Elon Musk repeatedly asserts, without evidence, that the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, covered up the abuses of young girls by gangs composed largely of British Pakistani men, in cases that date back to before 2010 when Starmer was head of Britain’s public prosecutions.
“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years,” Musk posted to the top of his account on Friday. “Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”
In fact, Starmer, who heads the Labour government, did not cover up abuses. Instead, he brought the first case against an Asian grooming gang and drafted new guidelines for how the Crown Prosecution Service should deal with cases of sexual exploitation of children, including the mandatory reporting of child sex offenses.
Musk also calls Jess Phillips, the Labour government’s minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, a “rape genocide apologist” because she pushed back on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester.
In fact, Phillips, who has long campaigned for women’s rights, has called for a local investigation by Oldham authorities rather than the central government. Women’s rights supporters say Musk’s labeling Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” is threatening her safety.
On Monday, Starmer warned publicly that Musk’s baseless accusations “crossed a line”, adding: “Once we lose the anchor that truth matters, in the robust debate that we must have, then we are on a very slippery slope.”
Musk’s global reach
Musk’s lies about the leftwing British government and his support for far-right groups are parts of an emerging pattern. Musk is also:
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Boosting the far-right party in Germany with neo-Nazi ties, known as Alternative for Germany (AfD), before elections early next month. Musk signaled his support for AfD in mid-December, writing in a post on X: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” He also penned an op-ed in a German newspaper recently, describing the party as the “last spark of hope” for the country. Musk is planning an online “discussion” on X with the AfD’s leader and candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, amplifying the party’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 policies. Musk has met regularly with Meloni, who has called him a friend, and appeared at a youth event for Meloni’s party.
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Urging support for Britain’s far-right MP Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party (although Farage and Musk have broken over the next item). Musk has said he might donate upward of £100m pounds ($127m) to Farage’s group.
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Demanding Britain “free Tommy Robinson”, the far-right founder of the English Defence League – an Islamophobic nationalist group – and anti-immigrant agitator who, Musk charges, is in jail for “telling the truth”. In fact, Robinson is in jail because he was found to have defamed a teenage Syrian refugee and then defied a British court order by repeating the false claims. (Robinson has been previously jailed for assault, mortgage fraud and traveling on a false passport to the United States, where he has sought to establish ties with rightwing groups.)
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Allowing on X inflammatory lies of a kind that incited anti-immigrant riots in Britain last July, following the killing of three girls in a mass stabbing in the town of Southport. After Britain arrested more than 30 people, Musk condemned the government for what he called an attack on free speech.
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Calling Justin Trudeau an “insufferable tool” over comments the Canadian prime minister made in support of Kamala Harris, and predicted he “won’t be in power for much longer”. (On Monday, Trudeau announced he would resign.)
Where Musk is getting this power
As Musk is the richest person in the world, politicians everywhere now recognize his capacity to pour money into their parties and political campaigns, as he did by investing a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected.
He also owns X, formerly Twitter, which (as of December 2024) has 619 million monthly active users. He has manipulated X’s algorithm to boost his own posts, which now reach 210 million.
But Musk’s real power these days comes from his proximity to and presumed influence over Donald Trump, soon to be president of the United States.
Musk has hardly left Trump’s side since the election, meaning that Musk’s opinions (amplified by his social media platform) cannot be ignored by politicians around the world who are trying to decipher Trump’s opinions.
One prominent member of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic party is asking that Germany determine “whether [Musk’s] repeated disrespect, defamation and interference in the election campaign were also expressed in the name of the new US government”.
This combination – the richest person in the world, owner and manipulator of the biggest political messaging platform in the world, with direct influence over Trump – puts Musk in the position of being able to move other nations toward the neo-fascist right.
Why Musk is doing this
Not for money. As it is, he has far more than any human can utilize.
Partly, it’s ideological. He calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, which puts him at odds with Europe’s and Canada’s aggressive responses to hate speech online. (Britain, Musk says, “is turning into a police state”.)
But the roots of Musk’s neo-fascism probably go deeper.
I am no psychoanalyst but I imagine that as an immigrant from South Africa, Musk is especially triggered by poor people of color moving into white nations. His father smuggled raw emeralds and had them cut in Johannesburg.
Part of his shift to the radical right also comes from Musk’s transgender child. As Musk told the conservative commentator Jordan Peterson: “I lost my son, essentially,” claiming she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus. I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.” (Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, now 20, told NBC News that Musk was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child.)
On X, Musk continuously criticizes transgender rights, including medical treatments for trans-identifying minors, and the https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1719633160365813913. He has promoted anti-trans content and called https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770359050557136941 who provide trans care to minors. Last July, Musk said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents. After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using transgender people’s abandoned birth names (known as “deadnames”).
Perhaps the major reason for Musk’s recent effort to push other nations to the neo-fascist right is his newfound thirst for rightwing global politics. After in effect (at least in Musk’s mind) winning the presidency for Trump by spending more than $250m and unleashing a maelstrom of pro-Trump and anti-Harris lies over X, he now seeks even more of an authoritarian rush.
What should be done about Musk?
For the time being, particularly under Trump, there is little that we in the US can do to constrain Musk except by boycotting Tesla and X.
Canada and Britain and other European nations, meanwhile, should, at the very least:
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Enact laws and regulations to prohibit non-citizens (like Musk) from financing activities that could affect their elections.
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Maintain, if not strengthen, laws and rules against hate speech, and ensure that they are applied to social media companies, such as Musk’s X.
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Refuse to contract with Musk’s Space X and its Starlink satellite division, or with Musk’s other corporations (Tesla and the Boring Company).
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Disengage from any joint ventures or technology transfers involving Musk, including xAI, his artificial intelligence company.
Musk is not the first person in history to be seduced by the thrill of unconstrained power, although this may be the first time so much power is concentrated in one unelected megalomaniac.
