Woke-bashing of the week: Elon Musk labels EU ‘woke Statists’ after X is fined €120m
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead
Today
Left Foot Forward
For all the talk of “the people,” Musk’s position boils down to a demand that one billionaire, who’s, unelected, unaccountable, and running a global communication platform, should operate above the law. Europe, to its credit, is saying no.
Left Foot Forward
For all the talk of “the people,” Musk’s position boils down to a demand that one billionaire, who’s, unelected, unaccountable, and running a global communication platform, should operate above the law. Europe, to its credit, is saying no.
Talking about throwing your toys out of the pram. After the EU imposed a €120m penalty on X for breaching the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, lashed out in his usual reactionary fashion. Brussels, he declared, was a “woke Stasi” that “must be abolished.”
He posted on X: “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,” which rather typically ignores the fact that the EU has always ensured that ultimate sovereignty resides with the member states.
The outburst followed the EU’s two-year investigation into X’s repeated failures to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires large online platforms to curb illegal and harmful content, from hate speech to coordinated disinformation campaigns. The objective is to prevent online environments from becoming engines of harassment, radicalisation, and large-scale deception.
But for Musk, any requirement to limit harmful content is rebranded as an existential threat to “free speech.”
Naturally, he ramped up the rhetoric, railing against Brussels’s “bureaucratic monster,” and demanding Europeans “dissolve the EU and return power to the people.” He attacked unnamed officials as “EU woke Stasi commissars,” vowed retaliation, and posted images likening the EU to the “Fourth Reich”
He then threatened that Brussels would soon “understand the full meaning of the Streisand effect, a phenomenon named for Barbra Streisand, in which efforts to censor information only bring it more attention.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen seemed unbothered by Musk’s theatrics. The fine, she explained, was “proportionate and calculated” based on the seriousness, scale, and duration of X’s violations.
“We are not here to impose the highest fines. We are here to make sure that our digital legislation is enforced and if you comply with our rules, you don’t get the fine. And it’s as simple as that,” she said.
But Musk was not the only American to take up the mantle of EU-bashing. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the fine to be “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.”
Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr said Europe was punishing X merely “for being a successful US tech company.” And Vice President JD Vance repeated the right’s tired talking point that the EU should be “supporting free speech,” not “attacking American companies over garbage.”
Critics have also compared the DSA to the UK’s Online Safety Act, warning of creeping censorship.
In a statement in the summer, X said: “Many are now concerned that a plan ostensibly intended to keep children safe is at risk of seriously infringing on the public’s right to free expression.”
Yet these laws do not grant governments power to police opinions. They require platforms to stop amplifying illegal content and to maintain basic transparency about how their systems operate. Far from throttling democracy, they aim to protect it from manipulation and abuse.
The louder Musk rails against “woke tyranny,” the clearer it becomes that his real objection is to oversight itself. For all the talk of “the people,” Musk’s position boils down to a demand that one billionaire, who’s, unelected, unaccountable, and running a global communication platform, should operate above the law.
Europe, to its credit, is saying no.
EU says it will ‘make sure’ Elon Musk pays €120 million X fine
9 December, 2025
Left Foot Forward
The EU Commission has fined X over its "deceptive" blue-check badge system
The European Commission has insisted Elon Musk’s X will have to pay a €120 (£105) million fine for violating EU transparency rules.
The Commission has called Musk’s blue-check badge system ‘deceptive’ and noted that paid verification makes users more vulnerable to counterfeits and fraud.
The Commission issued the penalty for breaches of transparency and deceptive design obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act on Friday.
X was also fined for a lack of transparency around its advertising practices. Under the Act, platforms must have a public and searchable ad repository to allow anyone to see what ads have run and who funded them.
The EU Commission also found X is limiting researchers from accessing data that should be publicly available.
The US government, Musk and his allies have claimed that this is “censorship” and an “attack on freedom of speech”, with some suggesting the world’s richest man should not pay the fine.
Musk himself threatened to take action against the EU and other “individuals” on Saturday.
However, Thomas Regnier, a Commission spokesperson told journalists: “X will have to pay that fine. The €120 million will have to be paid. We will make sure that we get this money”.
The company now has to pay the fine and has 90 days to respond to the EU Commission.
Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová, MEP for the Progressive Slovakia party, wrote on X: “Historic first fine under the #DSA — and a clear signal to Big Tech: in Europe, rules apply to everyone, even billionaires.
“If oligarchs such as Elon Musk think this is “censorship”, they might want to learn how European democracy works. And what does it actually mean the freedom of speech.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
The EU Commission has fined X over its "deceptive" blue-check badge system
The European Commission has insisted Elon Musk’s X will have to pay a €120 (£105) million fine for violating EU transparency rules.
The Commission has called Musk’s blue-check badge system ‘deceptive’ and noted that paid verification makes users more vulnerable to counterfeits and fraud.
The Commission issued the penalty for breaches of transparency and deceptive design obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act on Friday.
X was also fined for a lack of transparency around its advertising practices. Under the Act, platforms must have a public and searchable ad repository to allow anyone to see what ads have run and who funded them.
The EU Commission also found X is limiting researchers from accessing data that should be publicly available.
The US government, Musk and his allies have claimed that this is “censorship” and an “attack on freedom of speech”, with some suggesting the world’s richest man should not pay the fine.
Musk himself threatened to take action against the EU and other “individuals” on Saturday.
However, Thomas Regnier, a Commission spokesperson told journalists: “X will have to pay that fine. The €120 million will have to be paid. We will make sure that we get this money”.
The company now has to pay the fine and has 90 days to respond to the EU Commission.
Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová, MEP for the Progressive Slovakia party, wrote on X: “Historic first fine under the #DSA — and a clear signal to Big Tech: in Europe, rules apply to everyone, even billionaires.
“If oligarchs such as Elon Musk think this is “censorship”, they might want to learn how European democracy works. And what does it actually mean the freedom of speech.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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