Elon Musk lashes out at U.K. government after being snubbed from top investment summit over race riot posts
Elon Musk has hit out at the U.K. government after it was revealed he had not been invited to the country’s major annual investing summit for stoking up riots across the country over the summer.
The billionaire responded to reports that he would not be invited to the U.K.’s investment summit with false claims about the release of prisoners in the country, following a trend of erroneous and inflammatory comments directed at the U.K. in recent months.
“I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The U.K. began the early release of thousands of offenders in September amid an impending crisis over prison space. Sex offenders, however, were among those excluded from the list of people eligible for early release.
The country descended into rioting across several major cities in August after three children in Southport were stabbed to death by a U.K. national. Rumors swirled online following the attack, including accusations that the perpetrator was a Muslim immigrant, and led to violent demonstrations in cities including Liverpool, Sunderland, and Belfast.
More than 1,000 people were arrested in connection with the riots and 460 people were charged as of mid-August. There were also arrests over social media posts described as stirring up racial hatred.
Musk was accused of stoking up these riots with a series of inflammatory posts to his nearly 200 million followers, including saying “civil war is inevitable” in the country. He said race riots in the U.K. were “inevitable,” something U.K. courts minister Heidi Alexander described as “pretty deplorable.”
He also shared then deleted a conspiracy theory that suggested people involved in the riots were being sent to “detainment camps” in the Falkland Islands.
The BBC reports that his posts were the reason he was not invited to this year’s investment summit.
The U.K.’s International Investment Summit is a key platform for center-left prime minister Keir Starmer to appeal to hundreds of business leaders to pump tens of billions of pounds into the economy.
The tech billionaire was invited to last year’s summit but did not appear. He did, however, star as the main speaker at the U.K.’s inaugural AI Summit last November, appearing on stage with the then Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak..
Musk has used his platform in recent months to attack countries he perceives as too soft on immigration, starting with Ireland last year. Musk said Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar hated the Irish people after riots broke out in the wake of an Algerian immigrant stabbing five people, including three children.
Meanwhile, Musk has been courting leaders on the right of the political spectrum over their hard-line rhetoric on immigration.
Last week, Musk joined an event in New York for far-right Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, where he heaped praise on Meloni before she gave a speech on nationalism.
Musk has also thrown his support behind Donald Trump ahead of November’s U.S. presidential elections.
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