Elon Musk’s curious fixation with Britain | EUROtoday

In 2012, Elon Musk had simply accomplished a enterprise journey to London and Oxford. “Just returned… I met with many interesting people,” he wrote on Twitter. “I really like Britain!”

Fast-forward to 2024, and Musk’s views on Britain are somewhat completely different.

“Civil war is inevitable” … “Britain is going full Stalin”… “The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state”.

These are simply a few of his current feedback on X, as he renamed the location after he purchased it.

He has repeatedly received into spats with politicians together with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, he has amplified voices on the best and far-right on-line and is in talks to donate to Reform UK, in line with the occasion’s chief Nigel Farage.

So why has Musk’s relationship with America’s closest ally apparently soured and what, if something, does he hope to realize?

We would like to ask him ourselves however he did not reply to our requests for an interview.

His X timeline gives some clues although.

The self-proclaimed “Chief Troll Officer” usually exaggerates in an ambiguous means, unclear if he is being honest or ironic.

When he writes, “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?” he would not actually imply that Britain is a totalitarian Communist state but in addition, he kind of does. Often he reposts content material with only a single phrase – “interesting” – or an emoji, somewhat than going into particulars.

In current years, nonetheless, Musk watchers have seen that the sorts of issues he boosts to his 200 million followers have a tendency to return from a specific place: a world view that’s libertarian and “anti-woke”towards progressives and centrists.

The shift was express throughout final summer season’s riots following the horrific killing of three ladies at a dance class within the north-west England city of Southport.

False rumours in regards to the attacker had been circulated on X, together with by far-right accounts which had been unbanned since Musk took over the corporate two years earlier than.

As a protest turned violent and rioting flared, Sir Keir issued a warning: “To large social media companies, and those who run them – violent disorder, clearly whipped up online, that is also a crime.

“It’s taking place in your premises, and the legislation have to be upheld all over the place.”

Musk replied with one phrase: “Insane”.

Later, he would state that “civil conflict is inevitable” and spread a false message from the leader of a far-right party, claiming that Sir Keir was considering building detainment camps for rioters on the Falkland Islands. By the time he deleted the post, it had been viewed more than a million times.

Musk also criticised Britain’s “jail overcrowding state of affairs” on Joe Rogan’s podcast – watched 19m times on YouTube – saying we should “make Orwell fiction once more”, a reference to George Orwell’s writings about dystopian society.

While free speech is not Musk’s only big issue – he appears to care a lot about existential questions around the future of humanity too – it’s a subject that the Tesla, SpaceX and X owner has repeatedly returned to.

Just a few weeks ago, in response to a tweet from a right-wing American influencer, making an exaggerated claim about a report from the last government on radicalisation, he commented: “What is occurring within the UK?”

And he may be planning to do more than tweet. He was recently pictured with Farage and Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy, amid reports he is preparing to donate a large sum of money to the party.

Musk’s interest in UK affairs could be a reflection of how his own political beliefs have changed. He previously described himself as a centrist and even donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but now he talks a lot about the “woke thoughts virus”.

According to interviews he’s given and a recent biography, the transition of one of his children from male to female – and that child, Vivian Wilson, subsequently cutting him off from her life – appears to be one of the key turning points.

Winston Marshall, a former Mumford & Sons guitarist turned podcast host and right-leaning political commentator whose father jointly owns TV channel GB News, speculates that Musk could be picking fights because “he cares very deeply in regards to the UK”.

“Britain is the birthplace of liberal democracy, of most of the nice philosophies that underpin America,” Marshall says.

“So then he seems to be over to the UK and he sees what’s been happening for a number of years, however which is now crescendoing after the August riots, with many, many individuals being given lengthy jail sentences for actually Facebook memes in some circumstances.”

“Facebook memes” sounds pretty harmless but these examples include – for instance – a three-month jail sentence for a person who posted a meme along with the caption “let’s [expletive] riot” on a Facebook group with “riot/protest” in the name during the Southport disorder.

Some question whether the tycoon is really as committed to free speech as he claims.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which scrutinises social media companies, was critical of Musk’s tenure at X – prompting the tycoon to sue, accusing the organisation of misusing data and scaring off advertisers. The case was thrown out by a US judge.

Its CEO Imran Ahmed called the incident “indicative of the mindset of a person who merely can not perceive that freedom of speech is a freedom afforded to all, not simply to him”.

Other critics have pointed out that Musk has been careful not to criticise the president of China, a country where Tesla has huge business interests, despite Beijing’s well-documented culture of censorship.

He has far less at stake, business-wise, in Britain, but the country could still affect his bottom line via the Online Safety Act, passed by Parliament in late 2023. It will allow regulator Ofcom to issue huge fines to social media companies if they’re found to have certain types of illegal content on their platforms.

Andrew Chadwick, professor of political communication at Loughborough University, explains that while some provisions in the bill are uncontroversial, “the place it will get a bit extra difficult is the place this unlawful content material blurs throughout into what we would name the sorts of disinformation or misinformation that we see flow into every day on social media platforms”.

This might embrace “racially or religiously aggravated public order offences or the incitement of violence,” he says.

The Act comes with some potentially huge punishments – a fine of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.

Could it be that Musk is worried about Britain biting off a chunk of X’s revenues – or even, as the Act allows for in some circumstances, blocking access to the site in the UK?

Defenders of the Act argue that it’s got nothing to do with censoring free speech. Gawain Towler, former head of press for Reform UK, says while Musk might not have “a forensic data of all the main points of backbench committee” he does “see the larger image” – what Reform activists and others describe as a creeping culture of censorship.

“You haven’t got to pay attention at all times on the timber. And I feel Musk sees the forest fairly, fairly effectively,” he adds.

Nobody can read the mind of the world’s richest man.

But it’s clear that Musk has funnelled his vast wealth into influence and is now exporting his values – including a mainstream American view of free speech and largely unfettered capitalism – around the world.

And one factor’s for certain – he is not but performed with the UK.