| You might have thought the world’s richest man had enough on his plate teeing up history’s biggest IPO. The SpaceX listing is happening today. Since Elon Musk owns a majority of the company, which will be valued at about $1.8tn, he will become the world’s first trillionaire. He could buy a middle-sized country with that. Or fund the Pentagon for a year. He could even replace humanity with a superior race that he has genetically engineered from space (Swampians lunging for the nearest whisky bottle should Google “Bond movie, Moonraker, Drax Industries”). Yet he has been devoting many of his waking hours to stoking up racial hatred in Britain on his social media site. In the ten days since British police released video footage of Henry Nowak’s dying moments, Musk has posted or reposted more than 100 attacks on British multiculturalism and in support of extremists like Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe, leader of the Restore Britain party. For those unaware of the Nowak tragedy, he was an 18-year-old white boy on his way home one night in Southampton last December when he was fatally stabbed by a British Sikh, Vickrum Digwa. The culprit’s brother called the police to say that Nowak had attacked and racially abused him — a story that turns out to have been invented. The police believed Digwa’s account and handcuffed Nowak as he was dying on the doorstep of his home. The footage is unbearably tragic. Police negligence — and the existence of alleged two-tier policing — should be investigated and fixed. The police have to be held to account. But here is the thing: Nowak’s parents called on the public to respect their grief and not to politicise his murder. Musk, on the other hand, wants to turn Nowak into a white George Floyd. There have been cases of racially-motivated murders of non-whites by whites in Britain. Does anyone know the name Kamran Aman? He was a non-white Briton who was stabbed to death last year on the doorstep of his mother’s home in south Wales. He was dropping off her groceries. Aman’s two teenage killers hurled racial abuse at him while they were stabbing him to death. Few will ever know Aman’s name. Musk and the thugs he supports care about only one kind of victim, just as the idiotic portions of the left care only about another. “This is going to happen again and again and again,” Restore Britain’s Lowe posted about Nowak’s murder. “Rape. Sexual torture. Even worse. Mass industrial abuse of British children.” Above that, Musk posted “RAGE”. A few hours later he posted Tommy Robinson’s call for protests in Southampton. He also reposted this. “They [the British police] killed him because someone accused him of racism.” Whatever their other failings, the police did not kill Nowak. “I stand with the indigenous people of the UK,” wrote Matt Walsh, a Maga online personality — also reposted by Musk. Earlier this week a Sudanese immigrant was filmed apparently trying to behead a white man in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Riots broke out. “If I ever have my head cut off by an African, please politicise my murder,” wrote @Duxvul, a far-right account. “Please use it to push a far-right agenda. Please start a Reconquista.” Reconquista is the name given to the 15th-century Christian expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain. Beneath that, Musk posted “Same” alongside two fire emojis. “A vast number of people need to be removed from our country — when I say vast I mean it,” Lowe posted and Musk reposted. “Only Restore Britain can save Britain,” Musk posted. “It is the only way.” In addition to mass deportation of non-whites, Restore Britain would outlaw halal and kosher meat slaughter, restore the death penalty and defund the BBC. Non-existent a year ago, Restore Britain’s debut has been rocket-boosted by Musk on X to become a viable political force with over 1mn members. Restore’s ideology is straight-up authoritarian. Musk wants it to run Britain, a country in which he has never lived and of which he is galactically ignorant. I could write three more Swamp Notes just summarising Musk’s other incendiary postings in the past few days — alleging California’s elections have been rigged, describing the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a “criminal organisation”, claiming that European and American whites are the “least racist people in human history”, saying George Floyd died of fentanyl, nor asphyxiation, and so on. Or I could remind Swampians what he did to USAID during his Doge rampage last year. