful, illustration of this bias can be found at the New York Times, which today issued two different stories—-thousands of words—-amplifying a new memoir written by Gates.
The story above, by writer David Streitfeld, was so one-sided—-and so studiously ignorant to the criticism that today surrounds Gates—-that even a Gates Foundation staffer pinged me with this comment: “If you were doubting his [Gates’s] leverage on NYT, isn't this entire article straight-up image laundering? You’d think it was one of the tabloids.”
One reason for the hero narratives is that many of the people who write for legacy, mainstream news media tend to think like Gates. They are elite, liberal-leaning types. Their own political sensibilities are not that different from Gates’s own. They live in a world in which billionaires must exist, and the best we can hope for is that more of them are like Bill Gates. (This was the exact sentiment the New York Times deployed in its review of my book, “The Bill Gates Problem.”). These journalists can’t see beyond their own biases.
Another reason the news media tends to favor Gates: money. The Gates Foundation reports donating hundreds of millions of dollars to journalism. (Always important to note: the foundation moves additional sums of money to news rooms in ways that it doesn’t report, so it’s impossible to know the full scope of Gates’s financial influence—-or who really is and isn’t taking funding.)
As one example, in 2021 my investigative reporting compelled the New York Times to issue formal corrections to six previously published pieces about Gates, belatedly disclosing that the authors had financial ties to the foundation.
As another example, consider The Guardian, which has taken at least $12.8 million from the Gates Foundation. (And guardian.org has taken $3.9 million). Some staff at The Guardian I’ve interacted with seem to believe they work for the leading watchdog over our new gilded age. And maybe sometimes The Guardian is effectively playing that role.
But sometimes it feels like the outlet is telling us which billionaires are good (those that fund The Guardian) and which ones are bad (those that don’t). Maybe when The Guardian reviews Gates’s memoir in the days ahead, the outlet will dare to say something critical. They certainly owe it to their readers to do so after shamelessly promoting the book last year with a piece that reads like a press release.
Seeing so much of the news media continue to find ways to present Gates as a kinder, gentler billionaire, or an antidote and savior to fascism, is not just misinformation. It is imperiling democracy. If we really want to save ourselves from a world in which the richest guy gets the loudest voice, we need strong, independent journalists who have the mettle and independence to understand the threat that extreme wealth, in all of its forms, presents to humanity.
This should not be a difficult concept for journalists. It certainly is not new. As Louis Brandeis, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, said nearly a century ago, “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
Stayed tuned for part two of this series, When Oligarchs Cannibalize, in which I explain the real reason that Gates’s attack on Musk is newsworthy. Subscribe and stay tuned!