The Musk effect

What happens when the richest man in the history of the world obtains virtually unfettered control over a communications platform whose power matches his historic wealth? Well, look no further than how Elon Musk, the richest man ever and owner of X (formerly Twitter), has almost singlehandedly reframed cases of child sexual abuse that are at least a decade old in the UK into something that is/might still be happening, inflating the number of victims involved, accused British politicians and police of being involved in some ‘cover-up’, got the UK’s Conservative Party to join the bandwagon and force vote on the matter in parliament. The collateral damage: untold levels of hatred and bigotry being spread against mostly Muslim immigrant groups in the UK, particularly British Pakistanis. There were indeed multiple organised grooming gangs that engaged in the sexual abuse of underage children across some towns in the UK. The cases that have gotten the most attention, such as those in Rotherham and Rochdale, appear to involve predominantly British-Pakistani men. However, a national inquiry that focused on the scandal reportedly found that most perpetrators of child sexual abuse were young white men.

None of this seems to matter to Musk and his acolytes, and he has millions of the latter across the world. So when he falsely claims that “a quarter-million little girls were – still are – being systematically raped by migrant gangs in Britain” and retweets accusations about “politicians covering up rape gangs”, the lies get the kind of reach that even the most famous politicians could only dream of. Enough reach, it would appear, to get the leader of the UK Conservative Party Kemi Badenoch to force a vote on a new inquiry into the gangs based on allegations of some hypothetical ‘cover-up’. Mercifully, that vote failed on Thursday (January 9). Professor Alexis Jay, the chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, has said that there have been more than enough inquiries and discussions and has called for the UK government to actually implement the recommendations she made in 2022 to stop such abuse from happening again. Interestingly, the UK’s last Conservative government reportedly did not enforce any of Jay’s recommendations. Badenoch was a cabinet minister in this government but failed to do anything about the supposed ‘cover-up’ when she had the power to. This is clearly an irresponsible and cynical political ploy that risks endangering the lives of innocent Muslims while doing nothing to help victims and make Britain safer.

Musk is not a man known for his maturity and the world has been a witness to his juvenile posts. His entire involvement in politics, including his support for Trump, has an air of mischief about it and one could be forgiven for thinking this is an over-wealthy immature man playing games without caring about who it hurts. Others have speculated that his actions could be linked to the UK’s push for tougher online safety laws, something which would undoubtedly affect X, which has become a haven for misinformation and other dangerous content under Musk. In fact, Musk himself has personally played a leading role in X’s dark turn, of which his false claims about the UK are only the latest addition. None of this should mean giving up on the platform itself or on a free social media sphere. But it does show that a freer and more responsible digital realm is impossible with uber-capitalists like Musk at the helm. This is looking more and more like one man’s personal kingdom. Musk is ‘exhibit A’ for everything that is wrong with the current internet.