UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been ensnared in a war of words with Tesla CEO Elon Musk over riots that have gripped the nation for the past week.
As pockets of far-right violence continue to erupt around the UK following a knife attack in Southport that killed three girls, Musk has blasted Starmer in a series of posts on X for his handling of the crisis.
Musk’s social media platform has played a central role in the saga up until now: it was first used as a tool to whip up frenzy and misinformation about the Southport attack and has since become a channel for the tech billionaire to criticise the prime minister and give an even bigger platform to the rhetoric that has led to the subsequent violence.
Here’s a look at the posts on X that got us here.
Three girls were killed in a mass stabbing at a dance studio in the northwestern English town of Southport on 29 July.
The news instantly triggered speculation online over the identity of the alleged murderer, with many incorrectly claiming he was a Muslim immigrant.
It was soon announced that Welsh-born Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, a British citizen whose parents were originally from Rwanda, had been charged with murder in connection with the attack. Still, the Islamophobic narrative had already taken hold.
The name “Ali al-Shakati” was attributed to the alleged attacker, with no official source given to the name. Fact-checkers have since traced it to a dubious Russian-linked fake news outlet masquerading as a legitimate American news site.
The claim was picked up by far-right agitators online, including anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate incorrectly said on X that an “undocumented migrant” who “arrived on a boat” was behind the killings, while Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK party, questioned whether police were telling the truth when they said the attack wasn’t terror-related.
The claims quickly spiralled among xenophobic, far-right groups, who quickly came together to spark riots in more than a dozen towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland.
The UK government has repeatedly denounced the violence, with Starmer making a series of emergency speeches in which he blasted the “far-right thuggery” gripping certain pockets of the UK and announced new measures to crack down on those taking part — whether directly or from afar.
In one speech, the prime minister noted the dangerous role that social media can play in whipping up public disorder, which some saw as him throwing barbs at Elon Musk.
Criticism of social media and X in particular for their part in provoking the riots soon began making the rounds online, with much of it aimed at X’s owner Elon Musk.
The story caught the eye of the tech billionaire, who soon began making his own incendiary remarks against the situation in the UK, such as “civil war is inevitable” and likening the country to the Soviet Union.
