Musk has spent days beefing with politicians over the far-right unrest sweeping the UK.

*Musk has spent days beefing with politicians over the far-right unrest sweeping the UK. *

Elon Musk could be summoned for a grilling by British MPs over X’s role in race riots that have rocked the U.K. over the last week, as well as his own incendiary comments about the violence.

Labour MPs Chi Onwurah and Dawn Butler, who are competing to chair parliament’s science, innovation and technology committee, both told POLITICO they’d press the billionaire X owner and other technology executives to answer questions about the role of social media platforms amid mounting unrest in the U.K.

Musk has spent days beefing with British politicians over the riots, and is locked in a war of words with Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the U.K’s handling of them. Musk on Sunday wrote “civil war is inevitable” in the U.K. and claimed that the response by U.K. police has been “one-sided."

    • Will420@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Added to the false narrative that the killer of three little girls at a Taylor Swift themed party at a holiday daycare center. Was a migrant who had just gotten off a small boat and was on an MI5/MI6 watchlist. Which has ledt to a few relatively sporadic race riots from the far right. And now saying that Civil War in the UK is inevitable.

  • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Yeeeeah no. As much as I despise musk, the UK doesn’t get to call a US citizen into parliment, we fought a war about that one.

    (So uh, just as an aside, go after his business interests. You’ll nail that fucker to the wall if you snag his UK investments. We haven’t gotten around to fighting the war against capitalism…)

    • Will420@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      As a businessman with major companies operating in the UK. Who is inciting racial hatred and riots. Parliament has a right to request him to appear. I don’t believe that they can even order a UK private citizen to appear before them. Unless they’re a civil servant.

    • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Capitalism has been fought and defeated many times. Each time it went just about as well as beating medicare.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      There’s a difference between a request and a subpoena. Right now They’re discussing basically politely asking. If they want to subpoena him they’ll have to make an extradition request, at which point America will look over the details of the case and decide if they want to cooperate. It happens literally all the time. Sometimes we cooperate. Sometimes we don’t. Usually because Britain is our ally, we cooperate.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      You do realize that Musk is a citizen of two commonwealth countries (in addition to the fact that parliament can demand whatever the fuck they want - and that doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen).

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      the UK doesn’t get to call a US citizen into parliment, we fought a war about that one.

      I know American history classes suck, but I didn’t realize they sucked this badly.

      Parliament can call summon anyone they like anywhere in the world. Whether or not the person they summon is required to go depends on local laws.

      Believe it or not, even if the U.S. had a “you can’t summon us to parliament, so there” clause in the Constitution, the British could say “fuck your constitution” and do the summoning anyway.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Dude has rot in his brain like damn. Yes he can always just run away, but that wont improve his situation. If you dont answer when you are accused, the sentencing will happen without you. If the UK and EU ban twitter, he wont like that, so its in his own best interest to show up.

        If you wanna do business somewhere, you will answer to the laws of that place or deal with the consequences.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          Sure, I was speaking in more general terms about the bizarre claim that we fought a war to stop the UK Parliament from summoning Americans.

          • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            I mean… That was one of our formal complaints that all criminal trials in colonial American times happened in England instead of locally before a jury of peers, but to ignore the entire legal tradition of jurisdiction and extradition to focus entirely on that is… Dumb. Even then I’m pretty sure Patrick Henry would agree if Elon Musk committed a crime in London, where he should be tried is London. The argument the thread starter is making requires ignoring what the actual formal complaints was and instead flattening it into a simplified version that basically translates to “lol england bad”

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          Musk is a narcissist, so he’s probably thining the UK wouldn’t dare ban Twitter, now that he’s made it so awesome.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Ah hell, you make one deeply drunken joke and suddenly you’re at -25…

        FWIW, the US does have a whole host of laws and various treaty clauses that dictate US citzens cant be held to account by a foreign power without either US government consent or consent of the party. Our extradition and criminal parity treaties mean that, in criminal cases, we might let a citizen be tried outside of the US, but calling a US citizen is really really difficult to pull off. Thats what I was referring to when I said “we fought a war”. The UK government cannot compel him to testify, by hundred-year-old-treaty, without US consent.

        But calling a US citizen to testify in front of a foreign legislative power is 100%, by both treaty and hegemony, entirely consensual on the part of the called party. Musk can just say no, and there’s nothing that can be done without getting the buy-off from the state dpt, which… we’re an oligopoly, we’re not going to hand over a billionare.

        HOWEVER the UK is entirely able to hold his business interests and investments ransom, which would be highly effective. If parliment is serious about this they’ll do that, but since I have no more faith in the UK government than my own (okay a little more, the US is in a bad place, the tories would honestly be a step up in most states) I absolutely do not expect them to go after musk in a way that even slightly might work. Which I would love to be proven wrong about, please, some government hold this asshole to account.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Can’t they call him in due to him being the owner of the company and stoking racist riots via that companies only product in attempt to destabilize their government?

      Tho I guess you really only could request it. Unless Twitter is doing actual business in the UK, which for adverts and now with the pay outs for tweeting, they probably are. But even then, one would probably only get the bootlicking CEO Yackinasackarino.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        They can call him in for having a K in his name. They could summon Vladimir Putin if they wanted. There’s no restrictions on who they can summon as far as I know.

