Twitter’s formerly highest-ranking European executive accused the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, of being a “pretty toxic user” who is directly contributing to the racist violence currently spreading across the United Kingdom.
Musk has used his own personal account on X to stoke tensions in dozens of white, working-class areas of England and Northern Ireland that have erupted in U.K. race riots for seven straight nights following an unrelated tragedy.
The police are bracing for more rioting tonight.
The anger has mainly targeted Muslim and immigrant communities after false accusations were disseminated on social media platforms like X. Musk—who is not an expert on the U.K.—began his intervention on Aug. 4 by tweeting, “Civil war is inevitable.”
Civil war is inevitable
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 4, 2024
“Elon Musk is playing a pretty pivotal role, and it’s why it’s such a challenge to try and prohibit or to regulate what he’s actually doing right now,” former Twitter executive Bruce Daisley said in comments quoted by the BBC.
Riots broke out after the Southport community near Liverpool was devastated by the fatal stabbing of three young girls. The perpetrator, born in Wales to Rwandan parents, is believed to be a Christian. His alleged motive for the attack has not been described by police. Online, among far-right accounts, a rumor initially blamed a fictitious Muslim immigrant.
Towns across the country’s industrial Midlands have since been plagued by violence mainly from white working-class Brits heeding the call to arms spread by Tommy Robinson, cofounder of the Islamophobic far-right English Defense League.
Musk, added Daisley, is “largely responsible for bringing Tommy Robinson back onto Twitter, and then, as a user of the platform, amplifying [Robinson’s] voice to the extent that he has gone from really the bargain-basement of politics to being one of the biggest names orchestrating potentially this ongoing racial conflict.”
Attempts by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to assuage British Muslims fearful of pogrom-like reprisals were attacked by Musk. The Tesla CEO accused Starmer of policing ethnic white English citizens more harshly than immigrant people of color, calling the former crown chief prosecutor “#TwoTierKier,” a reference to the populist narrative of two-tier policing.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2024
Downing Street in return blasted Musk’s prediction that “civil war is inevitable,” saying there was “no justification” for such incendiary claims.
Calls to shut down X
Musk’s activism has sparked calls—including from human rights lawyer Jessica Simor—to shut the platform down before it does serious harm to the country’s social fabric.
The U.K.’s Brexit referendum vote to leave the European Union, held in 2016 months before Trump’s election, coincided with increased nativist English resentment against immigration in white working-class areas of the North, like Sunderland.
Daisley called for the U.K. to bring the Online Safety Act, the culmination of six years’ legislative work, into force sooner than the second half of next year. That way authorities would have a legal instrument in place to punish platforms like X that fan the flames of ethnic hatred.
“If companies don’t comply, there is the potential for senior leaders of the organizations to be held criminally responsible themselves,” said Daisley.
The ex–Twitter Europe exec left the company in 2020, well before Musk acquired the company and turned it into what it is today. Fortune reached out to the ex-manager to seek further comment.
Musk is an activist often wooed by the world’s leaders
First off, it’s not unusual for Musk to intervene in international politics, since he maintains business interests around the world. He is also a frequent and welcome guest of statesmen, including former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron, many of whom would jump at the chance to win pledges for a new factory that generates jobs and taxes.
He has, however, taken flak for pushing a peace plan for Ukraine favorable to the Kremlin and likening Taiwan to China’s version of Hawaii rather than an island nation in its own right.
Musk also maintains close political ties abroad with archconservatives and autocrats such as the government of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a darling of Fox News who runs the only foreign CPAC convention, as well as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, whose party has its roots in Mussolini’s fascist past.
He is close as well with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, attending as a personal guest the prime minister’s speech before Congress last month, where he had plenty of time to talk U.K. politics standing right next to British conservative commentator Douglas Murray.
What is motivating Elon Musk?
His stated motivation behind his political activism is to “destroy the woke mind virus” he believes is the cause behind his transgender child disowning him and what he views is an increasingly anti-meritocratic system unfairly helping marginalized communities and immigrants at the expense of native populations. He argues it is propped up by an anti-libertarian establishment with the help of corporate media and Big Tech.
But his motivations to stoke division and fan the flames of ethnic and religious tensions could be financial in nature as well.
X’s financial woes motivate Musk’s need for engagement
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, the bulk of which came out of his own pocket with another $13 billion in high-interest loans.
With the two-year anniversary of the deal now weeks away, X chief technology officer Musk has not yet delivered on his promise for a financial payments system that is crucial to its future. His attempt to poach Twitch viewers never got anywhere, either, with obvious candidates like streamer Adin Ross preferring to use Kick rather than X.
Meanwhile, advertisers have shunned the platform. Fund managers like Fidelity have been forced to slash drastically the estimated value of their investment in X.
As such, Musk has been using his own personal account, the most-followed on X, to drive engagement with an almost continuous stream of doom porn that appeals to his newfound antiestablishment users.
Recently he predicted America is headed for bankruptcy, saying it’s in danger of becoming the next Venezuela if Trump is not elected. He also claimed the U.S. dollar is on the verge of Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation.
Spreading deepfakes and misinformation
When it comes to distributing information as events occur in real time, X is still the leading digital platform. It received praise from users for its blinding speed covering the Yevgeny Prigozhin coup attempt in June 2023. But its scattershot attempt to leave the policing of content to a select group of crowdsourced superusers has yielded at best mixed results.
The problem is someone like Musk both owns the platform and decides on its core policies, including the recommendation algorithm. He is, moreover, spreading AI deepfakes and disinformation to his massive following of 193 million followers himself in order to peel eyeballs away from other media outlets and direct them to his platform.
The EU is watching Musk and X closely. It has launched infringement proceedings into X, TikTok, and Facebook owner Meta for failing to comply with parts of the Digital Services Act.
A European Commission spokesperson told Fortune it does not comment on individual tweets or accounts, but that it was prepared to take action in the EU “in case of a serious threat to public safety and security stemming from an online platform’s services.”
“It allows the Commission to request actions from platforms and be more transparent about the measures they are taking to mitigate any contribution to the threat.”
“X has now the right of defense,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said last month, “but if our view is confirmed, we will impose fines and require significant changes.”
