How Musk, white supremacists are fuelling anti-Muslim hatred in the UK

Violent protesters in the United Kingdom are garnering sympathy from some prominent people, including tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk has been actively engaging on X this week about the riots. He replied to one post blaming "mass migration and open borders" for the violence, saying "civil war is inevitable."

He then shared a video of a man allegedly being arrested for making offensive comments on Facebook, asking, "Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?" Responding to another post that suggested Muslims in Britain are given special protections to commit crimes, Musk said that the British police's response to the riots “does seem one-sided".

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's spokesperson condemned Musk's insinuations that the law is "two-tier," saying there was "no justification for comments like that" and "anyone who is whipping up violence online will face the full force of the law".

In response, Musk tagged Starmer in a video showing Muslim counter-protesters surrounding a pub in Birmingham, asking, "Why aren't all communities protected in Britain?"

Stoking divisions

Musk's comments appear to be resonating with some sections of white-majority populations, whose discontent is most visible online.

"There are fundamental ideas that drive most white supremacists, one of the most motivating is the idea that they are being literally replaced (by minority populations) in what they consider their own home countries, and that idea has motivated a lot of the terrorist incidents," said Heidi Beirich, cofounder of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, speaking in an online discussion organised by Brookings Institution in 2022.

"(What is) really driving all of this is the fear of demographic change on the part of these [minority] groups… American history, European history, this idea that white people should rule, that white supremacy should be the way things are, and all of these groups, because of this demographic change, feel that this is slipping away. That's what they are responding to," she added.

Despite seeming like a recent development, these anxieties are an extension of much older racist theories, but have once again gained prominence due to the likes of Musk and British far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson.

While they might deny outright accusations of being "racist" or "white supremacist," they continue to promote racist tropes, stoke paranoia about Muslims and other minorities, and promote misinformation and disinformation online.

For instance, just one month before the riots in the UK, Robinson was invited on Canadian psychologist-turned-self help guru Jordan Peterson's YouTube show to openly air his anti-Muslim views.

His hosts did not push back or question his assertion of facts, as mainstream journalists might feel compelled to do. Rather, Peterson and his wife nodded along understandably, agreeing with many of his statements.

Robinson and others have used the internet and lack of restrictions on social media sites to promote harmful narratives. Or in Musk's case, buy them and set the rules of the game. When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, now rebranded as X, he said it was because he felt it was "important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner without resorting to violence."

Instead, accusations of him turning X into "a haven for Nazis" continue to follow him.

"Musk's apparent embrace of the white supremacist community has already led to a rise in hate speech on the platform…In far-right forums, extremists of all stripes are salivating at the prospect of being able to share their hateful ideologies on a platform with much greater reach when Musk reinstates accounts that were banned for spreading hate speech,” wrote Vice reporter David Gilbert in 2022, soon after the acquisition.

Accountability concerns

Amid the violence in the UK, Starmer's spokesperson called on social media companies to do more to contain misinformation, which is being blamed for nationwide riots.

UK Justice Minister Heidi Alexander also condemned Musk's recent comments on the riots as "deplorable," saying social media companies have a "moral responsibility" to counter hateful rhetoric and misinformation.

Meanwhile, the BBC's disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring found that X, in particular, has become a platform where false information "spreads like wildfire," and helped fuel the recent riots.

The violence began when a teen attacked a children's dance class last week with a knife, killing three and injuring eight.

The suspect was born and raised in Britain, but people online began circulating rumours that he was an undocumented immigrant.

According to Spring, these posts "were actively promoted to users and racked up millions of views… Just as with the Sydney attacks and the attempted shooting of Mr. Trump, X was the focal point for untrue claims before they spilled onto other sites…The target is Muslims. While other communities are being attacked, the target is primarily Muslims," she wrote.

Spring also noted that tragic events can be used for clout by users looking to monetise their posts. This has been noticed since X changed its policy and allowed paid blue-tick users to earn ad revenue from their content.

"Their posts are more likely to be recommended on people's feeds, and they may be incentivised to post more controversial or sensational content to boost their views. This all seems to have had an effect on how attacks such as Southport are discussed in the hours and days after they have happened, since these kinds of frenzies are becoming more frequent and intense since the changes to X."

X has not responded to Spring's findings.