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Labour accused of ignoring Elon Musk’s ‘demand’ for civil war

Elon Musk has once again suggested civil war is imminent in the UK. Given that Musk is a social media baron who has the power to control the flow of information, some have accused him of abusing his position to push a political narrative. Others have accused Musk of ‘demanding’ a civil war.

Regardless of your stance, it certainly seems like the sort of thing a government should be taking notice of.

And yet:


Laughable from Labour on Elon Musk

If I was the prime minister and someone contacted me to say ‘that social media kingpin is pushing for a civil war again‘, I’d respond in one of two ways:

  1. Looking into the claim and then presenting a response to it.
  2. Simply keeping quiet.

Labour have chosen a third option, in which all they’ve achieved is highlighting how useless they are. Of course, they have done this before.

For clarity, here’s the offending tweet from Elon Musk:


As people have noted, you could certainly say this is more of a ‘prediction’ than a ‘demand’. There are issues which need addressing, though.

Firstly, Musk’s position as the king of X/Twitter allows him to amplify certain voices and narratives:

When you factor in his support and promotion of the British far right, it starts to look less like Musk is predicting a civil war and more like he’s attempting to shape one.

While Musk has claimed to be a ‘free speech absolutist’, he’s frequently shown himself to be anything but. As Gaby Del Valle wrote for The Verge, Musk has worked with governments to repress free speech on X. Musk has also made frequent use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) to silence the employees / mothers of his children who may one day wish to speak out against him. It’s additionally reported that Tesla tried to use these dubiously legal agreements to muzzle their own customers.

Musk has ensured that all manner of racism is now permissible on X, with Germany having sued the platform in 2023 for failing to “moderate antisemitic content and Holocaust denial”.

While we understand that Ben Shapiro is a loathsome figure who has publicly backed antisemites because they support Israel, we don’t think his comments should look like this; we don’t think anyone’s comments should look like this:


He’s got game

Elon Musk has been talking about civil wars for some time now:


People had a lot to say about Musk’s latest intervention and the Labour government’s failure to respond:


Meanwhile, an American writes:


To be fair, it’s not confirmed that Musk is abusing narcotics; it’s merely heavily suspected (and credibly reported):

Inactivism

As people have highlighted, Labour have been very quick to jump on comments made by relatively powerless people. This gives the game away, doesn’t it?

If you have money, you can get away with whatever you like in modern Britain – like Elon Musk is.

The real ‘war’ is between the people who see this and the people maintaining the status quo.

Featured image via Number 10 (Flickr) / James Duncan

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.