LONDON — The U.K. government hit back at Elon Musk after the billionaire made controversial comments about riots — fueled by the far-right and anti-immigration sentiment — taking place across the country.
A number of towns and cities — including Liverpool and Manchester — have seen violent disorder on the streets in the last week, with far-right groups clashing with police and rival demonstrators.
On Sunday, Musk replied to a post about the riots on X, the social media platform he owns, stating: “Civil war is inevitable.”
His remark was subsequently met with condemnation by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Responding to a reporter’s question on Monday on whether Starmer agreed with Musk’s tweet, the PM’s spokesperson said: “There is no justification for comments like that.”
“What we’ve seen in this country is organized illegal thuggery which has no place on our streets or online,” Starmer’s official spokesperson said.
“We’re talking about a minority of thugs that do not speak for Britain, and in response to it we’ve seen some of the best of our communities coming out to clean up the mess and disruption,” the spokesperson added. “You can tell from that the prime minister doesn’t share those sentiments.”
Heidi Alexander, the U.K.’s courts minister, said in response to Musk’s comments Tuesday that anyone with a platform on social media should “behave responsibly” with that platform, adding that language associating the riots with civil war is “totally unjustified.”
Peter Kyle, the U.K.’s technology minister, has held conversations with social media companies over the sharing of misinformation in relation to the riots. The unrest in Britain, initially starting as anti-immigration protests, has been overtaken by violent disorder fueled by misinformation online, with shops and mosques being attacked and bricks and petrol bombs being hurled.
“I do think the social media companies should be doing more,” Alexander told Sky News Tuesday. “They’ve got a moral responsibility not to be propagating and disseminating misleading and inflammatory content on their platforms.”
Last year, the U.K. passed the Online Safety Act, a landmark law that seeks to ramp up enforcement on illegal and harmful content on the internet.
However, Ofcom, the regulator tasked with enforcing the law, is unable to take action against social media firms for harmful posts inciting the ongoing riots, as not all the powers from the act have come into force yet.
Ofcom has said it is moving quickly to implement the act so that it can be enforced as soon as possible.
Musk, who is also CEO of EV firm Tesla, was still commenting on the U.K. riots as of Tuesday. In one post, Musk reshared a video which showed a man appearing to be arrested in relation to offensive comments shared on a Facebook page. CNBC was unable to independently verify the video.
Musk has allowed far-right figure Tommy Robinson and controversial online personality Andrew Tate back onto X, after they were previously suspended from the platform.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was banned from X, formerly Twitter, in March 2018. Tate was banned from X in October 2017 for posting inflammatory tweets
– CNBC’s Sam Meredith and Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report