It’s time for Starmer to confront Elon Musk’s extremism

At Tommy Robinson’s rally last weekend, the ongoing problem of the far-right radicalisation of the world’s richest man finally became a crisis that even this government surely cannot ignore for any longer.

Elon Musk’s ownership of X has been a major contributor to the UK’s problems ever since he took control in 2022. Musk allowed almost every user banned from the site for extremism and hate speech to return, and allowed most of them to monetise their accounts with a blue tick – giving some an income of tens of thousands of pounds a month, as well as enhanced reach.

Musk personally boosts far-right messaging almost daily to a global audience of more than 200 million followers. He interferes with the programming of his AI, Grok, whenever it gives factual answers that he doesn’t like. X was a vital platform for the spread of the misinformation which fuelled riots across the country last August. And by refusing to moderate his site in accordance with UK law, Musk outsources the handling of hateful content on his social media site to the police – directly contributing to the supposed “free speech crisis” he then politicises and denounces.

This is a systemic pattern of behaviour that either the government has failed to notice, or which it has decided is too difficult to properly grip, given Musk’s complicated relationship with Donald Trump and the broader MAGA movement. There was, in practice, an uneasy truce: Elon Musk would dedicate X to trying to topple the UK government and install a far-right replacement, and the government would let him.

But then, on Saturday, Elon Musk joined Tommy Robinson’s rally via video-link (wearing a “WHAT WOULD ORWELL THINK” shirt as he did, showing if nothing else, he has no idea what the writer would think of an oligarch like him) and made his extremism impossible to ignore, even for a government that has worked tirelessly to do so. It is worth quoting his exact words to the rally at some length, to analyse them, and to see what he is really saying.

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Addressing “the reasonable centre”, Musk said: “Violence is going to come to you. You will have no choice. You’re in a fundamental system here, whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, and that’s the truth.”

There is little ambiguity in Musk’s words here. The only question mark is whether Musk is encouraging those listening to him to strike first – “fight back” may suggest waiting to retaliate, but could just as easily mean to “fight back” proactively, before ‘they’ come for ‘you’. It is certainly not the talk of someone looking to preserve peaceful democracy, and it cannot be framed in that way.

Musk said that “this is a government against the people and not for the people” before accusing it of being composed of people who “tried to hide these horrific crimes against children” – a reference to the grooming gangs scandals, which took place long before it was in power. He accused “the left” of being “the party of murder and celebrating murder”.

Perhaps most significantly of all, Musk publicly aired a global far right conspiracy theory suggesting that immigration was part of a deliberate plot to ‘replace’ native-born voters with immigrants. “There is a massive incentive on the left to import voters…this is a massive factor,” he told the rally. “It is a strategy that will succeed if it is not stopped. Thus far it is succeeding … if they are allowed to succeed, if this is allowed to continue, they will succeed in importing voters, swaying elections and taking your vote away from you, and that is 100% what is happening.”

Musk, who repeatedly railed against “foreign interests” in British politics (he has never lived in the UK), concluded that “there’s got to be a change of government in Britain, and we don’t have another four years until a next election, it’s too long, there’s got to be a dissolution of parliament”.

Ignoring Elon Musk and hoping he goes away hasn’t worked. X has proven it can mobilise violent mobs onto Britain’s streets, financially support its leaders, and radicalise casual users of the site – and its owner has made plain its agenda. The government has allowed a problem to turn into a crisis. Now, it has to decide what to do.

It will be tempted to do nothing, as it has for more than a year already. That is particularly understandable for the next few days, when it has to manage an ill-timed state visit by President Donald Trump. But once he is gone, if the government actually wishes to keep out the far right, it needs to tackle Elon Musk.

That doesn’t mean the government should turn around and ban X tomorrow. Regulation of social networks does touch on the free speech of every user on the site, and so should be handled by independent regulators and by courts, which should look at escalating sanctions accordingly and only take actions that limit the speech of law-abiding Brits as a last resort.

But there are endless steps between “doing nothing” and “banning X” that the government has ignored. Musk wants contracts with the government for Tesla and some of his other companies – given his character and the security risk he poses, these should be rejected out of hand. 

The government should stop using a social network controlled by someone actively plotting their downfall, and it should encourage its MPs and the wider UK community to do so. There is a difference between staying in a forum with people who disagree with you, and staying in an establishment where the owner is plotting your demise. If the government has, as some suspect, been preventing independent enforcement action against X for its moderation failures, it should stop.

Elon Musk has been taught over the last year that he can interfere as aggressively as he likes in UK politics – for little more than kicks, given his lack of any personal stakes in the game – without repercussions. That has brought us to this point. The best time for the government to act was a year ago. The second-best time is now.