This essay was originally published in Newsweek. The views expressed are the authors’ own.
MAGA pillars such as Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer have been raising alarms over Elon Musk‘s blurring of public and personal business interests, with Bannon going so far as to call Musk “a truly evil person.” They appear to be channeling deeper-rooted concerns within the Republican base: according to a new poll out from The Economist, GOP support for Musk influence with Trump has already plummeted dramatically, down to just 26 percent today from over 47 percent last November.
Recent polling has found that Musk’s unpopularity has soared 10 percent this month alone. Furthermore, Tesla sales are plummeting around the world, making Tesla possibly the largest meme stock in history with the bubble perhaps ready to be popped.
Those striking polls suggest that the 77 million-plus Americans who voted for President Donald Trump were more motivated by bona fide issues such as inflation and immigration, and were not voting for Musk to unilaterally access the entire payment system of the U.S. Treasury.
Musk is driving MAGA head-first towards a shipwreck by trumping Trump, and continuing to gain power. Here are three common leadership pitfalls that Musk’s rise calls to mind and which have felled countless leaders and mass movements through history.
1. Leaders often outmaneuvered by their own consiglieres
Advisors often rise to power by demonstrating their uncommon loyalty to the boss—but over time, the tables are turned as the leader becomes increasingly reliant on those subordinates, and those consiglieres become the real power behind the throne.
Many leaders have fallen victim to this mythic palace intrigue. Grigori Rasputin, the infamous Russian mystic, expertly ingratiated himself with Tsar Nicholas through his extraordinary devotion, treating the tsar’s sick son and spending hours befriending the entire family, before consolidating political power in his own hands for his own interests, pressuring courtiers for bribes and sexual favors. His unpopularity led to his own assassination and played into the downfall of Tsar Nicholas II.
The wealthy GOP businessman Marc Hanna was often portrayed in cartoons as the master puppeteer behind the rise and short career of President William McKinley. Colonel Edward House was widely seen as President Woodrow Wilson’s forceful backstage coach until Wilson realized that House was undermining him in the 1919 Versailles peace negotiations.
This archetype of the evil, power-craving advisor who outmaneuvers their boss manifests in Shakespeare’s searing portrait of Iago, the villainous lieutenant to Othello who leads him to doom.
Similarly, in the Bible, Haman the Agagite rose to become a trusted minister in the court of Persian King Ahasuerus through his fawning obsequiousness, while abusing the king’s trust to demand personal subservience from those around him. When a Jewish man, who was the uncle of the king’s Jewish wife Esther, refused to bow down to Haman, he convinced the king to issue a decree that all Jews be exterminated. Esther ensured, though, that it was Haman who ended up at the end of a rope.
In the present day, Musk is going out of his way to demonstrate exaggerated fealty to Trump, posting on X “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man”—but if history is any guide, the tables could turn just as easily and the subordinate could become the puppeteer.
2. Mass movements, giddy with power, that go too far and lose their mission
The history of the rise and fall of popular movements shows just how quickly they can spiral out of control and consume themselves through their excesses. The French Revolution started as a democratic movement towards self-governance, winning popular esteem with its commendable goal of replacing the tottering governing nobility with republican leaders devoted to liberty
Initial enthusiasts included the Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Burke. But that enthusiasm quickly faded as Maximilien Robespierre and Madame de Guillotine took charge. Robespierre has been held personally responsible for the execution of no fewer than 17,000 people under the original “Reign of Terror.” including many police officers, all done under the guise of reform.
While very few Americans would quibble against the self-stated mission of Musk, and DOGE, to prune government waste, fraud, and abuse; recent headlines suggest DOGE may be flying off the rails and going way too far.
3. Rapacious self-gain and profiteering under the guise of reform
Historical parallels similarly show how easy it can be for self-declared “reformers” to hijack an original, virtuous mission and distort public power for their own private financial gain, enriching themselves while derailing the whole movement.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the founding of the modern Russian Federation under President Boris Yeltsin quickly devolved when, in exchange for loans to boost his own election fundraising, Yeltsin handed over private control of Russian state resources to oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Fridman, Vladimir Potanin, and Oleg Deripaska for a fraction of their value, with the oligarchs subsequently frittering away vast amounts of the country’s wealth on yachts and dachas for themselves. Similarly, the republican leadership of the French Revolution fell to Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship when its own leaders, such as Paul Barras, were exposed to be more interested in enriching themselves than in running the country.
Clearly, Americans were much more motivated by the price of eggs—which, incidentally, have only continued to skyrocket—than Musk’s impulsive antics. If history is any guide, Trump will need to be on guard that he does not end up with egg on his face from letting Musk hijack MAGA. The arrogant, grandiose power grabs of Rasputin, Robespierre, Jafar, Haman, Iago, and others ended with the brutal anger they unleashed ultimately consuming themselves—perhaps a timely lesson to keep in mind for Elon Musk.
“The Yale School of Management is the graduate business school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut.”
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