Elon Musk Trolls Britain and Defends Tommy Robinson in Flurry of Social Media Posts

He called for the release of a convicted criminal and a torturer fighting for the right to eat the bones of the brain. He lied to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, about failing to pursue child rapists during the main public prosecution. He endorsed a position calling on King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and call an election to remove the seven-month-old British government, which is constitutionally impossible.

Elon Musk has once again set his sights on Britain, putting the country in the bull’s-eye in the no-nonsense world of his internet obsession. Among the positions that started before the new year, Mr. Musk moved from his zealous expansion of a far-right party in Germany to focus on Britain in a number of politically sensitive areas.

After not paying much attention to Mr. Musk, for months, the British government on Friday withdrew, albeit in a dignified way.

“Elon Musk is an American citizen and maybe he should focus on the issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” said the government’s health minister, Andrew Gwynne, in an interview with LBC radio. The manager of Mr. Gwynne, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, told reporters, “Some of the criticisms of Elon Musk, I think are misjudged and untrue.”

Britain is one of several European countries where Mr. Musk trying to emulate the impact he had on behalf of President-elect Donald J. Trump in the US election last year. Outside of Germany, where his advocacy of a far-right party with neo-Nazi ties, Alternative for Germany, has shaken up the country’s politics ahead of elections next month, Mr. Musk has strengthened his close relationship with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgio. Meloni.

In Britain, the opposition of Mr. Officials said false and inflammatory statements helped fuel the anti-immigrant riots that followed the killing of three girls in a mass stabbing in the town of Southport last July. They arrested more than 30 people, which made Mr. Musk criticized the government for what he called an attack on free speech that he praised on his platform, X.

Britain, he said, is “turning into a police state.”

Since then, however, Mr. Musk has been embroiled in other heated issues, from announcing his support for the anti-immigration group Reform UK to sparking outrage over the government’s response to a 10-year-old child molestation case in a northern city. in Rotherham. An estimated 1,400 girls are being exploited by “gangs” made up mainly of British men from Pakistan.

Perhaps most annoyingly, Mr. Musk has taken up the cause of Tommy Robinson, an anti-immigrant campaigner whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He has been jailed since October after being convicted of contempt of court for making false allegations against a young Syrian refugee who successfully sued him for defamation.

Mr. Robinson has been arrested for assault, housing fraud and traveling on a false passport to the United States, where he sought to establish ties with far-right groups.

“Free Tommy Robinson!” Mr. Musk posted on Jan. 2 as his pin on his X account, which has 210 million followers.

The victory of Mr. Musk to Mr. Robinson put some of Britain’s allies at a disadvantage. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK and very close to Mr. Trump, has long avoided Mr. Robinson, who founded the English Defense League, an Islamophobic, nationalist group known for its violent street protests in the late 2000s and 2010s.

Mr. Farage, who has enjoyed the approval of Mr. Musk also courted her in the hope of winning a donation from Reform UK, emphasizing his demands for a reinvestigation into the child sex abuse scandal. But he has been conspicuously silent about Mr Robinson.

As in Germany, where the promotion of Mr. Musk’s far-right AfD party sparked widespread disagreements with him, Mr. Musk has won a few fans in Britain. But analysts say his closeness to, and influence on, Mr. Trump said that his views, raised by his social media, will not be ignored by the government.

“His message doesn’t work in Britain and Germany, yet governments are strained by their relationship with Trump,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a London-based think tank. “It will be difficult enough to have a relationship with Trump. What Musk is doing is putting this non-government official in the center of the court.”

Mr. Katwala said it is reasonable for the government to respond to the statements of Mr. Musk is extreme or wrong, if only because his unpopularity makes him an inviting target for some critics. “They left an open goal by saying nothing,” he said.

On the other hand, British officials say they hope that after the inauguration of Mr. But for now, his online reach is broad enough to “affect the political climate,” Mr. Katwala, talking about the scandal of child sexual abuse as an example.

The posts of Mr. Musk helped clear the storm in a case that had been discussing domestic and national questions since 2014. After being one of the ministers of Mr. it was a local council issue – the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, followed Mr. Farage in criticizing the government. “No one in power has joined the dots,” he wrote in X on Jan. 2.

On Friday, Mr. Musk said Ms. Phillips, who is the undersecretary for defense and violence against women and girls and a longtime women’s rights campaigner, was a “rape apologist” — language that women’s rights advocates say jeopardizes Ms. Phillips’ safety. He has tried to throw this scandal at Mr. Starmer, who was in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013, when the abuse first came to light.

Although several men were arrested, the investigation found that the police and prosecutors were slow to respond to the allegations, because the victims were reluctant to come forward and because of concerns about racism, as most of the suspects were British Pakistanis. .

“Starmer was complicit in the rape of BRITAIN during the main Crown Prosecution for 6 years,” said Mr. Musk in a post uploaded to his account early Friday. “Starmer must go and must face the charge of complicity in the worst crime in British history.”

In fact, in 2013, after the scandal, Mr Starmer published new guidelines on how the Crown Prosecution Service should deal with child sexual abuse cases.

Having won the majority of the Parliament in July, Mr. Starmer is in no danger of losing his job. But the drumbeat of disinformation and criticism of Mr. Musk, combined with hopes that he will give money to Reform UK, has alarmed people in Britain’s political establishment. Members of Parliament have asked the government to strengthen the laws that prevent foreigners from donating to political parties in Britain.

The support of Mr. Musk’s position asking Charles to step in and call an election shows his ignorance of how Britain works. Under the terms of his constitutional monarchy, the king can dissolve Parliament, but only at the request of the prime minister, who decides when to call an election.

“He is a 21st century Kane citizen,” said Mr. Katwala about Mr. Musk. “You have a picture of Britain, a picture of Germany, and you look at the information that confirms those pictures. The problem he has with sending it to Britain or Germany is the lack of knowledge about Britain or Germany.”