  • somenonewho@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Less to the point of the article and more to it’s wording:

    Why the fuck do they call it “race riots” as far as I can tell there are a bunch of rioting fascists and then a broad group of people (refugees, local citizens and Antifa) trying to defend places or stop the riots. This is not a black vs white fight this fight is between fascism and anti-fascism (or at least democracy)

    • devnev@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Why do you think it’s more fascist or than racist? The political “right” of the UK is incredibly anti-immigrant, you can see that in how they’ve voted for MPs and Brexit. The racial hate is more noticeable towards brown people, i.e. anyone looking anything from Arab to south Asian, there’s even the p-word that comes close (but isnt quite) the equivalent of the n-word.

      • Kiernian@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        The word that’s the first four letters of a country’s name is that serious of an insult now?

        I’m a yank so I’m pretty out of touch on this but I was under the apparently mistaken impression that it was no more serious than calling an Irishman a mick or a paddy (neither of which are awesome but don’t approach the derogatory ferocity of the T- word for Roman Catholic Irish).

        • BluesF@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          I would advise not doing that in Ireland. Anyway, yes, p*** has a comparable if not so extreme or long history as the n-word in the UK.

      • somenonewho@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Sorry I didn’t mean to imply that the Nazis aren’t racist I definitely know that. For me it’s just a different framing between “There are Race riots” (i.e. riots/fights between racial identies) vs fascist/racists rioting because of their racists reasons (and people fighting them in a (self)defense way. I hope I made clear what I meant.

        • devnev@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          I see what you mean, thanks. Maybe of interest, the Oxford English dictionary defines a race riot as “a public outbreak of violence due to racial antagonism”, much less specific than your definition which I imagine is America-based, so I think this might be a difference between American and European use of the term.

  • frunch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Love how this guy’s one of the richest people in the world yet he’s got nothin better to do than fuck with the common folk. Guess he doesn’t get enough attention at home, so here we are watching him stoke racism and stupidity to entertain his pathetic insecure self

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      It’s actually so much simpler than that. He’s tweaked the Twitter algorithm to serve more right wing brain rot for engagement and, being a habitual user, rotted his own fucking brain more and more. He’s indirectly self radicalizing. He’s getting high on his own supply.

      At least zuck doesn’t actually use that shithole called Facebook.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Love how this guy’s one of the richest people in the world yet he’s got nothin better to do than fuck with the common folk.

      to entertain his pathetic insecure self

      To those who have finished watching the first season of Squid Game, this observation is prescient.

      Capitalism replaced feudalism; and the new aristocrats are the billionaires.

  • nifty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Under what law would the UK govt do this though? I am not sure it’s a great idea since Musk is a private citizen and not a government actor. Would any govt then extend this precedent to any viral comment? Like the person who made the JD Vance couch comment?

    OTOH, Musk is in a unique position because of his money and influence, that a normal commentator does not have. So I don’t know, but seems like a legal quagmire.

    If however Musk is shown to funnel money to UK PACs persons or parties via any means, then the UK govt has a case to question him as a hostile foreign operator. But otherwise it seems like a tricky scenario. Perhaps the same legalities around the Assange case extend to this? But Assange was a sympathetic figure in many respects. I am not sure Musk has the same freedom of press and speech justifications.

    • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I think it’s more over the fact that he runs the platform and therefore if his platform helped stoke the flames that caused this then it’s completely valid for him to be brought in to be questioned about his involvement and what X will do in the future to combat racism and misinformation.

        • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          Yeah the answer is obviously nothing cause it’s Elon but still it’s the same type of thing when the US brings in people like Zuckerberg to talk about what their platforms are doing.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Free speech in the UK does not include hate speech or inciting violence, so that’s probably all they need, doesn’t matter that he’s an individual, in fact it probably makes it much simpler since that makes it not a diplomatic issue.

  • Etterra@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    I doubt they could do it since Musky is a US citizen. I didn’t know the laws for this kind of thing though, so maybe they could with the right kind of legalese?

    • UniquesNotUseful@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      They have some powers, they got upset at Facebook and decided to flex a bit by sending one of the boys around, to invite one of his mates for a chat.

      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers

      The person sent was the serjeant at arms. They carry a sword. Doubt they took it out but they also carry one of the House of Commons maces, which is gold covered and jewel encrusted, about 1.5m (4.9ft) long and weighs roughly 10kg (22 lbs).

      Imagine some large, pissed off looking dude, dressed like he’s from the year 1415, kicking your hotel door in because you didn’t RSPV properly. Then being told hand over documents or we may stick you in jail (and you know the pretended it would be the Tower of London).

      The 1,000 yard stare he must get when asked if he enjoyed London and how lovely that history must be.

    • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I guess he can ignore a court summons, but then he can never enter the UK again, which he might want to do at some point.

  • BrightCandle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    He has clearly been inciting the riots online. Treat him like all the other instigators of this and put out an arrest warrant for terrorism. He should stand in a court room and answer for his actions like everyone else, the billions shouldn’t mean he gets to talk to parliament first.

  • jaemo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Shitheels has a fucking opinion on how to run everything it seems. Clear sign he should run nothing, since the only thing being actually run is his fucking mouth.