By ALEX MACKINNON
As protesters gathered in London for the Unite the Kingdom (UTK) rally last September, they were unaware that the world’s richest man was about to appear on a widescreen over the crowd. Elon Musk’s attendance had been kept a surprise until moments before his appearance, which was met with a roar of approval from the 150,000-strong crowd.
The speech that followed was littered with far- right rhetoric: he declared that Britain was being slowly but surely “eroded” by “massive uncontrolled migration”, and that he wanted “Britain to remain Britain”. He argued that “there has got to be a change of government in Britain. And we don’t have another four years… it’s too long”; he went on to propose a dissolution of Parliament. Taking it a step further, he told the crowd that they “have to fight, [they] have to rally all of the people of Britain to fight for the future and if this doesn’t happen there won’t be a future”.
Musk quickly put an end to any assumptions that he was referencing a fight in the form of a social movement, and directly referenced violence. He warned the crowd: “… whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back, or you die.”
Elon Musk addressed thousands via video link at the Unite The Kingdom rally in London
Elon Musk’s recent penchant for British politics has seen him ally himself with some of the UK’s most notorious far-right figures. He has taken a particular liking to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson), not only speaking at his march but also covering his legal fees and reposting his content on X, including Lennon’s “documentary”, “The Rape of Britain”.
According to data from the Financial Times, over a third of Musk’s tweets and retweets in January 2025 were about UK politics. During August, when the enforcement of the Online Safety Act coincided with the height of anti-migrant protests in the UK, 13.7% of Musk’s output on X was dedicated to UK affairs. Musk has become both a financial and a social aid for members of the British anti-migrant scene.
“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
This is not the only time that Musk has encouraged violence amongst British people. On 29 August 2025, during the height of the summer’s anti-migrant protests, he reposted a clip of activists raising flags in Wales with the caption: “People of the great nations of Britain and Ireland, rally NOW to save your beautiful countries! It’s now or never. Fight, fight, fight! Soon it will be too late.”
More recently, Musk drew attention with an X post that read: “Civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a question of when”. Musk’s increasing influence over the British far right is a cause for considerable concern given his status, power and wealth; these reckless comments towards British audiences endanger lives, as those with genuine grievances about life in the UK are encouraged to turn on one another.
It is easy to sit in Texas, miles away both physically and socially from British people, and encourage violence as if for entertainment. It is not easy for the working people of the UK, who have to live through the outcome.
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE IN EUROPEAN POLITICS
Two and a half times as many people oppose the US government’s publicly stated intention to support anti-immigration parties in Europe – as part of its effort to “defend Western identity” from mass immigration and liberalism – as there are those who support it, a poll of over 8,000 UK adults surveyed in January 2026 has found.
Half of respondents said they were “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” by the plans set out in the US’s National Security strategy, published late last year, with just 19% saying they were “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned”. The remainder were either neutral or did not express an opinion.
Unsurprisingly, those who were opposed to immigration and had a dislike for Muslims made up the majority of those who were not concerned.
Almost half (44%) of people who voted Reform UK in the 2024 general election were unconcerned about these plans, with just 24% expressing concern.
PLATFORMING HATE
Online, Musk has amplified posts by other extreme figures. In January he reposted Hugh Anthony, an ethnonationalist who campaigns for a totally white Britain. The post read: “Remigration is a moderate position. Demographic replacement is an extremist position”, to which Musk added: “True”. “Remigration” is the deportation of non-white immigrants living in the UK, as well their descendants – even if they are citizens.
This is not the first time Musk has engaged with the Great Replacement theory, a conspiracy theory which suggests that migrants are being purposefully transported into European/majority white countries with the aim of replacing the white population. Musk often posts about the “extinction” of white people, and has described the ethnic replacement of white people as an “object reality”. He recently reposted a controversial statement reading: “If white men become a minority, [they] will be slaughtered” and so “white solidarity is the only way to survive”.
Musk has also engaged with a broader mix of far- right talking points, having backed the far-right party Restore Britain, led by Rupert Lowe. He has engaged with discourse around flag-raising, stating in an X post that “raising a foreign flag is treason and should result in immediate deportation”. He has also made many posts referring to “two-tier justice”, taking aim at the British political system, which he has referred to as a “police state” – mainly due to laws tightening online safety regulations.
