Tommy Robinson, who has been accused of stoking the anti-immigration riots, owes his huge platform to Elon Musk.
As violent riots spread across the UK last week, Tommy Robinson made an appearance on the Alex Jones Show from a luxury resort in Cyprus. The far-right agitator was ebullient – and made a point of thanking Elon Musk for giving a “voice for the truth”.
So what? Robinson, who has been accused of stoking the anti-immigration riots, owes his huge platform to Musk. The billionaire owner of X rescued Robinson from the digital wilderness by restoring his account last November. In the past few days Musk has:
- responded to a post by Robinson criticising Keir Starmer’s response to the widespread disorder – amplifying it to Musk’s 193 million followers;
- questioned Robinson’s recent arrest under anti-terror laws, asking what he did that was “considered terrorism”; and
- allowed Robinson’s banned documentary, which repeats false claims about a Syrian refugee against a UK high court order, to rack up over 33 million views on X.
It was the screening of this documentary at a demonstration in London last month that prompted Robinson’s arrest under counter-terrorism powers. Robinson left the UK the day before he was due in court, and is currently believed to be staying at a five-star hotel in Ayia Napa. He is due in court for a full contempt hearing in October.
None of this has stopped Robinson incessantly tweeting about the riots, where far-right groups have regularly chanted his name. He has:
- falsely claimed that people were stabbed by Muslims in Stoke-on-Trent and Stirling;
- called for mass deportations, shared demonstration posters, and described violent protests in Southport as “justified”; and
- shared a video that speculated that the suspect in the Southport stabbings was Muslim, a widespread piece of disinformation that helped trigger the riots across the country.
Making the weather. The far-right activist has nearly 900,000 followers on X, but reaches a much larger number of people. Tortoise calculated that Robinson’s 268 posts over the weekend had been seen over 160 million times by late Monday afternoon.
Analytics published by Robinson last week showed that his posts had been viewed 1.2 billion times in the three months to August, with 4.5 million people visiting his profile. Every data point indicates that Robinson’s platform on X has massively grown over the past six months.
Robinson has called Musk “the best thing to happen for free speech this century”. He’s perhaps not the only person to feel this way. The far-right activist is part of a wider constellation of agitators, right-wing media commentators, online influencers and self-styled news aggregators who have used X to foment unrest in recent days.
“It’s like a school of fish,” said Joseph Mulhall, director of research at the advocacy group Hope Not Hate. “People like Tommy Robinson are the weathermakers.”
Absolute state. Mulhall described a decentralised “post-organisational network” of accounts consuming, creating and engaging with far-right content. These accounts include Musk, who has called himself a free-speech absolutist.
On Sunday Musk, who lives 5,000 miles from the streets of Middlesbrough and Rotherham, responded to a tweet that blamed what was happening in the UK on its diversity. He wrote that “if incompatible cultures are brought together without assimilation, conflict is inevitable”. Later he replied to a video of riots in Liverpool: “Civil war is inevitable”.
A spokesperson for Starmer said there was “no justification” for Musk’s comments, and that the “organised violent thuggery” happening in the UK has no place on the streets or online.
The role of X and its owner in stirring up the riots will put to test the UK’s online safety bill, which is designed to hold social media companies to account.
“Elon Musk needs to be called into parliament,” said Mulhall. “Twitter should be facing extraordinary scrutiny, both legal and financial. Musk as an individual and the platform that he’s curating is having a disastrous effect on our streets and in our communities.”
What’s more. Yesterday afternoon Musk responded directly to a social media post from Starmer, questioning the prime minister’s pledge to protect mosques. Robinson continued to post about the riots from his sunbed. Neither is behaving as if they have much to fear.
