Now, Elon Musk is trying to bring about British politics

Elon Musk seems to have invaded Britain, if only via tweet. This week, the right-wing American billionaire sparked chaos by unleashing a tweet storm against Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labor Party and the current British Prime Minister. Musk has been rooting for Starmer since he was elected, and this week, he took things up a notch when he used his platform, X, to urge King Charles to dissolve the British parliament and dethrone the new prime minister.

In general, Musk tried to represent Starmer’s government as a corrupt and incompetent regime that is harming Britain. To blame that messaging effort, Musk reposted a message this week from a comment that read: “Who else thinks the KING should dissolve Parliament and order a general election to be called for the good and safety of the country? The King must act before it’s too late!” Musk responded to the user’s post, saying simply, “Yes.”

That’s not all Musk has done. The American billionaire also caught a scandal involving child care street gangs and used the episode to accuse Starmer of failing to account for child rapists in her country, saying that Starmer was “Complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN”. The scandal in question involves the phenomenon of “grooming gangs” in the north of England, which are said to be composed largely of perpetrators of Heritage of South Asia or British Pakistan. Musk was next accused of “politicizing” the rape of girls as a means of pushing his own right-wing agenda.

At the same time, Musk announced support for Tommy Robinson, a far-right political activist and convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record who is currently in prison. Robinson, whose name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was called an “anti-Islam” activist. and accused of Islamaphobia. “Free Tommy Robinson!” Musk posted. Robinson/Lennon is the founder of the English Defense League, a now defunct lobbying organisation. against Islamic extremism. Musk raised so many issues that Trump’s conservative political allies had to distance themselves from the comments. In truth, Bloomberg reports that “senior right-wing UK politicians” have reached out to “Donald Trump’s allies, urging the US president-elect’s team not to support far-right British activist Tommy Robinson”.

Why does Musk have it out for Starmer so badly? No one really knows for sure, though it’s hard not to see it as a broader effort to make the incoming Liberal government look bad so that a different (presumably Conservative) government could soon take over. That said, it’s not like Musk is the first American plutocrat to clash with British politics. Indeed, the connection between American billionaires and the effort to remake Britain in a right-wing dystopia, it has been well established for a long time.

The US-led push to make Britain more right-wing

One of the reasons that Musk and his cohort may be so afraid of Starmer is that he is the first British prime minister in years who has not enjoyed political affiliations with the American right. Boris Johnson, who served as PM between 2019 and 2022, in particular schmoozed with pro-Trump people, they called themselves libertarian, and their policies were broadly in shape from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think-tank that is part of a global libertarian network known as Atlas. While the Atlas Network was founded by a British citizen, it is based in the United States and enjoys associations with a variety of American organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and ALEC (the pro-corporate American Legislative Exchange Council). Before its rise to become Great Britain the prime minister of the shortest timethe famous Liz Truss met a US right number think tanks, including Patrimonio, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and ALEC. Later, when he became prime minister, many of Truss’s economic policy agenda has also been widely developed from the IEA. When Truss tried to solve Britain’s problems massive tax cuts for billionaires (a particularly Trumpian solution)it was fast laughed out of the government and abruptly resigned. Since his role as PM, Truss hasn’t done much except fangirl out of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak, the interim prime minister who served between Truss and Starmer, also appreciated it close ties with America and tried to implement “free market”, libertarian policiesmost of which were very unpopular.

Musk’s propaganda role

The effort to turn Western nations into conservative bastions was supported by propaganda efforts designed to shake confidence in liberal governments. It is worth noting that, at the same time that Musk has sought to attack Starmer’s Liberal government very publicly, he has also allied himself with many of the organizations and forces that have supported Britain’s cultural and economic drift towards the right.

I he wrote recently that Musk is basically the new Steve Bannon, meaning that Musk — like Bannon before him — helped Trump get elected by serving as a messaging guru who could rally political support by tapping into cultural and economic grievances of the voters. Bannon, who helped Trump get elected in 2016, is too credit with helping to bring American nativism to British political culture. Bannon also notably supported Tommy Robinson long before Musk started tweeting about him. Until 2018, Bannon openly supported the right-wing agitator. In the leaked audio, Bannon teared up: “Tommy Robinson is the backbone of this country. You lose guys like Tommy Robinson, you don’t have a country,” he apparently said, of Great Britain. In February of last year, Bannon appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland (with Liz Truss) and called Robinson a “hero.”

What Bannon did in a relatively quiet way, however, Musk does in the daytime. Through his X platform, Musk has managed to promote a host of right-wing conspiracy theories and misinformation that seem designed to shake public confidence in Starmer’s government. Before his pro-Robinson tweets and his comments about the dissolution of parliament and street rapes, Musk also used his platform to comment on a stabbing episode which led to riots throughout Britain. Musk’s comments were also credited aggravating the riots. Musk also recently called for new elections so that Starmer could be voted out of office.

So, while it may be happening on a different continent, Musk’s propaganda efforts in the UK will look identical to those he is carrying out in the US. These efforts cannot even be seen as a continuation of a broader effort on the part of the United States. The American political right to use racial and economic grievances as a means of radicalizing the lower and middle class populations and driving them towards economic agendas that are designed by and for the rich. That said, this program may work much better in the US than in Britain, where the average IQ may be slightly higher.