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Billionaire social media boss Elon Musk has launched another attack on the British authorities attempting to tackle far-right hate riots in the UK.
The owner of Twitter/X posted “woke stasi” this morning in response to the director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson promising to prosecute people who post or report material that incites racial hatred on social media platforms.
Mr Musk also retweeted a post by the co-leader of the far-right Britain First party Ashlea Simon with the comments “detainment camps”. Ms Simon had tweeted an image of a fake story about Sir Keir Starmer considering building emergency detainment camps in the Falkland Islands with the claim “we’re all being deported to the Falklands”.
The image had been made to look as though the story was published by the Telegraph, but that publication issued a statement saying: “No such article has ever been published by the Telegraph.“
Politics UK editor Josh Self claimed that Mr Musk’s tweet, since deleted, was seen by “almost 1 million people in 15 minutes”. He called it “utterly dystopian”.
The latest furore comes as former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak, who rolled out the red carpet for Mr Musk last year, has been photographed on holiday with his wife Akshata Murty outside an expensive restaurant in California, where the cost of a mushroom pizza is $32.
The leader of the opposition has been almost completely quiet during the riots leaving the responses to shadow home secretary and leadership contender James Cleverly.
But in November last year Sunak rolled out the red carpet for Musk as the star turn at his international conference on artificial intelligence.
Requests for comments from Mr Sunak on Musk’s recent attacks on the UK suggesting civil war is “inevitable” and criticising prime minister Sir Keir Starmer have been ignored by his spokesman.
Mr Musk’s latest blast was in response to policing of his site and other social media platforms.
Mr Parkinson explained: “The offence for incitement of racial hatred involves publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive, which is intended to or likely to stir up racial hatred.”
Later in the morning Musk, tweeted the article again with the message: “This is actually happening.”
He had already retweeted the post of the co-leader of the far-right Britain First group.
Musk also went after The Guardian over an article on “how the myth of two tier became widespread”.
The Guardian tweet had community notes attached arguing that The Guardian had been complaining about two-tier policing based on race and sex “for decades”, even though this referred to historic racism and homophobia within the police. Musk messaged: “Chef’s kiss”.
Earlier this week, Mr Musk had launched a barrage of attacks on Sir Keir and the UK government.
In one he asked why communities were not being protected, with an image of Muslim protesters.
In another he used the term “two-tier Keir”, a phrase used by far-right activists to suggest that the prime minister is treating different groups differently in terms of law and order. It’s based on false claims that Muslim groups were allowed to be violent while white working class ones were not.
Government justice minister Heidi Alexander branded Mr Musk “irresponsible”. However, Sir Keir has refused to comment on the social media boss or even mention his name when pressed about his tweets.
