I’m not usually a Michelle Goldberg reader but this is a good summary of the whole “grooming gangs” thing if, like me, you have no idea what they’re all talking about. (Gift link)
The billionaire is exploiting old atrocities to undermine his perceived enemies.
www.nytimes.com
GIFT LINK —>
Opinion | Elon Musk’s Dishonest Demagogy on Grooming Gangs
“…If you’ve been on X in recent days, you might have the impression that there has been some major new development in this awful story.
Musk, the platform’s owner, has been posting about it incessantly, smearing Jess Phillips, the Labour minister overseeing issues of violence against women and girls, as a “rape genocide apologist” and calling for her imprisonment. He’s also called for the
jailing of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and urged Britain’s king to dissolve Parliament and call new elections, something the monarch cannot do.
As the world’s richest man and a quasi-official member of Donald Trump’s team, Musk has enormous influence, and his admirers in both the United States and Britain have taken up the cause. Kemi Badenoch, head of the Tories, is demanding a new national investigation, which her party easily could have undertaken when it was in power until last year. Starmer, in turn, was forced to address Musk’s claims on Monday.
In this uproar, we’re seeing a particularly feral right-wing version of an old-fashioned Twitter mob, but with far higher stakes. Musk is using a genuine atrocity to pursue his campaigns against both Starmer, with whom he has a
long-running feud over the regulation of social media, and against mass immigration.
The visceral horror of the underlying story — especially to people who are only just discovering it — gives his demagogic attacks a sheen of righteousness.
But much of what’s he’s saying about the current government’s culpability is either distorted or flatly untrue, part of his increasingly vigorous crusade against the world’s remaining liberal leaders. …”
