Elon Musk has poured at least $442 million into helping the GOP in the midterm elections through various political action committees. The enormous spending spree has paired weird, bigoted campaign advertising with the claim that Musk and his allies are somehow rescuing a civilization.

Campaign filings place Musk’s spending at no less than $442 million. That total likely makes him the single biggest donor of the election cycle and possibly the biggest individual donor in American history.

The scale of that spending has drawn criticism from James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Texas’ Senate seat. Talarico is also one of the biggest targets of Musk’s torrent of election money.

“[Musk] wants his very own personal United States senator,” Talarico told supporters at a rally on Saturday. It was a blunt description of what hundreds of millions of dollars can look like when one billionaire throws his fortune behind a political party.

A Musk supporter responded to the criticism by contrasting the billionaire’s spending with that of liberal financier George Soros. Soros has long been a frequent target of antisemitic smears from the right.

“Elon is using his money to save America and Western Civilization. Soros is using your money to destroy America and Western Civilization,” read the post on X. Apparently, billionaire election spending becomes noble when the billionaire happens to be Musk.

The invocation of Western civilization is not merely overheated campaign language. It reflects a talking point often used in white supremacist circles, where the white world is portrayed as Western civilization and depicted as something requiring protection.

Within that movement, the supposed danger frequently comes from people who are not white. Musk’s political spending is therefore being defended with rhetoric carrying a distinctly racist meaning and history.

That defense fits Musk’s own record of pushing racist ideas and memes. His political campaign is not happening in isolation from the material he has repeatedly amplified.

Musk also has a bizarre interest in breeding women, according to reports. That interest is apparently connected to his belief in an impending apocalypse of sorts, adding another unsettling dimension to his grandiose civilizational fixation.

The actual advertisements from Musk’s America PAC make the rescue narrative look even more absurd. They heavily feature New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alongside Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Those prominent political figures are presented as participants in a supposed leftist plot to take over America. The ads turn familiar Democratic figures into sinister characters in a sweeping fantasy about national collapse and political conquest.

Musk is also using the campaign to demonize transgender people. He has often smeared transgender people as purported victims of a “woke mind virus,” and his election advertising carries that fixation into Republican campaign politics.

One especially ironic advertisement concerns Alaska’s Senate race, where Musk’s PAC attacks Democrat Mary Peltola. The group claims Peltola benefits from “dark money” supplied by “liberal billionaires.”

That complaint is remarkably rich coming from an operation supported by at least $442 million from Musk, whom the article identifies as the world’s richest person. His money is helping keep Republicans viable during the current election cycle while his PAC complains about wealthy liberal donors.

This is the level of introspection that has come to define Musk’s political operation. He casts himself as a defender of Western civilization while making Nazi salutes and overseeing chatbots that pedophiles apparently love, a grotesque backdrop for his record breaking attempt to purchase Republican victories.