Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, called Green Party leader Zack Polanski a “scumbag and a traitor” on X this week after Polanski labelled him a threat to British democracy in the context of the Belfast riots. Polanski replied. His post attracted three times as many likes as Musk’s. “Time for him to pipe down,” Polanski wrote.
How it started
Musk shared an inflammatory post about “murderous migrants” as violence was breaking out on the streets of Belfast following the knife attack on Stephen Ogilvie. As we reported in our Hasan Musk piece, Mehdi Hasan told Newsnight that Musk “is obsessed with finding these cases where he can then amplify far right voices,” describing it as “a very racist agenda” that operates consistently across Germany, England and the United States.
Polanski’s response to Musk’s post was direct. “Blaming a group of people for the awful actions of an individual leads us to a very dark place. Musk, Lowe, Farage, Robinson – these men don’t give a s**t about this country, they want to rip us apart.”
As we reported in our Polanski Yusuf piece, Polanski had already condemned Zia Yusuf’s “some cultures are MUCH better than others” post as “the kind of thing that was said about the Jews in the 1930s,” and called Reform “playing with fire.” The Musk post was a continuation of the same argument: these figures are not responding to violence, they are generating the conditions for it.
Musk’s response
A Musk fan accused Polanski of being the one who didn’t care about UK citizens. Musk liked the sentiment and added his own: he called Polanski “a scumbag and a traitor.”
“Scumbag and traitor” from the world’s richest man to an elected leader, for the offence of calling for calm and accusing Musk of trying to rip the country apart. As we reported in our Owen Jones dictatorship piece, Jones specifically identified “various rich, often foreign billionaires like Elon Musk” as central to the threat to British democratic norms – funding far-right parties, owning the platform used to amplify violence and using that platform to attack anyone who pushes back.
Polanski is neither a scumbag nor a traitor. He is the leader of a political party that won seats in the last general election and has been increasing its vote share. He asked for calm during a riot. The man calling him a traitor lives in the United States and has funded the German far-right with $100 million.
Polanski’s reply
“Elon Musk can say what he likes about me but I won’t stay silent whilst foreign tech billionaires, money earned off the backs of real workers, try to interfere in our democracy, incite violence in our communities and tear apart our country.”
“Time for him to pipe down.”
Several things make this response effective. First, it does not respond to the “scumbag and traitor” insult directly – it elevates above it. Second, “money earned off the backs of real workers” is a specific and pointed framing of where Musk’s wealth comes from – Tesla’s manufacturing workforce, SpaceX’s engineers, the workers on whose labour the fortune was built before he bought himself a platform and started calling political opponents traitors. Third, “pipe down” is specifically good. Not “stop” or “back off” – pipe down. The language of someone telling an overexcited child to settle.
The post attracted three times as many likes as Musk’s. Polanski, in the parlance of the platform Musk owns, ratioed him.
The broader pattern
This exchange is one data point in a larger picture. As we reported in our Hasan Musk piece, Hasan ended his Newsnight explanation of Musk’s approach with: “You can take the boy out of apartheid South Africa. Can you take apartheid South Africa out of the boy?” A foreign billionaire using the platform he owns to amplify violence in British streets, attack the elected politicians who call for calm and describe them as traitors is not, on any reading, someone who is doing this because he cares about Britain. As Polanski put it: these men “want to rip us apart.”
Polanski told him to pipe down. Three times as many people agreed with Polanski as agreed with Musk.
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