From his apparent “Nazi salute” at United States President Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration to his labelling of the US Agency for International Development as a “criminal organisation” that needs “to die” and the devastating austerity policies he excitedly pursues as the head of the newly minted “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)”, multibillionaire X owner Elon Musk has undoubtedly become a destructive force in American politics.
But Musk’s narcissistic political ambitions are not limited by the borders of the United States. After helping Trump and his far-right MAGA movement assume control of the US, he has set his sights on replicating this success across the world.
The South African started his “world tour” of stirring far-right sentiments and attempting to install radical, Musk-friendly figures in positions of power in the United Kingdom.
Musk spent the past year periodically elevating British far-right voices, such as English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson and Reform Party leader Nigel Farage. In early January he once again tweeted “Free Tommy Robinson!” and shared a link to the UK far-right leader’s controversial documentary titled Silenced.
In the documentary, reportedly commissioned by US far-right radio host Alex Jones’s InfoWars, Robinson falsely claims that Syrian refugee schoolboy Jamal Hijazi had violently attacked English schoolgirls and threatened to stab a boy at school.
Robinson had made the same claim a few years earlier in 2018 in a response to a viral video of Hijazi getting beaten at a school in Yorkshire. His response video on Facebook was viewed by more than a million people. Hijazi’s family faced death threats as a result.
Subsequently, Robinson – known to be funded by right-wing groups in the US – was smacked with a libel case from Hijazi, which he lost. He was ordered to pay Hijazi 100,000 pounds ($125,260) in damages, cover his legal costs to the tune of 500,000 pounds ($626,300) and was served with an injunction preventing him from publicly repeating his false claims about the Syrian schoolboy.
By making the documentary Silenced, in which he repeats his false claims about Hijazi, screening it for the public in London’s Trafalgar Square in July and widely sharing it online, Robinson violated the injunction. As a result, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in October.
Of course, none of this features in Musk’s rants about Robinson.
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