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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Elon Musk’s new obsession began on new year’s eve, and in the weeks that followed he fired off thousands of posts on his social media platform X about British politics, a decades old sex abuse scandal and a man named Tommy Robinson.

Now, the British government's agenda has stalled as the prime minister faces questions about the conspiracy theories Musk is pushing.

It’s a stark example of how the world’s richest man can influence politics in any country, and comes at a time when competitors like Mark Zuckerberg are trying to copy Musk’s playbook.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Elle Hardy on how Musk and Zuckerberg are reshaping the internet and democracy.

It’s Tuesday, January 14.

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RUBY:

So Elle, on X, Elon Musk is posting a lot about a man called Tommy Robinson. So to begin with, what can you tell me about Tommy Robinson?

ELLE:

Tommy Robinson's a pretty unpleasant dude. He's actually in prison at the moment for 18 months on contempt of court charge.

Audio Excerpt - Crowd Cheering

ELLE:

He came to prominence in Britain in 2009.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Robinson first became known more than a decade ago by leading chaotic rallies with the self-styled English Defence League.”

ELLE:

Their animating issue was being anti-Muslim and anti-immigration.

Audio Excerpt - Tommy Robinson:

“We don’t want any more mosques in this country.”

ELLE:

He had quite a strong following in the UK and he was a very prominent figure. But his influence did start to wane as he was slowly deplatformed from, from things like Facebook and Twitter. Back in the day, until Elon Musk reinstated his X account in November 2023 as part of his commitment to freedom of speech in letting people back onto the platform that had previously been banned.

RUBY:

Okay. So tell me what Elon Musk has been posting about him.

ELLE:

Musk seems to have become kind of obsessed with Tommy Robinson ever since New Year's Eve.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Now the Labour Party has caused an international furore, a huge backlash. As Charlie Peters from GB News revealed it will block a full-length inquiry into the Oldham rape gang scandal.”

ELLE:

On New Year's Eve, a report from the right wing British news channel GB News came to Elon Musk's attention about some historical allegations of child grooming gangs in the UK. It was a really big problem in the 2000’s and 2010’s and there have been a number of large national inquiries into the problem. But GB News sort of beat up a story out of nothing, saying that a particular small town in the north of England was calling for a fresh inquiry into further allegations about child grooming gangs, and the UK government weren’t going to launch a new inquiry even though they just had one in 2022.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“This comes as Sir Kier Starmer is attacked over his handling of the Oldham grooming gang scandal when he was head of the Crime Prosecution Service.”

ELLE:

But this really became a story about the perception that the Labour Government is scared of taking action on issues such as paedophilia, on issues to do with, you know, potential crimes by immigrants in the country. And Elon Musk became interested in Tommy Robinson's case as it was connected to the grooming gang scandal very loosely in that Robinson was someone who was always talking about this in the media.

Audio Excerpt - Tommy Robinson:

“There's a total two tier policing operation in this town where they get what they want. The islamic community get away with what they want. They don't. The police do not know how to deal with these problems. I went on to say that they use drugs as a weapon against our community to get our children into paedophilic practices, which is what was now known as grooming.”

ELLE:

So Elon became interested in Robinson's case and has started posting things like Free Tommy Robinson now. And he's been falsely implying that his imprisonment has something to do with exposing the grooming gangs scandal in the UK, which Robinson didn't and which his imprisonment has nothing to do with.

And Elon Musk has sort of worked himself into a frenzy. The Financial Times counted as of last Thursday, I believe, that he had tweeted more than 1180 times about British politics in one week.

RUBY:

So by talking about this grooming scandal and stoking the kind of the associated racial tensions that come with it, what effect is that having on UK politics and on the current Prime Minister Keir Starmer?

ELLE:

Keir Starmer was the Director of Public Prosecutions when some of these grooming events came to light. In fact, he did decline to prosecute one case where he said that the victim was essentially an unreliable witness. So a lot of Starmer's political opponents are trying to tie him to the issue.

And Musk has been consistently attacking Prime Minister Starmer on X. At one point, he said that Starmer was deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes. And he's also advocated that Starmer should go to prison. And he even suggested that America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.

So, you know, they're derailing the government agenda, I suppose you'd say.

Audio Excerpt - Keir Starmer:

“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation thus far as wide as possible. They're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves. Those who are cheerleading Tommy Robinson aren't interested in justice.”

ELLE:

The Labour government last week was trying to push through a bill to begin debating, pushing through some of the recommendations from the most recent inquiry that came down in 2022. The opposition party. The Tories tried to attach an amendment saying that they needed a new child abuse inquiry because of the fervour that Musk could had stoked on on X.

Audio Excerpt - Nadia Whittome:

“But the Conservative Leadership and Reform MPs, marching to the beat of Elon Musk's drum, are plainly weaponising the pain and the trauma of victims for their own political ends.”

ELLE:

And the Labour Government is now saying, well, hang on, this is going to slow down US passing reforms for child protection. So, it really is derailing the whole process and it's controlling the British political narrative. And once again, this is really all come from one guy with a social media platform who's sitting in the United States.

RUBY:

Why do you think it is, if you wouldn't mind, I suppose, spelling out how you see this that Elon Musk is talking about this particular scandal now. Obviously, it happened a long time ago. So what is he trying to do here?

ELLE:

This really fits in the context of Elon Musk's recent political far right turn, I suppose you'd say. And he appears to have enjoyed, I think, the success that he found in delving into U.S. politics, into, you know, becoming a major funder for Donald Trump and to, you know, probably helping him get elected and to providing a voice to that side of politics on his X platform. And we're starting to see him get more involved in politics in all sorts of different countries around the world, particularly in England and in Germany.

