Politics
Polanski calls Elon Musk a ‘threat to democracy’
Elon Musk has once again been encouraging far-right agitators running rampant on the streets of Britain and Ireland. And in response, Green Party leader Zack Polanski has called him out:
This man is a threat to our democracy. He backs violence and extremism.
Blaming a group of people for the awful actions of an individual leads us to a very dark place.
Musk, Lowe, Farage, Robinson – these men don't give a shit about this country, they want to rip us apart. https://t.co/zbV6s42xIv — Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) June 11, 2026
‘Threat to democracy’
Since Elon Musk bought X/Twitter, far-right accounts have made the site their home. As NBC News found in 2024:
NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust.
These accounts aren’t simply lurking on the fringes either:
During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece.
Some of these accounts are doing well specifically because Elon Musk retweets them:
Elon Musk has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents on his platform X, spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers. https://t.co/FIeJ3NAYJA
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) September 1, 2024
As Mother Jones reported:
Musk is amplifying users who will incorporate cherry-picked data and misleading graphs into their argument as to why people of European descent are biologically superior, showing how fringe accounts, like user @eyeslasho, experience a drastic jump in followers after Musk shares their tweets. The @eyeslasho account has even thanked Musk for raising “awareness” in a thread last year.
Notoriously, Musk once did a Nazi salute in front of a roaring crowd. Because he’s a coward, however, he and his supporters have denied it was a Nazi salute ever since:
I don’t know how to explain to people how these are so clearly different
Like; the videos are side by side here and you can see how Elon’s is a deliberate Nazi salute and Zohran’s is a gentle wave https://t.co/R3sgJM511n — Mike
Israel critic Hasan Piker — who was banned from entering the UK — said the following about Musk:
Hasan points out that Elon Musk has literally incited a significant amount of violence within the UK and Europe overall through his tweets and influence, yet Elon hasn’t been banned from the UK. Why is that? pic.twitter.com/wOIRaYOxkg
— adri ♡ (@socialistadri) June 10, 2026
Standards
What happened in Belfast is obviously a dark and disturbing crime. The problem is the crime of an individual is being used to justify attacks on all people of colour:
A pastor helping those in houses targeted tonight in Belfast says people were being put out of their homes “because they're black”
He says members of his church “who have been with us for 20 years..had their house attacked, windows smashed, houses beside them burned” pic.twitter.com/nYwrVPx8Aa — Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) June 9, 2026
This is the kind of thing that was said about the Jews in the 1930s.
It is not hyperbolic to say that degrading an entire culture leads us to a very dark place. Reform are playing with fire right now trying to stop themselves being outflanked by the extremists of Restore. https://t.co/4THiLmSsKb — Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) June 10, 2026
It’s also clear that these people don’t care about the crime itself… they care about its usefulness in terms of propaganda:
If you are being told to "protest" in Belfast but you weren't in Bristol after Alina Burns tried to behead someone, ask yourself "why?" pic.twitter.com/Kn5RpCFkSX
— Socialist Opera Singer (@OperaSocialist) June 9, 2026
Given that Musk owns X, he has the ability to push propaganda like no one else. His posts show him drumming up support for racist white riots in belfast before they happened:
Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!! https://t.co/73GDcLLFwv
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2026
Oh, and this is something he’s doing with the backing of the Murdoch press, by the way. This man is the editor-at-large of the Sun:
He’s encouraging pogroms on the streets of the UK. Maybe it’s time you showed some of the patriotism you so often lecture the rest of us about.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) June 11, 2026
If you’re wondering — yes — that is the same Harry Cole who said this (as immortalised by the WayBack Machine):
Growing resentment
To be fair to Keir Starmer, he has also been criticising Musk:
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) June 4, 2026
The problem is criticism is all he’s offering. And we’re at a point at which we can no longer pretend this man hasn’t weaponised his propaganda site to stir up violence and racial tensions in the UK.
Featured image via Benjamin Fanjoy / Leon Neal / Mario Tama (Getty Images)
By Willem Moore
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