UPDATE: UK SLAMS ‘DEEPLY IRRESPONSIBLE’ MUSK COMMENTS ON RIOTS
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Elon Musk, the American tech entrepreneur, came under fire on Tuesday from a UK government official for his “unacceptable” remarks on social media regarding the far-right riots raging in England and Northern Ireland.
After declaring on the website on Sunday that a British “civil war” was unavoidable, the owner of X faced backlash. With his aggressive response to a tweet from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, he incited even more outrage.
“Use of language such as a ‘civil war’ is in no way acceptable,” said justice minister Heidi Alexander, branding Musk’s comments “deeply irresponsible”.
“We are seeing police officers being seriously injured, buildings set alight, and so I really do think that everyone who has a platform should be exercising their power responsibly,” she told Times Radio.
After three children were killed on Monday of last week at a dance party in Southport, northwest England, with a Taylor Swift theme, anti-immigrant protestors unleashed riots around the country.
Online misinformation that the stabbing culprit was a Muslim seeking asylum has fueled them. Axel Rudakubana, who is 17 years old, is a British native.
The government has been forced to provide emergency security to Islamic places of worship because the rioters have targeted mosques and hotels that house asylum seekers.
In a post on X on Monday, Starmer vowed to apply “criminal law online as well as offline”, adding that “we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities”.
Musk replied: “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?”
His original “civil war” post came in a reply to another X user blaming the riots on “the effects of mass migration and open borders”.
Starmer’s spokesperson said Monday their was “no justification” for the comment.
Influencer Andrew Tate and far-right, anti-Islam figurehead Tommy Robinson are among people promoting false claims about Rudakubana on X.
Starmer’s spokesperson also blamed “bot activity online”, suggesting that the false rumours could have been “amplified with the involvement of state actors”.
EuropeInvasion, an anti-immigrant X account with hundreds of thousands of followers, still has a post up falsely claiming that the attacker was “confirmed to be Muslim”.
An AI-generated image depicting Muslim men chasing a child wearing a British flag has over 900,000 views.
Technology minister Peter Kyle met representatives from TikTok, Meta, Google, and X on Monday and warned that social media users spreading misinformation will have “nowhere to hide”.
Musk –- who has reduced content moderation on the platform since taking over Twitter, instead relying on user-written “community notes” –- regularly voices support for right-wing causes and politicians like Donald Trump in the US and Javier Milei in Argentina.
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