Not for the first time, I have found myself idly dreaming what it would be like to be worth over $220 billion. Would I retire off to a yacht somewhere and watch socialism destroy Britain all over again? Or would I act like Tesla/SpaceX/Twitter owner Elon Musk, and use my financial invulnerability to say the truth as I saw it?

Like a Mario Karter with an invincibility power-up, Musk ploughs into the banana skins and oil slicks of public controversies to clear a path for others to follow. So it was that he interacted with the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, on X:

Starmer: “We will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities.”

Musk: “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?”

Given the violence we have now seen meted out against white Britons by Muslim-constituted armed militias, which followed the completely unacceptable violence caused by white knuckle-draggers against people and property across the UK, this ought not be a controversial question. 

Alas, this has given establishment politicians and commentators another distraction to focus on, in our desperation to not confront the deep, broiling social and cultural sicknesses in Britain. Rather than engaging with the message, everyone from the Prime Minister down wants to blame the messenger, and blame the platform formerly known as Twitter for showing people what is going on in the streets of Britain. On both sides.

In a Britain that is moving to an Ottoman-style millet system of sectarian communities (perfectly described by Sam Bidwell in these pages), to try to suggest that we should all be treated as “one-nation” is akin to a hate crime. It has somehow become unacceptable in some circles to dare to suggest we should all integrate and downplay differences.

The assaults on Musk have been relentless. Former Lib Dem Leader Tim Farron was quick to attack — Magikarp to Musk’s Mewtwo. He said “There is no excuse for being such an utter berk about this. I’m white and a Christian…. I’m concerned about attacks on the communities that are actually *being* attacked”. This would have seemed unsavoury in the aftermath of the Southport killings and seems absurd after the events in Birmingham.

One of Musk’s strengths in this debate is that journalists are so addicted to Twitter that its presence has warped their brains

Musk says it like he sees it. He goes so far as to tag “Community Notes” to things he’s not sure about. This involves open-source fact-checking among users as a means of self-policing, and Musk always allows his own messages to be subjected to the same scrutiny that anyone else is liable to face for tweeting out mistruths. I have never, ever seen a politician or journalist welcome such immediate and brutal scrutiny, and likely never will.

One of Musk’s strengths in this debate is that journalists are so addicted to Twitter that its presence has warped their brains. David Aaronovitch thinks that Musk has immense power with no accountability. David, there are plenty of other websites you can switch to. You can just put the phone down and log off Twitter for a bit. Go outside. Touch some grass.

Jessica Simor, a lawyer who gives a bad name to KCs everywhere, thinks parliament should pass an Act to ban Twitter in the UK, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is doing her best to prove Musk right when he wonders if the UK is turning into the Soviet Union. 

This is the same instinct that wanted to ban the printing presses rather than engage with the ideas they were disseminating. It also proves why Musk’s freeing of Twitter from the cold grip of the censors was such a boon for Western society. Rather than allow internal content moderators or charlatans like Hope Not Hate to inform polite society of the “acceptable” range of opinions, and uphold the progressive line, the boisterousness of the online public square has ushered in an uncomfortable, disquieting, but fundamentally essential new age for freedom of expression. 

More challenging to defend was Musk’s assertion that civil war was inevitable. I obviously don’t think that’s going to happen here, but I suspect Musk’s point was more about how people would react to a continuation of the two-tier response from government, police, and media.

Musk comes from South Africa, where the horrors of apartheid were followed by only a brief period of ‘rainbow nation’ solidarity. “Kill the boer, kill the farmer” is an actual slogan chanted by supporters of a political party. People move from gated compound to gated compound with private security because of the breakdown in law and order. 

Musk has also just left California, in part because of the lawlessness defiling that great state. If Britain were to become more like either of these places, I’m not sure how different it would feel to an end of civil society as we currently enjoy it.

My old boss, Nadhim Zahawi, absolutely understands the need for more dialogue and debate, rather than less. Going from vaccine hero to tax villain, he knows both the glory and goriness of free expression. As he said in The Times this week:

Where there are tensions, we should be fearless in working through them. For example, my great grand uncle, Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, was a poet who criticised the veil as a social ill in 1920s Iraq. If that could be debated there, we surely have the ability to discuss all sorts of issues of integration in a constructive manner.

Is it uncomfortable to talk about integration, religion and race? Of course. But this is not a dinner party. This is the social fabric of our country we are talking about. The potential prize is a multiracial society at ease with itself, able to attract the best talent around the world and integrate it into the best country in the world. That would allow us to focus on raising families, building businesses, and becoming an interplanetary species that can fly to Mars. I’m grateful that Musk had freed the public sphere; without him we would likely have seen only one side of the violence of this past week.