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Bill Gates told the FT. But I have made my point. I have no idea whether Musk is an engineering genius, or just a savvy and lucky venture capitalist. The scientific world is divided on that question. I do know that he is a monstrous human being. I am turning this week to my colleague, Robert Shrimsley, the FT’s must-read British politics columnist. Robert, I have two questions. First, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, is apparently keen to stamp down on racial hatred, while British police have been arresting people for quite arbitrary — and often comically trivial — cases of alleged racism online and off. Starmer obviously cares about what random citizens think about Black people, Israel, trans-activists . . . pick your target. But as far as I know, he has taken no action against a man who uses his massively influential platform to call for civil war in Britain. Does Starmer have the backbone to run a county council let alone the country? If that question seems too loaded, Robert, let me ask what British liberal democracy can and should be doing to protect itself from Musk? My column this week compared Trump to Jimmy Carter — two deeply unalike characters who share an Iran syndrome and a reputation for geopolitical impotence. It followed my latest telephone interview with Trump last Sunday in which he insisted that he, not Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, calls all the shots. On the same topic, I really enjoyed appearing on The Newsagents, the podcast hosted by the excellent duo, Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel. My colleague, Brooke Masters, has written an important column asking what happened to the great rebirth of American manufacturing. Neither of the very different remedies applied by Joe Biden and Trump have reversed the trends. “Re-industrialisation is a lot harder than it sounds,” Brooke writes. Do also read my colleague John Thornhill, the FT’s technology columnist, on why Europe is much more innovative than people think. Far from the hidebound backwater it is often depicted to be, Europe is adapting and changing with increasing purpose, John argues. The always probing Jonathan Martin is a must-read in Politco on why the US and Britain share the same atrophying problems. A decade after Brexit and Trump’s first election, populism is, if anything, growing. Finally, I have enjoyed reading Simon Nixon’s Substack Wealth of Nations. His latest on the future of AI is excellent.
Hi Ed. A lot to unpack there. I’m not sure I entirely agree with your characterisation of Starmer’s approach to social media. Many of the attacks on him from the right and, let’s remember from Musk himself, are about his response to the Southport riots when the courts cracked down hard on those whose tweets appeared to be fomenting violence. Nonetheless, hate crime legislation that preceded Starmer has been used quite aggressively by police to at least scare some of those pushing out opinions that many would find unpleasant, but probably fall short of criminal. In recent months police have been told to adjust their priorities and “police streets not tweets”. Sadly, this has happened at a time when sites such as X have become absolute sewers of open racial hatred. As to Musk himself, it is a really good question. Were he Russian or a resident of a declared hostile state, his site would have been shut down under national security legislation. But as he is American, there is no such prospect. Nevertheless, many British politicians are getting increasingly concerned at the sight of a foreign plutocrat using his social media platform to foment unrest and promote those with a far-right ideology, quite alien to British values. Then again, Musk is currently promoting a rival to Nigel Farage, who he now regards as too liberal. This is not wholly unwelcome to the Labour Party as it might help split the rightwing vote. I do wonder if the government will eventually feel forced to act, though at present it has not even quit the site itself. They could in theory do all kinds of things. It could use Musk’s own posts and promotion of others to designate him a publisher, for example, with all the legal liabilities that entails. It has already used the regulator to crack down on “nudification” tools. The issue of child protection is felt to be a far better wicket for the government to bat on than political opinions. Right now there seems little appetite for a full fight but views are hardening. Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, has said she is asking the regulator Ofcom to ask X how it intends to comply with new regulations to make it remove illegal content during times of crisis. She announced this on X, so one probably should not expect too much. Of course, Starmer could be gone soon in any case. The former health secretary and current mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, is standing in a parliamentary by-election next week with the clear intention of challenging the prime minister should he win. If the bookies are right and he takes the seat, Starmer’s days look numbered. We’d love to hear from you. You can email the team on [email protected], contact Ed on [email protected] and Rana on [email protected], and follow them on X at @RanaForoohar and @EdwardGLuce. We may feature an excerpt of your response in the next newsletter |
