Why is Musk pushing for a civil war?

Musk is an yet another far-right agitator-in-chief


Elon Musk says ‘civil war is inevitable’ as UK rocked by far-right riots. He’s part of the problem | CNN Business

LondonCNN —
Social media has played a big role in fueling the anti-immigration riots engulfing towns and cities in the United Kingdom.

And agitator-in-chief Elon Musk is not sitting on the sidelines.

The Tesla chief executive and owner of X posted to the platform Sunday that “civil war is inevitable” in response to a post blaming the violent demonstrations on the effects of “mass migration and open borders.”


On Monday, a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed Musk’s comment, telling reporters “there’s no justification for that.”

But Musk is digging his heels in. On Tuesday, he labeled Starmer #TwoTierKier in an apparent reference to a debunked claim spread by conspiracy theorists and populist politicians such as Nigel Farage that “two-tier policing” means right-wing protests are dealt with more forcefully than those organized by the left. He also likened Britain to the Soviet Union for attempting to restrict offensive speech on social media.

Musk’s decision to amplify the anti-immigrant rhetoric highlights the role that false information spread online is playing in fomenting real-world violence — an issue of growing concern to the UK government, which vowed Tuesday to bring those responsible for the riots, as well as their online cheerleaders, to justice.

Later on Tuesday, a 28-year-old man in Leeds, northern England, became the first person to be charged with using “threatening words or behavior intending to stir up racial hatred” online, according to the UK Crown Prosecution Service. The charges related to “alleged Facebook posts,” Nick Price, the director of legal services at the CPS, said in a statement.

In recent days, rioters have damaged public buildings, set cars on fire and hurled bricks at police officers. They also set ablaze two Holiday Inn hotels in northern and central England believed to be housing asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their claims. Hundreds have been arrested.

The riots broke out last week after far-right groups claimed on social media that the person charged with carrying out a horrific stabbing attack that left three children dead was a Muslim asylum seeker. The online disinformation campaign stoked outrage directed at immigrants.

The suspect, who has since been named as 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, was born in the UK, according to police.

But false claims about the attack — Britain’s worst mass stabbing targeting children in decades and possibly ever — spread rapidly online and continued garnering views even after the police had set the record straight.

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank, by mid-afternoon on July 30, the day after the attack, a false name circulated online for the alleged asylum seeker had received more than 30,000 mentions on X alone from more than 18,000 unique accounts.

“The false name attributed to the attacker was circulated organically but also recommended to users by platform algorithms,” the ISD said in a statement.

“Platforms therefore amplified misinformation to users who may not otherwise have been exposed, even after the police had confirmed the name was false.”

According to the UK government, bots, which it said could be linked to state-backed actors, may well have amplified the spread of false information.

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https://www.politics.co.uk/news/202...preading-fake-news-about-uk-detainment-camps/

Elon Musk deletes post spreading fake news about UK ‘detainment camps’
Elon Musk has deleted a post on X, the social media platform he owns, in which he spread fake news about “detainment camps” being established in the Falkland Islands.

A fake article, mocked up to mimic The Daily Telegraph newspaper’s style, had been shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the co-leader of Britain First, a far-right political party.

The headline of the fake article read: “Keir Starmer considering building ’emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands”.

The byline added: “The camps would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity”.

At around 10.00am UK time, Elon Musk quoted the original post with the statement: “‘Detainment Camps’ …”.

Musk deleted the post after around 35 minutes, which had by then accumulated over 1.8 million views.

In recent days, Musk has repeatedly clashed with prime minister Keir Starmer amid far-right rioting in the UK.

Violence spread onto Britain’s streets after the suspect accused of killing three young girls in Southport was falsely identified online as an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK via small boat.

In a slew of tweets aimed at Starmer over the past week, Musk has questioned whether the riots were taking place in Britain or the Soviet Union and even claimed that “civil war is inevitable”.

This latter remark prompted an explicit rebuke from Downing Street.

“There’s no justification for comments like that”, Starmer’s official spokesperson responded at the time. “What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online.”

They added: “We’re talking about a minority of thugs that do not speak for Britain, and in response to it, we’ve seen some of the best of our communities coming out and cleaning up the mess [and] the disruption of those that don’t speak for our country.

“And we’ve seen the response for people that do speak for our country. I think you can tell from that that the prime minister does not share those sentiments.”