The United Kingdom's government is in a bit of a pickle right now. Three little girls under the age of 10 were stabbed to death at a dance camp, sparking riots. These weren't the run-of-the-mill Muslim migrant riots the police are used to ignoring, though —there were "far-right," white British natives who'd had enough. The reaction from Prime Minister Kier Starmer was swift, with police arresting citizens over Facebook posts and threatening to arrest any "curious observers" who were even watching, and not participating in, the riots.

The government blames social media for the riots, and the European Commission has even suggested extraditing Elon Musk and putting him on trial in the U.K. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes:

One man is missing. Of course, it’s good that so many of those responsible for a week of terrifying far-right violence are facing an especially swift and severe form of justice – but there’s one extremely rich and powerful suspect who should join them in the dock. If the UK authorities truly want to hold accountable all those who unleashed riots and pogroms in Britain, they need to go after Elon Musk.

…

Let’s remind ourselves who brought Robinson and a whole slew of far-right agitators back in from the cold, thereby putting X out of step with the likes of YouTube and Facebook. It was Musk, of course. He decided to make X a safe space for racism and hate almost as soon as he bought it. The effect was instant. One analysis of tweets found a “nearly 500% increase in use of the N-word in the 12-hour window immediately following the shift of ownership to Musk”. The same study also found that posts including “the word ‘Jew’ had increased fivefold since before the ownership transfer”, and something tells me those tweets weren’t tributes to the comic style of Mel Brooks.

This editor calls bulls**t on that analysis of tweets containing the N-word. We're all on X all day, every day, and we didn't see it.

Author and columnist Douglas Murray notes that the same columnist calling for Musk's arrest wrote a book fantasizing about the assassination of a president a few years back under a pseudonym.

Recommended

Advertisement

The author of this crappy Guardian piece calling for ⁦@elonmusk⁩ to be arrested for incitement wrote a whole novel (under pseudonym) wet-dreaming about the assassination of President Trump.⁩ https://t.co/Ws47mXqqvi

— Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray) August 12, 2024

The Guardian reviewed Freedland's book back in 2017:

Now Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, after publishing 2015’s The Third Woman under his own name, has re-Bourne the pseudonym under which he previously produced five conspiracy thrillers. In To Kill the President, a White House legal aide spots a plot to murder a recently elected controversialist president who, though never named, seems familiar.

Unexpectedly winning an election against a female Democrat who attracted criticism for being unwise with her email service, this “cheat and bigot” has dismayed the political and media establishments with “the tweets, the lies, the grotesque misconduct, the acts of unwarranted aggression”. He also does things of which Donald Trump has not yet been accused, including grabbing a female aide by her genitals in the Situation Room, where staff have been summoned in the middle of the night because the President wishes to nuke North Korea and China.

Although Armageddon is averted in the opening chapter, the fear that the leader intends to use cruise missiles as a sort of super-Twitter leads more moderate American patriots to seek out a Lee Harvey Oswald of our days.

Nice. Thanks for taking the mask off this loser.

— Lisa (@lalalainsd) August 12, 2024

His self-abasement in writing this piece registered on the Richter scale.

— Andrew Allen (@_AndrewAllen) August 12, 2024

"Real" journalists like Freedland can write about whatever they like — even assassination. But Musk should be arrested for his own free speech.

Here I agree with Murray.

The choking of the freedom of speech in the UK is obnoxious

— The Eye of Change (@theeyeofchange) August 12, 2024

So England has these incredibly strict speech laws that can be weaponized but is kosher with public figure assassination fan fic? As an American, do I have that right?

— Oh, I've Lettered, Trust Me (@6YrLetterman) August 12, 2024

So hypocritical. Sad thing is they don’t see it

— Nancy Neidballa (@NNeidballa) August 12, 2024

Maybe we should look into extraditing him for inciting violence and unrest in the U.S.?

— Alex O'Alexandra (@Shannonsheeha18) August 12, 2024

After he wrote about an assassination attempt, Donald Trump was nearly killed by a real assassin. Incitement? There should definitely be an investigation.

This guy just needs to go find his safe space.

— Debra Storm (@DebraStorm11) August 12, 2024

When will Musk finally create robots that could automatically detain moderators of such cynical ideas and prove to them that freedom of speech is a basic human value?!

— Diana Panchenko 🇺🇦 (@Panchenko_X) August 12, 2024

Jonathan Freedland even looks like an authoritarian.

— Tarak (@TarakNL) August 12, 2024

and this is physiognomic eye composure; they all look the same pic.twitter.com/6PpI5rBXWq

— Dr. Ricardo Duchesne (@dr_duchesne) August 12, 2024

Another white savior of the poor Muslim migrant.

With what's going on in Europe and especially in England that shows you why you never let your government disarm you, I don't understand why anyone would let that happen

— ANJI USA PASSION🇺🇲🙏😘 (@usa_anji) August 12, 2024

We have the First and Second Amendments here because we learned our lesson from the British. The Brits are willingly giving up their freedom of speech.

***

Update:

Also in The Guardian:

Pre-Musk Twitter makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that these people ran it pic.twitter.com/GVd0jD9axa

— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) August 12, 2024

***