How Elon Musk's X is fueling the MAGA-Trump split
Given Twitter's somewhat inhospitable conditions, the far right's more fantastical narratives tended to flourish on alternative sites such as 4chan, its offshoot 8kun, Rumble and Gab.
That all changed when Musk took over Twitter, later renaming it X, and promised to create a digital public square that welcomed content and influential accounts that had previously been banned. Their audiences came along, and X is now the main hub for crackpot beliefs.
'These alternative platforms still exist,' said Jared Holt, a specialist in online extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 'But the cultural capital they hold in the Trump movement has been almost entirely displaced by X.'
Toxic conspiracy theories used to gestate on alternative platforms and then spread to bigger sites. The anonymous leader of QAnon, who claimed to be a senior federal official, would post messages on 8kun that followers would then take to Facebook and Twitter. This content no longer has to cross-pollinate, as users have been emboldened to post it directly on X.
The big tent that X provides allows fringe users to directly confront prominent allies of the president, particularly in the comments of their posts. Their streams and posts often land on X's Discover feed, giving the content extra visibility among the mainstream and more center-right media.
'As far as they're concerned, it is activism to be posting on social media,' Renée DiResta, a Georgetown University professor who researches online conspiracy theories, told POLITICO. 'Particularly for the right, they're not wrong that … posting achieves results.'
According to Donovan, somewhat more mainstream figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have been able to harness this anger on X. She says Carlson in particular has 'managed to move from the mainstream to the fringes, and then bring some people from the fringes back towards the MAGA right.'
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