According to prominent CEOs like Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg, recent changes in the political and media landscape have created new “cultural elites” that seem more authentic to the general public. It’s what Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon identifies as “a hot speech winter, one where speaking out in outrageous ways carries no cost.”
A Shift in What’s Ok to Say
Since the release of Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tape, CEOs have been free to make more controversial, strange, and concerning statements without repercussions. Whereas CEOs before this time might have tried to maintain a low profile in media and politics, the modern CEO faces less pressure to do the same. Prominent figures like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg are emulating Trump’s outspoken and outrageous approach as the new “cultural elites.”
Can the Elite Ever “Give it to You Straight”?
The phrase comes from a conversation between Zuckerburg and Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience. The Meta CEO stated that the new “cultural elites [are the] voices being authentic,” viewed by the public as “the people who give it to me straight.” It might be perception alone, but how you appear to the public has been enough to enter office.
“[The] cultural elite class needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust,” Zuckerberg said.
As Salmon pointed out, “[Zuckerberg is] adopting the kind of anti-press language familiar to observers of dictatorial regimes.”
Defiant in the Face of Controversy and Wrongdoing
Figures like Trump, Musk, and now Zuckerberg have been choosing to behave defiantly in the face of public scrutiny rather than admitting wrongdoing. Where CEOs and leaders of an earlier age might have stepped down to make up for a controversial statement or failure, the growing class of the uninhibited elite has no such inclination.
For instance, an anonymous banker told the Financial Times that he now feels “liberated” to speak inappropriately and shockingly without needing to be afraid of facing repercussions. Prominent CEOs like Trump, Musk, and Zuckerberg appear to be symptoms of a spreading culture of limited inhibitions among the ruling elite—supposedly working to reclaim a bygone era of authenticity and free speech.
A Male-Dominated Change
It’s hard to ignore that the leaders of this new cultural elite are almost entirely men, aligning with Zuckerberg’s notions of “masculine energy,” which the CEO discussed at length on Rogan’s podcast. Many men feel constrained by societal changes that have enabled women and minorities to find more opportunities in society, and speaking without inhibition seems to create a feeling of renewed freedom for these figures.
Trump ally Peter Thiel seemed to echo Zuckerberg’s recent sentiments in a Financial Times article. In it, Thiel described “the media organizations, bureaucracies, universities, and government-funded NGOs that traditionally delimited public conversation” as the “Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC).” Thiel went on to say that people like himself were celebrating “our liberation from the DISC prison.”
Thiel went on to quote 14th-century Italian writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio, who said, “Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person.”
The Impact on Moving Forward
Ironically, Musk’s takeover of the former Twitter platform, now called X, was accompanied by journalist bannings and the personal ordering of suspensions for political activists. Though the owners of major social media platforms like X and Facebook might call themselves free speech advocates, it’s hard to ignore that their CEOs are silencing whatever voices they choose.
While corporate leaders might feel freer than ever before to speak their minds, can the same be said for the hundreds of millions of people who use their platforms, products, and services? There might be a cost to this authenticity, and it is seeing firsthand exactly what they think about the people.
