Beware You Oligarchs Who Make Faustian Bargains with Autocrats

In German folklore comes the story of Faust (or Doctor Faustus) who agrees to relinquish his soul to an evil spirit such as Mephistopheles: a representation of the Devil. For this surrender, Faust is promised knowledge and magical powers unattainable by other mortals that give him enormous wealth and pleasures that he could ever desire.

When taking this bargain, though, Faust understood that making a deal with the Devil was inherently evil and amoral, but his greed and desire overrode reason, which finalized the exchange.

What has come to be known as the “Faustian bargain” has become a cautionary tale with tragic and self-defeating results for the bargainer because what is forfeited is far more valuable than what is acquired, whether they realize it or not.

Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican Party political strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project—a political action committee holding elected officials accountable to follow their oaths to the Constitution—must have had the story of Faust in mind in the writing of his two popular books on US politics: Everything Trump Touches Dies, and Running against the Devil—A Plot to Save America from Trump and Democrats from Themselves.

In the Faustian story, Trump represents the Devil. Anyone and everyone even thinking about making a deal with him becomes the Faust in the tale who eventually gives up so much more they could ever receive. Such is Trump’s “art of the deal.”

Apparently, Elon Musk learned this lesson the hard way as so many others in Trump’s orbit have as well.

Elon Musk, technological wizard, owner of the social media platform X, and major stakeholder in Tesla and SpaceX, pumped an estimated $288 million into Trump’s war chest during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Whether Elon Musk ever had a soul is up for debate. But for his enormous contribution to Trump’s campaign, he received almost unlimited access to the candidate and then to the president. Trump assigned Musk to head a special government position, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And Trump gave Musk assurances of the continuance of lucrative government contracts, loans, and tax credits.

All seemed to be going well for the richest man in the world until Satin turned on him, eventually sending him [back] to the underworld. Trump pushed for the ironically named “One Big Beautiful Bill” in Congress that, among other things, called for cancelling the federal electric vehicle tax credit of $7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for pre-owned.

Musk made his displeasure known to the president about this clause in the bill. Though we do not know the precise reason, Trump fired Musk from his DOGE position and sent him out with nothing more than a tackey golden key and a goodbye.

Musk went to X to denounce his former “friend.” In one post, Musk, without providing any evidence wrote:

“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” he wrote. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

Jeffrey Epstein had been accused of sex-trafficking minors in 2019 before he committed suicide in prison.

By sacrificing himself to the man around whom everything he touches dies, Musk is currently one of the most hated men in the country if not the world. His Tesla brand is skidding toward Trump’s border wall. Trump hinted that he may rescind Musk’s government contracts, while his net worth has tumbled.

Musk is no longer respected as one of the tech bros. Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, called out Musk by accusing the world’s richest man of “killing the world’s poorest children” through his huge cuts to the US foreign aid budget, especially through the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) program.

Nazi Germany

We need not go back very far to identify the dangers oligarchs place themselves in when cozying up to satanic autocrats, since history affords us plenty of examples.

Another real-life Faust was German industrialist Fritz Thyssen. A devoted Catholic, political conservative, and staunch German nationalist, Thyssen held a prominent role in elite German society.

He was the son of steel mogul August Thyssen, head of the largest steel manufacturing company in Germany. In 1926, Fritz took control of the family empire. Within only two years, his company dominated over 75% of German iron ore reserves while employing approximately 200,000 people.

After being persuaded to attend a Nazi rally in 1923 by retired general Erich Ludendorff in which Adolf Hitler was to give a speech, Fritz Thyssen became immediately mesmerized not only by the Nazi leader’s stunning oratory, but also by his nationalist platform and disgust over the brutal terms inflicted upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles.

Soon thereafter, Thyssen contributed 100,000 gold marks through Ludendorff, which was his first of many indirect financial donations to the Nazi party. Thyssen was the initial industrialist to contribute to the Nazis, and he was responsible for bringing in others in assisting the Nazi party to take political control of Germany.

Thyssen applauded the Nazi party’s suppression of left-wing political organizations and of trade unions, which had cut into his overall profit margins.

Hitler appointed Thyssen in July 1933 to the Council of State of Prussia, the largest German state, and he was elected to the Reichstag in November 1933 and held that seat until the outbreak of the second world war.

Fritz Thyssen agreed with Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies and laws, and he fired all of his Jewish employees. He did, however, send a letter to Hitler protesting Nazi anti-Catholic policies after 1935.

Thyssen’s suspicions of the party grew as Hitler’s expanding plans of militarism became more intensive. The industrialist believed that another European war would amount to the final nail in the coffin of Germany’s demise.

Thyssen’s final break with the Nazis and their policies came when Hitler ordered his military invasion of Poland sparking the beginning of another great war. Fritz and his wife escaped into exile first in Switzerland and then in France.

In their rush, they left many of their belongings and papers behind, including a document Fritz had intended to send to the German press for publication. In it he lodged a heated personal attack on Hitler and his policies, which concluded with the sentence, “Your policy will terminate in a finis Germaniae.”

Though the document was never published, the Nazis confiscated and absorbed Thyssen’s companies and other properties. German officials issued an international arrest warrant against Fritz Thyssen. The charges included “theft, embezzlement, fraud, non-payment in income and other taxes, and contravention of the German currency restrictions.”

Thyssen called the charges “ridiculous” when interviewed by the press. Actually, the Nazis found that the Thyssen family did have a sorted history of tax evasion dating back to World War I, when August Thyssen created several firms in the Netherlands, including a bank, for the purpose of safeguarding and funneling assets and avoiding taxes.

After Germany defeated France in 1940, Thyssen took refuge in Vichy France, ultimately intending to go to Argentina. But in August 1942, Vichy authorities turned him over to the Gestapo. Later he was joined by his wife, and they were eventually imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp.

Fritz Thyssen and his wife survived the war. They were taken with other important prisoners by the allies. He was interrogated as part of Camp Dustbin: a British-American interrogation camp serving as an interrogation and processing center for German scientists, technicians, and administrators incarcerated during the war.

Explaining his financial contributions to the Nazi party, Thyssen told his interrogator Clifford Hynning:

“I did not want to give any money directly to the [Nazi] party, so I gave it to Ludendorff and he gave it to the party.”

Shortly thereafter, the Thyssens were released by American troops with a monetary fine equivalent to 15% (500,000 Deutschmarks) of his estimated remaining assets. He was acquitted of all other charges.

Apparently, Fritz Thyssen ultimately regretted supporting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

Though he denied employing slave labor, he accepted responsibility for his companies’ maltreatment of Jewish employees in the 1930s.

While Elon Musk has apologized to Trump for posting of an alleged connection Trump may have had with Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal operation, Musk has never apologized to the people of the United States and people throughout the world for his mass firings of government workers, closing of essential government departments and services, and for killing an estimated 300,000 people worldwide by cutting funding for food and medicine for starving and sick people through the USAID.