Is Elon Musk Being EXTRADITED?!

Right, so Keir Starmer being dead set on waging war against so-called keyboard warriors who are to blame for inciting riots in the UK won’t just stand for people actually in the UK, but could apparently land people abroad in hot water too and of course Starmer’s most public spat on such matters has very much been with somebody based abroad, a certain Elon Musk. Now Musk has certainly been abusing his lofty position on this score and as much as I’ve spoken about how Starmer might abuse such legislation to gag legitimate freedom of expression and freedom of speech to curtail such riot inducing nonsense, that isn’t to say there are not legitimate cases for prosecution in relation to actual comments made designed to incite riots however and in that regard Musk dropped himself in a spot of bother and it does highlight the problems a lack of legislation to govern social media can bring. Musk owns Twitter. He might call it X these days, but it’ll always be the bird site to most of us, and through that he’s pretty much above all of us in what he can get away with saying. However by deleting the offensive and inciteful tweet he put out, it begs the question of whether he is truly above the law as it were and could we actually see the guy extradited for his actions?
Right, so the riots up and down the country have been incited, have been committed and people have been arrested and charged with offences in relation to that, having cross the line of freedom of expression, I suppose given some of what we’ve witnessed, that seems a bit of an understatement, but we’re talking in legislative terms here on this one.
We have protected freedom of expression in the UK which of course includes freedom of speech, but also extends to protesting, gestures, it’s all in the ECHR. But this isn’t an absolute protected right, it’s one of those rights that comes with a sense of responsibility and depends on the situation being referred to, it obviously doesn’t extend to hate speech and incitement to riots as is the case here, posts causing anxiety, fear, stoking hatred, such actions might also fall afoul of the communications act, which does cover social media platforms.
Where do you draw lines of distinction? A litany of harassment or abusiveness versus an extended conversation which might get a bit tetchy, turns into a bit of a thread, is it enough to just be annoying, or does it have to be more than that, the communications act itself not having been designed to police freedom of expression despite it ending up being used as such in cases concerning social media, cases that have been successful, but equally cases that have been completely quashed too.
Annoying isn’t enough, inciting violence or hatred, is wrong in law, there’s provision for that under the human rights act, under the ECHR, the law will intervene and we’ve seen examples of that exposed in these riots, the woman who spread a false name in relation to the Southport attack being arrested, hotels being named for housing asylum seekers to incite others to target them in some way, those doing that should face consequences for doing that, for driving the hatred, but equally so should those who have encouraged such narratives to propagate, the Farage’s of this world yes, the Douglas Murray’s the mainstream media, but also Starmer himself is not absolved having targeted people, Bengalis notably during the general election, ignoring Muslim organisations whilst running to pro Israeli ones and of course it does bring us to Elon Musk as well in what he’s said in regard to actions here versus the US law, which as a US citizen actually governs him.
Musk put out a tweet, which he later deleted, claiming that Keir Starmer was planning on building detainment camps for rioters on the Falkland Islands. Now having grown up in apartheid South Africa as a white man, I’d imagine Musk knows more about such things than Starmer does. Musk has been goading Starmer for days though, also saying the country is facing inevitable civil war and in my view the most offensive thing that Musk has said, every inch a racist himself frankly, when he said the Starmer government wouldn’t tolerate attacks on Muslims and mosques and why isn’t he concerned about all communities.
This is the language of incitement surely? Never mind Musk has got it completely backwards with Starmer, he should read the Forde Report to realise Starmer prioritises antisemitism over all other forms of racism, but it encourages more attacks on those same communities already under assault and living in fear and given Musk owns the platform he’s using to spread such filth, this is clearly an abuse of his position, so how can he be held to account? Does it not just encourage Starmer to be as authoritarian as he wants to be with social media, with Musk giving him the excuse? Certainly Met Police boss Mark Rowley has said as much about offences caused by so-called keyboard warriors as he put it, no matter where they were, that the police here in the UK would be coming after them in an interview with Sky News. Musk called him a craven two-tiered coward in response, clearly not bothered about the law coming for him, but is he too big to be above the law and if Starmer chose to try to extradite him would it happen?
Well Musk deleting his tweet concerning these purported detainment camps amongst the penguins on the Falklands certainly did get deleted but ultimately, and this is according to the Black Belt Barrister YouTube channel, who have done an excellent video covering this issue in much more detail, got hold of a US barrister to explain the in’s and out’s, Musk probably won’t be facing extradition to the UK over his actions. As entertaining as it might be to see it happen, you can imagine the hoops Musk might leap through to avoid it and certainly has the cash to fight it, it’s probably off the table.
That isn’t to say that the UK wouldn’t necessarily have a case to seek extradition, in theory a case of extradition on the basis of incitement to commit lawless action is how this US barrister would conceivably see matters playing out, specifically in relation to Musk’s civil war comment as this charge would be, so he sees that comment as being criminal in that sense I suppose, and sees this as how the CPS might choose to proceed and certainly Starmer with his background – albeit his competence in that also questionable – might argue this publicly if there at all seems any likelihood of pursuing such a course of action.
However the barrister also warns this wouldn’t be successful, because in his view the words were not inciteful, they were simply a warning of what will happen under Starmer given his handling of the rioting, which at that point, was pretty non existent, Starmer was not handling the situation well. Civil disobedience I would contest is going to become more likely should Starmer fail to make people feel meaningfully better off with continuity Toryism and austerity to come and with such warnings of cuts coming in the soon to come autumn budget, I’m certainly minded that way.
Musk’s comment as crass and unhelpful as it was regarding potential civil war, I read as an observation as well, the problem is all the anti migrant rhetoric will have people continuing to target ethnic minorities, migrants and the such like as the ones at fault, but it’s the Farage’s and the Starmer’s and the Jenrick’s and the Braverman’s doing that far more than Elon Musk. He’s just a rich prat with too much time on his hands, the real damage is being done on these shores and by our politicians in no small way. If people continue to feel worse off, it’ll be men in suits making us that way, but telling us all it’s the migrants who just turned up that morning on a beach in Kent who have made their lives hell for years.
Where according to our laws and our freedom of expression Musk’s words can be interpreted perhaps as incitement, no such provision exists in US law, so no extradition attempt would work.
So all in all, unless Musk drops himself in it further and his deletion of his latest stupid comment suggests somebody has suggested he tone things down – for how long who knows? But at the moment it would seem he’s not really in any bother, so no need to get too excited.
There will be a lot of hard man posturing, there will no doubt be people hauled in for incitement given their own words, but as I’ve said on previous riot videos, that should include the politicians too and not least Keir Starmer himself. He needs a long hard look in his own mirror for his own words, his own conduct, the offence he has caused and the possible contribution those words have made towards leading to the violence and attacks we’re still bearing witness to right now.
Starmer himself absolutely has to be held accountable for his actions as much as anyone else. For as much as extraditions seem all tough talk right now and make Starmer look good in the press, his own actions need holding to account, nobody is above the law and neither is he and that is a message that must not be lost as we condemn those throwing bricks on the street as much as those inciting violence online either. All of this is political and politicians must be made to take responsibility too, a novelty for Starmer as I’m sure that would be, a man who takes no responsibility for anything going wrong and I’m minded to think that anything Musk might have said about rioting here, he wasn’t the one who said Israel have the right to starve the people of Gaza or turn the power off to them. Get more on political incitement here in the UK in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.