Elon Musk repeatedly asserts, with out proof, that the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, lined up the abuses of younger ladies by gangs composed largely of British Pakistani males, in instances that date again to earlier than 2010 when Starmer was head of Britain’s public prosecutions.
“Starmer was complicit within the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years,” Musk posted to the highest of his account on Friday. “Starmer should go and he should face prices for his complicity within the worst mass crime within the historical past of Britain.”
In truth, Starmer, who heads the Labour authorities, did not cowl up abuses. As an alternative, he introduced the primary case towards an Asian grooming gang and drafted new pointers for the way the Crown Prosecution Service ought to take care of instances of sexual exploitation of youngsters, together with the obligatory reporting of kid intercourse offenses.
Musk additionally calls Jess Phillips, the Labour authorities’s minister for safeguarding and violence towards girls and ladies, a “rape genocide apologist” as a result of she pushed again on requires a nationwide inquiry into youngster sexual exploitation in Oldham, a city close to Manchester.
In truth, Phillips, who has lengthy campaigned for girls’s rights, has known as for a neighborhood investigation by Oldham authorities quite than the central authorities. Ladies’s rights supporters say Musk’s labeling Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” is threatening her security.
On Monday, Starmer warned publicly that Musk’s baseless accusations “crossed a line”, including: “As soon as we lose the anchor that fact issues, within the sturdy debate that we should have, then we’re on a really slippery slope.”
Musk’s international attain
Musk’s lies concerning the leftwing British authorities and his help for far-right teams are components of an rising sample. Musk can be:
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Boosting the far-right social gathering in Germany with neo-Nazi ties, often called Various for Germany (AfD), earlier than elections early subsequent month. Musk signaled his help for AfD in mid-December, writing in a publish on X: “Solely the AfD can save Germany.” He additionally penned an op-ed in a German newspaper just lately, describing the social gathering because the “final spark of hope” for the nation. Musk is planning a web based “dialogue” on X with the AfD’s chief and candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, amplifying the social gathering’s neo-Nazi ideology.
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Attacking the Italian judiciary for curbing the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s hardline anti-asylum immigration insurance policies. Musk has met often with Meloni, who has known as him a buddy, and appeared at a youth occasion for Meloni’s social gathering.
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Urging help for Britain’s far-right MP Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK social gathering (though Farage and Musk have damaged over the following merchandise). Musk has stated he may donate upward of £100m kilos ($127m) to Farage’s group.
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Demanding Britain “free Tommy Robinson”, the far-right founding father of the English Defence League – an Islamophobic nationalist group – and anti-immigrant agitator who, Musk prices, is in jail for “telling the reality”. In truth, Robinson is in jail as a result of he was discovered to have defamed a teenage Syrian refugee after which defied a British courtroom order by repeating the false claims. (Robinson has been beforehand jailed for assault, mortgage fraud and touring on a false passport to the US, the place he has sought to ascertain ties with rightwing teams.)
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Permitting on X inflammatory lies of a form that incited anti-immigrant riots in Britain final July, following the killing of three ladies in a mass stabbing within the city of Southport. After Britain arrested greater than 30 folks, Musk condemned the federal government for what he known as an assault on free speech.
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Calling Justin Trudeau an “unbearable device” over feedback the Canadian prime minister made in help of Kamala Harris, and predicted he “gained’t be in energy for for much longer”. (On Monday, Trudeau introduced he would resign.)
The place Musk is getting this energy
As Musk is the richest particular person on the earth, politicians all over the place now acknowledge his capability to pour cash into their events and political campaigns, as he did by investing 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars} to get Trump elected.
He additionally owns X, previously Twitter, which (as of December 2024) has 619 million month-to-month energetic customers. He has manipulated X’s algorithm to spice up his personal posts, which now attain 210 million.
However Musk’s actual energy as of late comes from his proximity to and presumed affect over Donald Trump, quickly to be president of the US.
Musk has hardly left Trump’s facet because the election, that means that Musk’s opinions (amplified by his social media platform) can’t be ignored by politicians all over the world who’re making an attempt to decipher Trump’s opinions.
One outstanding member of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic social gathering is asking that Germany decide “whether or not [Musk’s] repeated disrespect, defamation and interference within the election marketing campaign have been additionally expressed within the title of the brand new US authorities”.
This mix – the richest particular person on the earth, proprietor and manipulator of the largest political messaging platform on the earth, with direct affect over Trump – places Musk within the place of having the ability to transfer different nations towards the neo-fascist proper.
Why Musk is doing this
Not for cash. As it’s, he has way over any human can make the most of.
Partly, it’s ideological. He calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, which places him at odds with Europe’s and Canada’s aggressive responses to hate speech on-line. (Britain, Musk says, “is popping right into a police state”.)
However the roots of Musk’s neo-fascism most likely go deeper.
I’m no psychoanalyst however I think about that as an immigrant from South Africa, Musk is particularly triggered by poor folks of shade shifting into white nations. His father smuggled uncooked emeralds and had them minimize in Johannesburg.
A part of his shift to the novel proper additionally comes from Musk’s transgender youngster. As Musk advised the conservative commentator Jordan Peterson: “I misplaced my son, basically,” claiming she was “useless, killed by the woke thoughts virus. I vowed to destroy the woke thoughts virus after that.” (Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, now 20, advised NBC Information that Musk was an absent father who was merciless to her as a baby.)
On X, Musk constantly criticizes transgender rights, together with medical therapies for trans-identifying minors, and the use of gender-affirming pronouns. He has promoted anti-trans content material and known as for arresting folks who present trans care to minors. Final July, Musk stated he was pulling his companies out of California to protest a brand new state regulation that bars colleges from requiring that trans youngsters be outed to their mother and father. After Musk purchased X, then often called Twitter, in 2022, he rolled again the app’s protections for trans folks, together with a ban on utilizing transgender folks’s deserted delivery names (often called “deadnames”).
Maybe the foremost motive for Musk’s current effort to push different nations to the neo-fascist proper is his newfound thirst for rightwing international politics. After in impact (not less than in Musk’s thoughts) profitable the presidency for Trump by spending greater than $250m and unleashing a maelstrom of pro-Trump and anti-Harris lies over X, he now seeks much more of an authoritarian rush.
What needs to be executed about Musk?
In the interim, notably below Trump, there may be little that we within the US can do to constrain Musk besides by boycotting Tesla and X.
Canada and Britain and different European nations, in the meantime, ought to, on the very least:
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Enact legal guidelines and rules to ban non-citizens (like Musk) from financing actions that might have an effect on their elections.
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Keep, if not strengthen, legal guidelines and guidelines towards hate speech, and make sure that they’re utilized to social media firms, corresponding to Musk’s X.
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Refuse to contract with Musk’s Area X and its Starlink satellite tv for pc division, or with Musk’s different firms (Tesla and the Boring Firm).
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Disengage from any joint ventures or expertise transfers involving Musk, together with xAI, his synthetic intelligence firm.
Musk isn’t the primary particular person in historical past to be seduced by the fun of unconstrained energy, though this can be the primary time a lot energy is concentrated in a single unelected megalomaniac.