And he's not just supporting traditional conservative or right of centre parties. He's supporting the furthest right parties. So in the U.K., he's become particularly interested in Reform UK, which is Nigel Farage's new political party. Farage used to run the UK Independence Party. Now that's Reform. Musk had already mooted, potentially making a large donation to the Reform Party.

But since Nigel Farage came out and said that there was no room for Tommy Robinson in his party and something he stood by for a long time, Elon Musk then started tweeting that Nigel Farage is not up to the job of leading the party and suggested a possible alternative leader. And given that he's already suggested that, you know, he would like to make a large donation to the party and is really pushing their popularity and aims on his platform, this could be quite a seismic intervention in British politics.

RUBY:

After the break - the other tech billionaire watching and learning from Elon Musk.

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RUBY:

Elle, while Elon Musk has been doing this, stoking this anti-immigration sentiment in the UK, Mark Zuckerberg has also announced some big changes to the way he is going to be running Meta. Can you tell me about what he said?

ELLE:

So last week, Zuckerberg made an announcement that offered up a series of reforms to Meta, which is much more in line with what Musk has been doing at X.

Audio Excerpt - Mark Zuckerberg:

“Hey everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.”

ELLE:

So they're getting rid of a fact checking which Meta brought in in late 2016 in direct response to allegations about Facebook's role of disseminating misinformation that helped Trump get elected.

Audio Excerpt - Mark Zuckerberg:

“But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.”

ELLE:

The switching to community notes, which is something that Musk introduced to the X platform, which is essentially crowdsourced fact checking of of posts to see if they're wrong and why they're wrong and link to more relevant information. They're also not going to be policing comments particularly about gender and immigration, which are two very big right wing issues.

Audio Excerpt - Mark Zuckerberg:

“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas. And it's gone too far. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”

ELLE:

They've also appointed Dana White, who runs UFC, who is a close personal friend of Trump. And they're moving their moderation teams from California to Texas purely for the perception that people in California tend to be more liberal and that Texas is becoming sort of a new home of big tech.

RUBY:

Okay. And it's hard to see all of this as anything else than a way for Zuckerberg to attempt to get close to Trump. And in his good books.

ELLE:

Very much so. And I mean, Zuckerberg is very clearly seeing Musk's success in getting close to the incoming administration, and and obviously what it can do for his companies as well. He has been embracing issues that Trump and Musk both speak a lot about, such as, you know, liberal censorship, the importance of freedom of speech. You know, going back to prioritising that freedom of speech. And he's been doing it in outlets such as Joe Rogan, which is very clearly speaking to that audience of of Trump’s world, of Musk’s world, and of the wider tech industry itself.

Audio Excerpt - Mark Zuckerberg:

“These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse. And it's like these documents are it's all kind of out there.

Audio Excerpt - Joe Rogan:

“Did you record any of those phone calls?”

Audio Excerpt - Mark Zuckerberg:

“I don't know. I don't think I don't think we. But, but I think, listen, I mean, there are emails, the emails are published. It's all it's all kind of out there and and they're like and basically it just got to the point where we were like, no, we're not going to we're not going to take down things that are true. That's ridiculous.”

RUBY:

And is this about currying favour with Trump, or are there other reasons that that he would be seeking to be in alignment with the Trump administration going forward?

ELLE:

Meta has an antitrust case coming up that's going to be heard in April. It's a case from a photo sharing app that said it was crushed by the Meta empire and antitrust is a pretty big deal in the U.S.. It's the kind of thing that, you know, they can potentially levy monstrous fines, but they can also break up companies. So tech companies are obviously pretty wary of this and feeling it very acutely. And I mean, it's a pretty good time to get into bed with Trump if he's coming in and he's, you know, believing in having a less powerful state. So in general, the tech industry has been very behind the incoming Trump administration. And it seems like they're going to be pretty big supporters of him throughout.

RUBY:

So Elle, we have these two men, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, dramatically reshaping not only the Internet, but politics as well. So what do you think the impact of this is going to be on how we experience both these platforms, but also, I suppose, how we experience democracy in the U.S. and the UK?

ELLE:

Certainly. I mean, it shows that American politics is for sale. This isn't a particularly new idea, but the fact is that you can buy a tremendous amount of power and influence due to the way that the United States political system operates and that people are willing to do so and not not overtly, that they are very happy to do it proudly and loudly.

Internationally, it also shows that that these networks can be strong arms. You might have leaders from other countries now who look to to get something out of Musk or Zuckerberg or anyone who runs these large platforms.

It brings up wider questions of, you know, if governments should be regulating these sorts of social media platforms that have such outsized influence in our lives. I mean we've just seen this week that Elon Musk's sudden interest in a sort of a fairly dormant British political issue that had been dealt with by an independent inquiry that he could suddenly change the course of British politics just by tweeting obsessively about one issue.

RUBY:

Elle, thanks so much for your time.

ELLE:

Yeah, no worries.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged $3 billion to upgrade the NBN if his government is re-elected.

The government says fibre to the node connections would be upgraded, with higher internet speeds to be delivered to around 622,000 additional premises by 2030.

And, the mass resignation of hundreds of psychiatrists from New South Wales public hospitals will have “devastating consequences”, according to the federal health minister Mark Butler.

A pay dispute and concerns over the state of the mental healthcare system has prompted more than 200 psychiatrists to hand in their resignations. The state government has offered a pay increase of 10.5% over three years, while the psychiatrists, through their union, are pushing for 25%.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

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