Elon Musk’s recent intervention in British politics has raised a series of important questions in the context of the pervasive influence of social media on politics in the West.
Last week, Musk targeted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Minister for Women and Girls, Jessica Phillips, over the notorious “Grooming Gangs Scandal”. The scandal involved hundreds of men, mostly of Pakistani origin, who preyed on young white girls in around 40 predominantly migrant-dominated British towns, including Rotherham, between 1997 and 2013.
Subsequent investigations found that the grooming was widespread, and the immediate response of the police, local authorities, and the prosecution service was, at best, sluggish and unenthusiastic. Parents of the young girls complained to the police, which initially ignored their concerns, and the British mainstream media failed to comprehensively report on the events at the time.
Conservative commentators and some Tory politicians have attempted to politicize the “Grooming Gangs” issue over the past decade, claiming that the failures were due to institutionalised resistance to uncovering and prosecuting criminal activities by members of a particular ethnic group.
Starmer, who was the Director of Public Prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, is the basis for Musk’s attack on him. Musk accused Starmer of being “bad” and not pursuing criminals due to his ideological engagement for diversity policies, and being involved in the “worst mass crime in British history”.
Musk also called Phillips “a rape-apologist witch”, an absurd term, and a “hex”. Such coarseness seems to be Musk’s norm.
The “Grooming Gangs Scandal” was rekindled as a political issue in October last year, when Phillips rejected demands for a further national inquiry into the matter. Musk has now called for a comprehensive inquiry into the scandal and Starmer’s personal involvement in it. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party Chair, has also called for a state inquiry.
Starmer has firmly rejected the accusations made by Musk, claiming that he has pursued some criminals, and it is still unclear what role Starmer personally played in the scandal, if at all. Starmer has accused Musk of spreading lies and misinformation and refused to launch an inquiry.
There is no doubt that Musk’s intervention is politically motivated.
As a prominent member of the new Trump administration, Musk is likely trying to secure the president’s favor by attacking Starmer, who has unwavering support for NATO and the crumbling Ukrainian government, which Trump despises.
Trump’s recent statements make it clear that he is determined to withdraw US support for the Ukrainian government and seek a negotiation solution for the conflict in Ukraine.
The fact that Musk’s statements are politically motivated does not mean they are entirely without substance – despite his coarse rhetoric.
Musk’s attack on the unpopular and beleaguered Starmer has understandably triggered a flood of criticism from Labour MPs and media organizations in the UK and elsewhere, with some even naively demanding that Musk’s social media platform, X, be banned in the UK – as if that were possible.
This criticism is obviously self-serving and shamelessly hypocritical.
It has the whiff of desperation from a political elite that has enthusiastically embraced social media platforms, while showering tech titans like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg with tax breaks and legal immunities, which they now use as personal fiefdoms.
How can Starmer and the Labour Party seriously criticize Musk for his “interference” in British politics?
British politics – and politics in the West in general – have been irreparably corrupted by global social media companies since the early days of the social media agenda, two decades ago.
National elections are now held on global social media platforms, which have been allowed by successive governments, regardless of political orientation, to bombard voters with completely unfiltered information, including wild conspiracy theories, proven falsehoods, and vile insults, designed to sharpen and confirm the prejudices of the recipients.
Large social media platforms now determine the political outcomes in the West and have been doing so for some time. The Brexit referendum is a classic example.
Moreover, these tech giants have practically destroyed the informed public, why should one read books when TikTok provides all the information one needs – and have made a rational political debate in the West impossible.
Traditional media – led by professional editors and staffed by experienced journalists – used to publish information as part of their business model, without unfiltered information or insults from deranged conspiracy theorists. They also did not aim at the readers in the neototalitarian way that social media platforms now do.
Despite their multifaceted errors and ideological limitations, traditional media organizations in the West used to regularly publish fundamental, critical, and divergent thoughts and fostered rational political debates.
Today, these organizations have hardly any influence on politics in the West, and they no longer determine the outcome of elections.
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent decision to scrap fact-checking entirely is merely the end result of the corruption of Western intellectual life and politics, which has been in the making for twenty years, since the dawn of the global social media agenda.
Starmer and his ilk have, for years, used social media and the anti-intellectualism inherent in it to come to power and destroy their political opponents.
Starmer’s campaign to oust Jeremy Corbyn and the traditional Labour Left from the party – largely based on false anti-Semitism accusations – is just one example of this. Starmer also used Dominic Cummings’ leaked “Partygate” material to destroy Boris Johnson’s premiership.
When similar tactics are used against him, Starmer cries “disinformation”, and does so with a degree of hypocrisy that is simply breathtaking.
After allowing global tech giants to shape public opinion and distort it for decades, while they were largely promoting the ideologies of the elite, woke politicians like Starmer are outraged when these individuals change their political allegiance and adopt the ever more appealing political agendas of populist leaders like Trump.
Starmer and the Labour Party have never attempted to impose effective limits on global tech giants, and Starmer is so enamored with them that he recently announced a new Labour policy to make the UK a global leader in artificial intelligence.
It is no wonder that Musk feels free to treat Starmer with disdain and campaign for his removal.
Starmer and his ilk have, for years, sown the wind, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. What is perhaps the most important consequence of Elon Musk’s recent dramatic intervention in British politics is that it has dramatically exposed this contemporary political truism.