As Musk urges civil war, why are government departments still on X?

The horrific fatal stabbing of a dog walker in Uxbridge – for which an Afghan national has been arrested – has given Elon Musk an excuse to return to a favourite theme: that civil war is on its way to Britain and Europe. The ketamine-addled billionaire responded to the killing by writing on his social media hellscape X that “Civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a question of when”.

Later, Musk could be found fantasising about orcs and “hard men, like Tommy Robinson”. He wrote: “When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t realize the horrors that take place far away. They were able to live their lives in peace and tranquility, but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.

“What happened to the nice man who was brutally murdered while walking his dog will happen to all of England if the tide of illegal immigration is not turned. It is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die.”

They were the latest in a spurt of inflammatory posts by the businessman and sometime Trump confidante, who appears to be increasingly thirsting for a bloody uprising in a country he is not from, does not live in and has only tenuous connections to. Musk appeared by video link at Robinson’s London rally in September, telling the crowd: “You’re in a fundamental situation here. Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.”

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The tech guru tweeted several times in late 2023 about his belief that “civil war is coming to Europe” and has been predicting the same for the UK since the Southport riots last year.

It all begs the question of why the democratically elected British government continues to use Musk’s platform despite his increasing commitment to its violent overthrow. The only one of the UK government’s 24 ministerial departments not to be active on X is the relatively obscure Office of the Advocate General for Scotland, while the Scottish and Welsh governments and Northern Ireland Executive continue to post merrily away.

Way back in July ,Mark Pack, president of the Liberal Democrats and a member of the House of Lords, sent a written question to ministers asking why they persisted in using Musk’s platform, citing the government’s own SAFE Framework, which establishes four principles for brand safety in digital advertising.

One of these is ‘safety and suitability’, stating it “establishes minimum standards to ensure HMG advertisements do not appear next to or fund illegal, harmful, or offensive content. The criteria also assess the campaign’s suitability, considering potential reputational risk”. This would appear to rule out appearing on the increasingly crackers X, but then, as the response from minister Ruth Anderson pointed out: “The last assessment on X was made in April 2023.”

That, of course, was before Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump, helmed his DOGE, gave what looked to many people across the world like a Nazi salute on inauguration day and literally called for civil war on the streets of Britain. Time, maybe, for a rethink?