Of my mother’s five brothers, Uncle Jean-Mvondo was the calmest. He had a soft and soothing voice. He avoided conflicts and did not get involved, for example, in the power struggle between the two eldest, Uncle Bisseau and Uncle Etoundi. His sisters said he was withdrawn. His wife, Auntie Anata, often told him to assert himself more.
“I’ve never seen anyone as soft as you,” Auntie Anata could be heard shouting in frustration.
Uncle Jean-Mvondo never wavered.
At songo’o, the traditional game that men played in my childhood in Fanta Citron, in Mvog Ada in Yaoundé, Cameroon, they would call him a “crack” which meant that he was a formidable opponent. His calm sowed fear among the other men who feared his next move.
For a long time, Uncle Jean-Mvondo was one of the few men in the neighborhood who had only one wife. He was not known to have any mistresses, which was an anomaly in a society where a man was most often respected when he had at least two or three wives.
“If you ever take a mistress, I’ll kill you,” Auntie Anata often threatened him when he came home late.
He said nothing.
“Who was that woman you were talking to at the bar?” Auntie Anata often asked in a fit of jealousy. “I already told you. If you take another woman, I’ll take the kids and we’ll go to my parents’.”
Uncle Jean-Mvondo never lost his calm. He never flinched. He remained silent.
Auntie Anata’s regular remonstrances and threats were intended, she hoped, to dissuade Uncle Jean-Mvondo from taking more wives. The majority of men in my childhood had at least three wives each.
But when their children — my cousins Lili, Vieux, and Obama — were ten, seven, and five, Auntie Anata learned that her husband had a second and a third ‘household,’ meaning two other women. Auntie Anata packed her things and left, leaving my cousins behind. For days, we children had no news. The adults spent their time whispering among themselves in small groups. My mother and my other aunties were careful not to let a word slip. At first, it was frustrating, but we quickly forgot about Auntie Anata.
It was obvious that she had tried, with the means at her disposal, to avoid the inevitable. Our tradition looked up to men who had at least two wives. When a man had only one wife, his family believed that his wife had bewitched him with black magic. The worst part was that women were often the first to make such accusations. In the case of Uncle Jean-Mvondo, my mother and her siblings never stopped questioning their brother’s masculinity and manhood. They had even introduced him to some of their friends. Needless to say, all the elements were against Auntie Anata: our society, our traditions, and people’s attitudes. Polygamy, not monogamy, was the norm. She had also underestimated her husband’s silent determination to perpetuate traditions. In fact, some men at songo’o knew that Uncle Jean-Mvondo had been dating other women for some time, but they had kept quiet. He believed that polygamy was an important part of our culture that should not be lost. As deep as his love was for his first wife, he felt that his mission, like that of the men in our tribe, was to perpetuate the traditions; that our future depended on it. And that is what Auntie Anata had failed to understand. It might have been morally questionable, even unacceptable, but it was the mission that society had set for my uncle.
Decades later, I observed a similar determination in Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, whom I have covered as a journalist for more than eleven years. Initially, this was through his companies — Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and X (formerly Twitter) — and later by focusing on his personality and ambitions to become the guiding figure of our planet. He has taken it upon himself to ensure the sustainability of humanity, promising that we will live on Mars in the near future. In the meantime, Musk has set out to save Western civilization, which, according to him, is primarily threatened by declining birth rates.
“If birth rates continue to plummet, human civilization will end,” he warned on April 28 of last year. A day earlier, he wrote that the problem with “Great Replacement Theory is that it fails to address the foundational issue of low birth rates.”
He added: “Record low birth rates are leading to population collapse in Europe and even faster population collapse in most of Asia. Immigration is low in Asia, so there is no ‘replacement’ going on, the countries are simply shrinking away.”
On December 20, the whimsical CEO of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla became even more ominous: “Germany and Europe are in deep trouble, due to super low birth rates,” adding “They’re in danger of disappearing altogether.”
Without directly stating it, for Musk, if nothing is done, the decline of the number of white people will accelerate. He has been calling for several years now for couples to have more babies.
“Extremely concerning, given that the recent massive influx of illegal immigrants exceeds babies born in the United States,” he said on January 10, 2024.
The pro-natalist tech entrepreneur has set an example. He has twelve known children with three different women, six of whom were born in the past five years. Yet, his plea for more babies has remained unsuccessful.
At the same time, Musk has noted waves of immigration, including illegal immigration, from other races to Western countries. This trend has intensified his concerns. Although he does not state it outright, Musk fears that the white race is on the brink of becoming a minority in its own lands. Preventing this from happening has become his primary objective — a mission he is determined to pursue at any cost. This has led him to form alliances that, for many, seem unnatural, as they involve the far-right, the alt-right, and the new right.
The first part of this mission has been accomplished. It involved allying himself with Donald Trump, with whom he became close friends, despite the fact that in 2023, the two men were at odds. However, Musk put aside his criticisms for the sake of his mission. He went so far as to spend more than $200 million of his personal wealth to help get Trump elected. The 47th President of the U.S. promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants and to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), a slogan that, critics argue, carries an undertone of affirming white supremacy.
Musk is now turning his attention to Europe, the second and final part of his mission to preserve white Western civilization. Similar to his approach in the United States, he is using his personal fortune and assets, such as the social media platform X, to support this cause.