Narratives around unjust policing, particularly in relation to those prosecuted for social-media posts, are becoming increasingly common amongst the far right. In December 2025, a man was jailed for tweets made after a car-ramming at a Christmas market.
His comments included: “time to hit the streets and slaughter”; “violence and murder is the only way now”; “head for the hotels housing them (immigrants) and burn them to the ground” and “then head off to the MP’s houses and Parliament”. Despite the clear calls for violence and murder, Musk reposted a news article about the case, captioning it that the UK had become a “prison island”.
BRITS SAY NO TO FOREIGN SOCIAL-MEDIA INFLUENCE
Three quarters of the British public are concerned that the owners and algorithms of global social- media platforms (like X/Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok) have too much influence over political debate and elections in the UK, a poll of 8,000 people has found.
Just 17% said that they were not concerned.
As the government publishes the Representation of the People Bill, which seeks to clamp down on foreign interference in British politics, the views of people are clear. They are worried about the impact and influence of social-media companies and clearly would support legislation taking action to limit the political influence of these companies’ owners.
Last year, Elon Musk promised to invest millions in British politics, and only last month threw his support behind Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party. Direct donations are one thing, but given the amount of British presence on X and the extent to which Musk can shape the platform’s algorithms, his influence can be felt in other ways.
GROK AI
Musk came under fire again in 2025 after X’s AI assistant Grok began engaging with extreme far- right rhetoric and producing non-consensual nude images of women and children. Grok posted content containing pseudoscientific statements about racial IQ and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories.
This included narratives around Jewish control in Hollywood and jokes about left-wing activists with Jewish surnames. It also began referring to itself as “MechaHitler”. In the same period, other users found ways to make Grok say racial slurs and neo-Nazi references, further exposing the weak safety features of the AI assistant.
However, this outburst was not unique. In November, Grok began engaging with Holocaust denial. It posted that gas chambers in Auschwitz were “designed for disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus, featuring ventilation systems suited for this purpose rather than for mass executions”.
Though the AI corrected itself later on, it was still enormously concerning to see what the public might consider a neutral voice parroting well-established Holocaust-denial conspiracy theories.
In January, huge numbers of X users began asking Grok to generate non-consensual nude images of women and children. The majority of cases involved users asking Grok to create photos of people in bikinis. These sexual deepfakes prompted an investigation into X by both Ofcom and the European Commission.
Peter Kyle, the former Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, told the BBC that he had met a Jewish woman who had discovered an image of herself in a bikini outside Auschwitz. Ashley St Clair, who has a child with Elon Musk, was subjected to users asking Grok to undress photos of her at aged 14 and put her in a bikini – which Grok did. While it has been illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK since June 2025, legislation to criminalise creating or requesting one has not yet been passed. On 14 January, Musk responded on X that he was “not aware of any underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero”.
Musk has an increasing influence on the landscape of the British far right – whether that be providing financial backing for Robinson himself, or giving platforms to extreme voices like Hugh Anthony. He leans into far-right conspiracies like the Great Replacement theory, and continuously attacks European governing bodies who attempt to moderate dangerous content on his platform. Musk has also displayed a recklessness towards the British people, encouraging civil war and violence as if these were throwaway comments.
While the majority of generative AI tools are capable of producing harmful content, Grok’s massive reach among X users makes it particularly concerning. The posts are especially dangerous due to the tendency for users to treat Grok as a non-biased fact source. When the chatbot supports fringe conspiracy theories, many users absorb those theories as the views of a neutral speaker, framing them as legitimate.
While Musk has thankfully been removed from official political power in the US, X gives him an enormous cultural reach which stretches across the Atlantic. His attacks on the British government seem strongly linked to feeling threatened by the Online Safety Act, hence his continued argument that the UK is a “police state” and his attempts to ally himself with other British anti-establishment bodies. In turn, X has become a comfortable playground for the far right to act out its discourse, with Musk himself regularly fomenting conflict on the streets of Britain by encouraging violence.
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