As Belfast erupted into violent riots following the knife attack on a man in his 40s – buildings and vehicles set alight, some with terrified people still inside – two figures did everything in their power to calm tempers and prevent further violence. Elon Musk, from his home in the United States, and Tommy Robinson, bizarrely from a luxury hotel in Russia alongside Elon Musk’s father. No, obviously not. Quite the reverse. On Tuesday’s Newsnight, Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo UK, was given approximately one minute by Victoria Derbyshire to explain what Musk is actually doing – and he used it well.
“He is obsessed with finding these cases where he can then amplify far right voices,” Hasan said. “He doesn’t just do it in England with Tommy Robinson. He does it in Germany with the AfD. He does it in the US with Twitter.”
Derbyshire: “What is he seeking to do?”
Hasan: “He’s seeking to embolden some of the worst far right voices in the Western world. That’s why he’s funding so many people all over the place. This is his agenda. It’s a very racist agenda. We see that in the US with the Republican Party. Elon Musk amplifies some of the most neo-Nazi voices on Twitter.”
And then, signing off with a line that has circulated widely since: “You can take the boy out of apartheid South Africa. Can you take apartheid South Africa out of the boy?”
What happened in Belfast – and who responded to it
As we reported in our Belfast stabbing piece, a man was left in a serious condition in hospital after a brutal attack outside an apartment complex in north Belfast. A 30-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker has been charged with attempted murder and appeared in court. The PSNI had held emergency meetings in advance, having identified that far-right figures online were calling for people to take to the streets wearing masks. Those predictions proved accurate.
The response from Musk was to do precisely what Hasan describes: identify the case, amplify it, and use it to push the pre-existing political narrative about migration. This is not a new pattern. As we reported in our Farage Nowak piece, JD Vance blamed Henry Nowak’s murder on “mass invasion of migrants” despite the killer being a British-born Sikh. As we reported in our O’Brien piece, O’Brien described the approach as a pattern of “gleeful relish at the prospect of provoking more violent responses.”
Tommy Robinson, for his part, contributed from his hotel in Russia. In Russia, alongside Musk’s father. The luxury hotel detail is doing significant work in that sentence.
The wider pattern Hasan is describing
Hasan’s point is not about Belfast specifically. It is about a documented global strategy. Musk has funded the AfD in Germany with $100 million. He has used X to amplify far-right politicians across Europe including Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen and Reform UK. He shifted his support from Reform to Restore Britain in Makerfield – as we reported in our Electoral Dysfunction analysis – after Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe was expelled from Reform for being too extreme even for Farage.
As we reported in our Owen Jones Britain headed for dictatorship piece, Jones specifically identified the role of “various rich, often foreign billionaires like Elon Musk” in the threat to democratic norms: “The amount of money they’re going to throw in is supporting… Restore, this far-right party which is a splinter from Reform, but Restore is dragging Reform even more to the right.”
Hasan’s shorthand for this – “a very racist agenda” – is blunt. The evidence he is drawing on is specific: the funding of far-right political parties across multiple countries, the amplification of neo-Nazi accounts on a platform Musk owns and controls, and the pattern of using violent incidents involving non-white suspects to generate political heat. The apartheid South Africa line is his specific interpretation of the root of that pattern.
The political context in Belfast
As we reported in our Jenrick community note piece, the political response to the Belfast attack has produced its own ironies. Robert Jenrick condemned the attack, was community-noted by X users pointing out he was Immigration Minister when the suspect was granted leave to remain. Suella Braverman was Home Secretary at the time. Both are now in Reform UK. Zia Yusuf called the attack “a direct result of treacherous Tory and Labour immigration policy.” Two members of that Tory government are now sitting beside him in the same party.
Musk’s intervention does not engage with any of this complexity. It does not need to. Its function, as Hasan identifies, is not to analyse the policy failures that led to a specific case. Its function is to find cases and amplify them – to feed the political emotion that produces the riots, the burning buildings and the terrified people inside them.
Braverman, on GB News, said she repeatedly argued for ECHR withdrawal and was “attacked, blocked and undermined” by her Conservative colleagues. She may be right about the ECHR. She was, nonetheless, Home Secretary. The man charged with the attack was granted leave to remain on her watch. Musk does not tweet about that part of the story.
One minute on Newsnight
What Hasan did in approximately sixty seconds was name the strategy clearly. Musk finds cases. He amplifies them. He does it everywhere, not just in Britain. The goal is to embolden the far right globally. It is funded. It is coordinated. It is, in Hasan’s assessment, racist.
The response to his appearance included, as reported, “a hell of a lot of racist abuse directed at Mehdi Hasan by Musk and Robinson fans.” This is, as the source material notes, not a surprise. It is also, in its way, a confirmation of everything he said.
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