Elon Musk shared a fake Telegraph article claiming Keir Starmer is considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detention camps” in the Falkland Islands.
Musk deleted the post about 30 minutes later. Screenshot taken by Politics.co.uk It is suggested that the video had nearly 2 million views before it was removed.
In it, Musk shared an image posted by Ashley Simon, co-leader of the far-right group Britain First, with the caption: “We will all be deported to the Falkland Islands.”
The fake article, purportedly written by a senior Telegraph news reporter and styled to resemble the paper, said that camps in the Falkland Islands would be used to hold prisoners from the ongoing riots because the UK prison system is already at capacity.
The Telegraph said on Thursday it had never published the story in question. A Telegraph Media Group spokesman said in a statement: “This is a fabricated headline for a story that doesn't exist. We have notified the relevant platforms and asked them to remove the story.”
In a post about X, the paper said: “We are aware that an image circulating purporting to be a Telegraph article about 'emergency detention centres' on X. The Telegraph has never published such an article.”
Musk has not apologized for sharing the fake report, but has continued to share material criticizing the UK government and law enforcement response to the riots.
The Guardian contacted Mr X for comment but received an automated response saying: “We're busy at the moment, please check back later.”
On Thursday, Musk said Share the Sky News interview Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, said officers were searching social media for content that incited racial hatred. “This is something that is really happening,” Musk said. In another post about the same clip:Musk called Parkinson a “woke Stasi.”
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Musk has been embroiled in a spat with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and British police authorities after saying a “civil war is inevitable” in response to anti-immigration protests in England and Northern Ireland and claiming the police response had been “one-sided”.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said this week there was “no justification” for the comments. In response, Mr Musk has repeatedly attacked Mr Starmer on his platform, branding him a “second-rate keel”.
Musk, the billionaire co-founder of Tesla, SpaceX and the payments platform X.com that later became PayPal, bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. Last year, he renamed it X. The direction Twitter has taken under his leadership has sparked a series of controversies, including accusations that it has not taken harmful content seriously enough.
The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospitals NHS Trust said in a post on Thursday that after 13 years running X's account it was closing it because the platform “no longer aligns with the trust's values”. The trust directed followers to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
This week, Musk announced he was suing a group of advertisers and major corporations for illegally agreeing not to advertise on X.
Source: www.theguardian.com
