Elon Musk attends the session ‘Exploring the New Frontiers of Innovation: Mark Read in Conversation with Elon Musk’ during the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity 2024 – Day Three on June 19, 2024 in Cannes, France.
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LONDON — The U.K. government has hit back at Elon Musk after the billionaire made controversial comments about riots — fueled by far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment — taking place across the country.
Some cities – including Liverpool and Manchester – saw violent unrest in the streets last week, with far-right groups clashing with police and rival protesters.
On Sunday, Musk responded to a post about the unrest on X, the social media platform he owns, declaring: “Civil war is inevitable.”
His remark was subsequently met with condemnation by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Asked by a reporter on Monday whether Starmer agreed with Musk’s tweet, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “There is no justification for such comments.”
“What we have seen in this country is organized illegal thugs who have no place on our streets or on the internet,” Starmer’s official spokesman said.
“We’re talking about a minority of thugs who don’t speak for Britain and in response we’ve seen some of the best from our communities come out to clean up the mess and disruption,” the spokesman added. “You can tell the prime minister doesn’t share those sentiments.”
Heidi Alexander, the UK’s justice minister, said in response to Musk’s comments on Tuesday that anyone with a social media platform should “behave responsibly” with that platform, adding that language linking the riots to civil war is “totally unjustified”.
Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology minister, held talks with social media companies about sharing misinformation in relation to the riots. The unrest in Britain, which initially began as anti-immigration protests, has been overtaken by violent unrest fueled by online misinformation, with shops and mosques attacked and bricks and petrol bombs thrown.
“I think social media companies should be doing more,” Alexander told Sky News on Tuesday. “They have a moral responsibility not to propagate and spread misleading and inflammatory content on their platforms.”
Last year, the UK passed the Safer Internet Act, a landmark law that seeks to strengthen enforcement of illegal and harmful content on the Internet.
However, Ofcom, the regulator tasked with enforcing the law, is unable to take action against social media companies for harmful posts that incite the ongoing unrest, as not all powers from the law.
Ofcom said it is moving quickly to implement the law so it can be implemented as soon as possible.
Musk, who is also CEO of the EV company Teslawas still commenting on the riots in the UK as of Tuesday. In a post, Musk reposted a video that showed a man appearing to be arrested in connection with offensive comments shared on a Facebook page. CNBC could not independently verify the video.
Musk has allowed far-right figure Tommy Robinson and controversial internet personality Andrew Tate to return to X after previously being banned from the platform.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was banned from X, formerly Twitter, in March 2018. Tate was banned from X in October 2017 for posting inflammatory tweets
– CNBC’s Sam Meredith and Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report
