JAMMING THE BANDWIDTH

Elon Musk is no friend to rape victims.

One might disagree with Jess Phillips decision not to hold a public enquiry into grooming gangs for perfectly rational reasons, but the idea this means the Labour government are engaged in some kind of sinister cover up is perfectly mental.

Where the hell have you been?

The stomach-turning truth about grooming gangs came to light well over a decade ago. I remember reading reams of brilliant and harrowing investigative journalism. I remember posting about it often and discussing it widely. There have been a ton of government reports since then, several local inquiries and one national inquiry, as well many, many prosecutions which continue to this day. There have been books about it, TV documentaries and a BBC drama. What, I wonder, do the people currently grandstanding think there is to know about this dreadful catalogue of systematic abuse and rape that isn't already known?

Unlike some, I didn't need racist thicko Tommy Robinson to tell me the gang rape of thousands of vulnerable girls by mainly Pakistani men was wrong. I didn't need him to tell me the failure of those institutions whose duty it was to protect those girls was a deep seated national disgrace. Robinson's gullible supporters are busy deluding themselves that he is some kind of ‘political prisoner’. In fact, he is in prison for contempt of court – a charge he pled guilty to – for repeatedly libelling a bullied Syrian schoolboy. Some hero. This is the same serial criminal, you will recall, who came close to collapsing a grooming gang trial in Huddersfield in 2018 by prejudicing the case, meaning several rapists nearly got off Scot-free. Let him rot.

Elon Musk, the world's richest man and shitposting far right troll, is a booster of Tommy Robinson, naturally. Musk has been stoking the flames of outrage in typically reckless style, spamming X with an unhinged ejaculation of conspiratorial posts calling Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” and arguing she should be jailed. He also accused the Prime Minister Kier Starmer, who was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) between 2009 and 2014, of colluding in “the rape of Britain”.

This tirade of baseless character assassination would once have brought a loud chorus of condemnation from all sides for its inflammatory rhetoric alone. Alas, those times have long since passed us by. The debasement of political discourse has a long history, but it went into overdrive the moment we had social media. Rage drives engagement. People are far more likely to click, comment or share if they are motivated by anger. The algorithms know what we like, and feed us more. The system thrives on outrage and rewards derangement. No one understands that better than Elon Musk.

Back in 2022 dudebros kept telling me Musk had to purchase Twitter because it was politically biased. He wanted to buy it, they assured me, for noble reasons, because he is, they claimed, a “free speech absolutist”. We then watched as he took a public company private, gamed the algorithm to boost his own posts, turned the platform into a megaphone for far right conspiracies, declared his support for Donald Trump, and used his platform and bottomless pit of gold to bolster Trump's presidential campaign. I'd argue that's quite biased. Far from being any kind of free speech warrior, Musk has a long record of banning accounts which are critical of him.

Now that Musk has inserted himself in the debate around grooming gangs his army of online simps have the audacity to claim any criticism of their guy means you don't care about victims. To question his motives, they bark, is to be engaged in a cover up of a scandal already a matter of public record. That kind of emotional blackmail is morally contemptible. Musk said nothing about any of this at the time. You will search in vain for any sympathy for the victims before he realised he could weaponise the issue for his ongoing private war with the UK government. The idea that this Johnny-come-lately gives a single fuck about the lives of vulnerable working class girls in places like Oldham, Rochdale and Rotherham is laughably naïve. Using their victimhood as a stick to beat Phillips and Starmer with, while amplifying far right voices, is the behaviour of a populist demagogue, not a selfless campaigner for rape victims.

Jess Phillips is not to everyone's taste, to say the least, but she has dedicated her political career to the victims of violence against women. Her record of public service is one of action, not rhetoric. Musk's smears come at a time when politicians like Phillips are already subject to a barrage of online rape and death threats. Two sitting MPs have been murdered in recent years. To disagree with Phillips is one thing, to single her out for opprobrium in this way is quite another.

The DPP have been rightly criticised for their decision not to proceed with a prosecution in Rochdale in 2009 because they seemed the main witness “unreliable”. However, that decision was overturned in 2011 when Starmer appointed Nazir Afzal as chief prosecutor for north-west England. Far from covering up the gangs, it was Starmer who pressed the trigger on the initial round of prosecutions. There are many valid criticisms of Starmer and his government, but there is no evidence girls were raped because of his inaction or that he was engaged in suppressing the truth. If Elon Musk had done any reading on the subject he would know the most egregious failures happened at the local level, among the police, councils and social workers who neglected to do their duty, and who didn't act because they feared the effect on social cohesion and didn't want to appear racist. That is scandalous, obviously, but hardly Starmer's doing.

Despite Musk’s weird obsession with the UK, he clearly knows nothing about how the country actually works. Just look at his long string of posts urging King Charles III to dissolve parliament and save us from Starmer's “tyrannical” government. That is not the way we do things over here. To have a foreign oligarch interfering in British governance ought to disturb more than it does. Musk is an avowed enemy of this country, and he is using his vast power and resources to press for the removal of our democratically elected government. Whatever one thinks of Labour, that is an attack on our fundamental rights and should be rebuked as such.

It is galling in the extreme to be lectured by Musk and his fanboys as if they have uncovered some dark secret. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) published its findings just two years ago in a 400 page report. The people losing their minds right now said nothing of note back then. No one was accusing Rishi Sunak or the Conservative government of presiding over a cover up despite their failure to act on its recommendations.

There is an argument to be made that the IICSA didn't go far enough in giving voice to victims, nor in finding out who knew what and when on the local level, and that is why we need a further inquiry. I have some sympathy with that. The police, social workers and local government officials who colluded in suppression of the victims voices have not been properly brought to account. There is also an argument to be made that another inquiry is a waste of time and money when the recommendations in the IICSA report have yet to be implemented. To suggest we should be focussing our efforts on compensating and supporting the victims and implementing the institutional changes needed to ensure it doesn't happen again does not make one an apologist for rape gangs.

Musk has enough personal wealth to help every single victim of the grooming gangs. Any person in his position who truly cared would do just that. He won't be starting a fund in their name, though, because he's too busy jamming the bandwidth with noise. It is about him, not them.