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British politicians have accused Elon Musk of encouraging an anti-immigrant pogrom in Northern Ireland.
On Tuesday night, masked men burned cars, smashed windows, and set fires across the city of Belfast after footage of a knife attack the previous night circulated online. A 30-year-old Sudanese man has been charged with attempted murder for the knife attack. Rioters then targeted immigrant neighborhoods, forcing families to flee. Claire Hanna, leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party, described the violence as a “race-based pogrom.”
On Tuesday, before men rampaged through Belfast in search of migrants, Musk shared a call by far right Tommy Robinson for people to take to the streets. Musk wrote, “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”
Musk later reposted a post that said: “It’s not social media that’s ‘inflaming tensions.’ It’s not Elon Musk. It’s not Nigel Farage. It’s not the ‘far-right.’ It is the very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders. This policy has to end or it will destroy Western nations.”
Musk said in another post that “Nothing else matters if civilization falls” — echoing claims made by white nationalists that immigrants are a threat to “Western civilization.”
On Wednesday, members of the Labour Party called Musk’s posts “appalling.” Labour Party Chair Anna Turley said that Musk “is seeking to drive and exploit” the situation “to drive [his] own political agenda.”
“We’ve seen children, families having to flee their homes on the streets of Belfast last night,” she said, adding that “anyone that is seeking to whip [up violence] should be condemned.”
Another Labour Party politician, Ruth Anderson, said that 27 people were made homeless on Tuesday night “because people went door-to-door to try and target foreign nationals to burn them out of their homes.”
“I don’t think any of us will ever be able to forget the image of a 9-year-old child and their family being put in the back of a Land Rover to be rescued from violent, racist thugs,” she went on.
This is not the first time that Musk has been called out for stoking racial violence across the U.K. – just a week ago, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused Musk of “interfering in British politics” in a similar case.
Zarah Sultana, British Member of Parliament and co-founder of Your Party, wrote on X Wednesday, “From Southport to Belfast, we keep seeing the same pattern: a terrible crime, followed by racist mobs attacking black and brown people who had nothing to do with it. These are pogroms. The politicians and media figures who spent years demonising migrants and inflaming racial hatred have blood on their hands.”
Activists have also expressed frustration with media outlets that have called the rioters “protesters.” As Ian Allinson, a U.K.-based union activist, wrote, “The BBC describes the people carrying out pogroms against migrants in the north of Ireland as ‘protesters.’”
“Thank goodness they aren’t holding placards opposing genocide, holding meetings in places of worship to discuss non-violent direct action, or chanting for the whole of Palestine to be free of apartheid on a ‘hate march,’” he said sarcastically.
Activist and author Harsha Walia also insisted that people must understand that these are not protests. “Stoked on by far right across UK and Europe (and even Musk), they are literal anti-migrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim fascists who are setting up barricades and storming peoples houses looking for migrants,” she said.
The family of the victim of the knife attack — who lost his eye in the attack — has called for an end to violence, and praised the contributions of immigrants that the country “depend[s] on.”
People Before Profit, a political party in Northern Ireland, wrote in a statement that this is the “third successive summer where racist mobs have inflicted untold levels of violence on minorities here.”
And yet the government is set to increase its detention and deportation of immigrants in Northern Ireland as a result, expanding its Immigration Enforcement funding by over 20 percent over the next three years.
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