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On April 27, 2022, Egyptian-born cleric Yahya Al-Farghali, who is affiliated with Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and is based in Syria, lambasted Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, which he said exemplified democracy's objective to "enslave humanity to money."[1]
In a Telegram post, Al-Farghali, also known as Abu Al-Fath, criticized Musk for his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company, noting that the purchase price was "equivalent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of a handful of third-world countries."
"[Musk's purchase] is an episode of a dirty conflict between supporters of Biden and Trump," he asserted, without further explanation. "What we conclude therefrom," he wrote, "is that democracy is nothing but a threadbare wrap that is used to justify enslaving humanity to money. Any other definition of democracy is a bare-faced lie rebutted by reality."
In commenting on Musk's purchase, Al-Farghali clearly intended to disparage democracy. Indeed, he clarified in a subsequent post that his critique of democracy applies to "all its forms," not only "capitalism or democracy based on capitalism."
In the cleric's view, Musk was "induced to buy Twitter" so that Trump supporters could return to the platform, which, he said, exposed Twitter as just a "cheap commodity in the slave market of powerful people." Al-Farghali did not differentiate between the objectives of "capitalists" and "other" proponents of democracy, arguing that they differ only in their methods, not their end goals.
Al-Farghali's April 27, 2022 Telegram posts criticizing Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.
[1] Telegram, April 27, 2022.
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