Musk’s game — why you shouldn’t believe everything you read about the UK grooming gang scandal

Elon Musk lays traps with his deft tweets. 

The tech billionaire’s set-up goes something like this: choose a controversial topic that gives you traction; throw in a few divisive characters; spice it up with rage; add optional half-truths; manufacture a false solution – like directing blame and loathing at the chosen target; press post; repeat several times; then sit back and wait for commentators and retweeters to take the bait and create your desired distraction and division.

Musk most recently inserted himself into the UK child sex abuse tragedy – the so-called grooming gangs scandal – through remarks on his social media platform, X. On the surface his tweets seem to reflect outrage over the lack of justice for 1,400 girls who were victims of a brutal sex abuse and grooming scandal that rocked Britain in 2011. 

This came to light after an investigation by The Times that year, exposing grooming gangs active in North England and the Midlands, most notably Rochdale, Oldham and Rotherham, from around 1997. The newspaper article series found that the children, some as young as 11, were targeted in public spaces, befriended then abused, brutalised and groomed for sexual exploitation.

The gangs were made up of mostly British Pakistani men and their victims were white British girls from vulnerable backgrounds. This racialised dynamic fit perfectly for Musk to amplify race hate, Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Musk’s tweets are a follow-on from his earlier X tirades directed at senior members of the ruling Labour party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer which started in July 2024. At that time the far-right Southport riots swept across England and Northern Ireland. This came in the wake of fatal stabbings at a children’s dance class. Misinformation spread on social media claimed that the suspect was an illegal migrant.  

It led to Starmer calling out Musk’s social media platform for fuelling misinformation and inciting violence and public rioting. He said at the time that “violent disorder was clearly whipped up online”. 

Musk doubled down. Exploiting the already combustible claims, Musk’s tweets supported swirling sentiments that police were soft on the left-wing and Islamic protesters but heavy-handed with white working-class protesters. 

Added to this, Musk has deliberately conflated the grooming gang scandal with support for the prominent far-right, anti-Islam campaigner Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson. 

Robinson is currently serving an 18-month jail sentence for contempt of court for repeating false claims made against a teenaged Syrian refugee that he first targeted in 2018. Robinson repeated his false claim that the teenager was violent, especially towards white girls, to his millions of Facebook followers. He also screened a video titled Silenced during a protest in Trafalgar Square in 2024, rehashing his claims against the teenager. 

Robinson was banned from Twitter but Musk reinstated his account when he bought the platform in 2022. In early January Musk called for Robinson to be released, apparently on the grounds that he believes Robinson to be a kind of political prisoner bravely speaking out on issues like the grooming gang scandal.

But Robinson’s jail time is for contempt of court, not for commentary on the grooming gang. Musk ignored this fact. 

Musk falsely accuses media and UK government of ignoring scandal

Majority of grooming gang members in UK are white males