Elon Musk embroils himself in spat with UK police and politicians after riots
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is embroiled in controversy after posting a meme alleged to be Islamophobic.
On Saturday, Musk posted the meme on X, formerly known as Twitter until Musk's acquisition of the social media platform.
In it, four bearded and Muslim-appearing men stand watching over a white British police officer, a riff on the popular meme depicting four Black men standing over adult film star Piper Perri while she sits on a couch.
“This meme could get you 3 years in prison in the UK (actually),” Musk added in a reply to his post, which received 888,000 likes and 94.4m views by time of publication.
Since his acquisition of Twitter, Musk has styled himself as a vanguard of free speech who often tests censorship laws in a number of countries by sharing content that some perceive to be inflammatory.
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At the same time, he is accused of throttling criticism of Israel and the Zionist movement after a scandal in which he appeared to agree with the antisemitic accusation that Jews are weakening the West by encouraging mass immigration.
Since advertisers threatened to boycott his platform over the post, Musk went on what many on X criticised as an "apology tour"; first to Israel to meet survivors of the Hamas assault on 7 October and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than a million Jews were killed by the Nazis.
In recent weeks, Musk has attacked his online rivals, including former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, who he accused of being racist and a “scumbag”. The South African-born tycoon has also shared fake news about the UK riots and has joked about invading Britain.
Yousaf branded Musk “one of the most dangerous men on the planet” for his “amplification” of disinformation after the riots.
Last Thursday, Musk hit back, calling Yousaf, the son of Pakistani migrants to Scotland, “super, super racist” and claiming he “loathes white people”.
“I dare that scumbag to sue me,” Musk said on Sunday in response to reports that Yousuf was considering legal action against him.
Last Friday, London’s Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, threatened to extradite and imprison people overseas, including US citizens, over online posts - and warned that “the likes of Elon Musk” are potential investigation targets.
Musk is ‘accountable to no one’
Musk, whose daughter recently alleged that he told her when she was six years old that Arabic is the “language of the enemy”, has made a number of interventions on the topic of the far-right anti-Muslim riots that raged across Britain in early August.
Having declared that civil war in Britain was “inevitable” during the riots, which were partially triggered by misinformation spread on X, Musk has since issued multiple apparently humourous posts suggesting the US should invade the UK.
Does seem like the people are being oppressed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2024
He has criticised the prosecution of British citizens for social media posts deemed to be “hateful” or inciting violence, and accused the country of implementing a two-tier justice system.
This is a reference to the common far-right trope that ethnic minorities in Britain are treated more leniently by the authorities than white people.
During the riots Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on X, also replied to a post depicting an offensive caricature of a Pakistani man with a knife.
The cartoon suggested that British police protect Muslims who say “kill the infidels” but imprison white men who say “I don’t want my children to get stabbed”.
“Does seem one-sided,” Musk responded.
😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2024
Also on Friday, Musk replied approvingly to a parody account of India’s minister of home affairs, Amit Shah, which posted a video of the UAE’s foreign minister warning European countries about their Muslim populations.
“There will come a day that we will see far more radicals and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision-making, trying to be politically correct, and assuming that they know the Middle East, and they know Islam and they know the others far better than we do,” Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed can be heard saying in the video.
“7 years ago UAE Foreign Minister HH Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed warned the west of something,” the Amit Shah parody account said.
“He did,” replied Musk in apparent agreement.
The UK government’s technology secretary, Peter Kyle, met with representatives from X and other social media platforms, including TikTok and Meta, last Monday to “make clear their responsibility to continue to work with us to stop the spread of hateful misinformation and incitement".
Later that week, Kyle complained that Musk is “accountable to no one”.
Musk, meanwhile, branded Prime Minister Keir Starmer “two-tier Keir” and suggested the UK was becoming like the Soviet Union.
Last Thursday, he shared a fake Telegraph article announcing that Starmer was considering building “emergency detainment camps” in the Falklands to house imprisoned rioters.
The fake headline was posted by the co-leader of the far-right Britain First group. Musk deleted his post half an hour later.
On Monday, Bruce Daisley, formerly Twitter’s vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said Elon Musk should face “personal sanctions” and the threat of an “arrest warrant” if found to be stirring public disorder.
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