“From MAGA to MEGA,” the billionaire wrote on X on January 18. “Make Europe Great Again!”
He is popularizing this slogan by frequently repeating it on X and by backing far-right European political parties, such as the Reform U.K. party, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. These parties share common traits, including their nationalism and anti-immigration stance.
“Only @AfD can save Germany,” Musk posted on January 9. This was the second time in less than three weeks that he had posted the same message. During this period, he also wrote, “The traditional political parties in Germany have utterly failed the people,” adding that “AfD is the only hope for Germany.”
He called Alice Weidel, the leader of AfD, the “possible Chancellor of Germany.” “AfD is going to win an epic victory,” he posted on December 30.
It is important to note that Germany is the leading country in the European Union, with France being a close second.
Last year, he amplified racially charged incidents and anti-immigrant riots in Great Britain and Germany. He went as far as calling for new elections in the U.K., less than six months after the Labour Party won the parliamentary elections.
“The people of Britain do not want this government at all,” he wrote on January 3, adding: “New elections.”
Two days earlier, he had called for the release of far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Robinson was sentenced at the end of October to 18 months in prison for violating a 2021 court order that prohibited him from making defamatory remarks about a Syrian refugee.
“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Musk said during a virtual appearance at a rally for AfD on January 25, urging Germans to “move on” from past guilt and to “protect the German people.”
Germany will hold snap elections on February 23. According to the polls, AfD is currently in second place, behind the traditional conservative party CDU/CSU.
Like the Democrats in the United States, European political leaders are resorting to traditional outrage against Musk. They have labeled him a danger to Europe.
“The words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about ‘Great Germany’ and ‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous,” Poland’s Prime minister, Donald Tusk, slammed on X on January 26.
While discussing with CNN on January 28, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Musk’s meddling in European politics “disgusting.”
“Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech on January 6 at the Elysée Palace in Paris.
These are the same criticisms that were once directed at European far-right leaders by the traditional political establishment. It shows that European leaders don’t know how to deal with Musk. They are lost, clinging to an outdated playbook that no longer applies to the tech billionaire. They remind me of Auntie Anata from my childhood. Like her, they hope that their warnings and invectives will be enough to dissuade Musk — or, at best, convince their populations to reject him.
This is a very miscalculated approach because the terrain is not favorable to them, and Musk has understood this. He knows that Europeans, like the American people, are fed up with immigration. They blame immigrants for society’s problems and believe that their countries’ immigration policies are too lax.
Half of Europeans (51%) disapprove of the European Union’s immigration policy, and a large majority (71%) want stronger border controls, according to a 2024 Ipsos poll for European news channel Euronews, conducted across 18 member states.
Given the current difficulties in European economies, it is easy for citizens to blame immigrants for the deterioration of their economic and financial situation. Legal and illegal immigrants become convenient scapegoats. This means the ground is fertile for the nationalist discourse that Musk’s allies promote, despite its lack of nuance.
Another point that political leaders seem to overlook is that many Europeans associate Musk with the fight against climate change, due to Tesla and the company’s network of electric vehicle charging stations across Europe. To them, Musk is seen as someone who cares about the planet. They recognize his accomplishments and are curious to hear what he has to say. Musk is aware of this. During my recent trip to France, residents of a small village in the southeast, where I was spending Christmas, asked me about the billionaire.
“Can you tell us what Elon Musk wants?” Sabine, a fifty-year-old woman asked me, while Nadine, also a fifty-year-old woman, insisted, “what does he want? We hear a lot about him.”
There was clearly a lot of curiosity and goodwill towards the billionaire.
Another element favorable to Musk and his mission is the electoral calendar for the next two years in Europe, which promises political shifts.
In a few weeks, Germans will vote in snap elections. So far, the campaign has been dominated by the issue of immigration, following a December 20 attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market by a 50-year-old man of Saudi origin. The incident left at least five dead and more than 200 injured. Despite authorities identifying the suspect as an Islamophobe with far-right connections, the attack has sparked anti-immigrant sentiment in eastern Germany.
In May, there are presidential elections in Poland, which, according to local media, are being billed as a referendum on the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has been in power since December 2023, less than two years.
In September, local elections in several Italian regions could confirm the hold of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party on the country. In October, parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic could strengthen an anti-EU stance in Central Europe, should the populist ANO party, as current polls suggest, secure victory.
It is clear that Musk is determined to impose his vision of the world during these elections, and it is not the protests of unpopular European political leaders that will stop him. Like Uncle Jean-Mvondo in my childhood, Musk is on a mission to save Western civilization, and nothing will stop him — whether it means ignoring the facts or dragging European leaders through the mud.
European leaders haven’t updated their political software. They believe their populations won’t support a “foreigner” meddling in their affairs. They think Europe is immune to Trumpism and its allies. This is a big mistake.
Musk is another animal. He has the power to attack Europe without exposing himself. He knows how to bait his foes. And most of all, he likes challenges. That’s all he needs to remain focused on his mission.
He will only stop when his victory is complete — when the nationalist and far-right parties with a hard line on immigration have won.
The question now is not whether he is going to win, but when he will celebrate. In the U.S., it took less than two years for him to become the kingmaker.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.