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He learnt about an old scandal in Britain – so-called “South Asian grooming gangs”. These gangs preyed on at least 1400 poor white children in some of England’s most socially disadvantaged areas. Police, social workers, authorities, media and even politicians – including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was head of the Crown Prosecuting Service during the years in which many girls tried to report – are accused of minimising and ignoring the crimes because the perpetrators’ ethnicity was difficult to square with a preferred narrative of harmonious multiculturalism.
In 2012, when a fraction of the perpetrators were brought to justice in Rochdale, former Labour MP for Keighley Ann Cryer, who had campaigned to bring the matter to light, said the girls involved had been “betrayed” and condemned to “untold misery” due to “political correctness”. Some pundits are still trying to make these cases disappear by emphasising that rape is not just perpetrated by foreigners, as though one crime scrubs out another. Musk’s crusade concerns the cover-up and whataboutery as much as the crimes.
I don’t doubt Musk’s genuine horror at the rapes and the heinous nature of the cover-up, which allowed them to continue. It’s what he calls deep empathy, not shallow empathy – looking for the real victims, not society’s preferred hierarchy of victimhood.
But this is where the limits of the billionaire’s knowledge compromise the good he hopes to do. First he thought the solution was to back the UK Reform Party’s Nigel Farage. Now he’s decided that an anti-Islam campaigner called Tommy Robinson, who had little to do with bringing the crimes to light, is the real hero here.
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There is a similar pattern to Musk’s interest and intervention in German politics. According to a recent poll, poorly managed immigration is the top issue for voters there, going into the election on February 23. Musk has thrown his support behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Like Reform, it is a challenger party on the right.
The AfD became a serious force in German politics after mass sexual assaults against women celebrating the New Year’s Eve of 2016-17 in Cologne – by a throng of men “of Arab or North African appearance”. The attacks initially went unreported in the mainstream media and were then played down, leaving many Germans feeling betrayed by their media and authorities.
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Following the assaults, the AfD made immigration its major platform for the 2017 election and became a significant player in German politics. Shocked by the fact that calling voters racist hadn’t worked to stamp out the AfD, the major parties refused to form any kind of coalition with it, pushing it further to the fringes.
Despite being ostracised, the AfD’s vote has increased, and it is now the second-largest party in Germany. In December last year, Musk published an opinion piece claiming that “only the AfD can save Germany”. He declared: “The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you?”
It’s true, Weidel isn’t Hitler by any stretch. But again, while Musk’s intention might be good, his information is incomplete. Over the past few years, the AfD has allowed in neo-Nazi elements.
His international interventions show no sign of slowing. Australia is also preparing for an election year and, given the current trajectory, it’s only a matter of time until Musk’s gaze falls upon us. Some Australians are already trying to make that happen.
But Elon Musk is not God, and his judgment is not divine or perfect. He is everyman – us, unburdened by shallow empathy, crusading on behalf of victims, but without all the answers.
We don’t need him to disrupt the stinking little hypocrisies in our politics – we know what they are. We can and should be doing it ourselves, without the pitfalls of misinformation that come from relying mainly on X for information.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.
