Britain is in the grip of its worst race riots in decades. Elon Musk, the billionaire X owner, has caused fury in the British government after he responded to incendiary footage of the far-right disorder that's sweeping the country by saying "civil war is inevitable,” Politico reports. The post on X was roundly condemned by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office, which said there was “no justification” for Musk’s comments. Musk doubled, then tripled down on Monday night. Responding to a Starmer statement vowing his government would “not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities,” the X boss effectively accused the British prime minister of wearing blinkers. “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on all communities?” Policing of the unrest "does seem one-sided," he offered in a third post. Starmer's interior minister, Yvette Cooper, has a litany of complaints over the way social media giants like X are policing incitement and disinformation on their platforms.
“There are some things which are clearly already criminal, where we'll need police intervention and action to pursue those," Cooper told the BBC. "There are other areas where the social media companies do have clear requirements at the moment to remove criminal material, and should be doing so, but sometimes take too long to do so ...There are other areas where they have made commitments around their terms and conditions that are supposed to be enforced but are not being done so." Cooper vowed to take up the issue with tech giants this week. Yet, despite plenty of hand-wringing over the proliferation of far-right messaging, Britain's toolbox for forcing the hands of social media companies seems limited.
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