Musk’s posts on British grooming gangs are rooted in a far-right conspiracy
Why has the American billionaire become fixated on historic child sex abuse in English towns?
As 2024 turned into 2025, and people across the globe woke up to hangovers and the dreaded return to work, the world’s richest man was sharing a conspiracy theory from 5,000 miles away.
In the first week of the year, Elon Musk sent dozens of posts on X (formerly Twitter), the social network he has owned since 2022, alleging complicity by the UK Labour Party in ongoing child sexual exploitation by Muslim men.
Musk’s posts include claims that a “quarter million little girls were – still are – being systematically raped by migrant gangs”, that the “snivelling cowards who allowed the mass rape of little girls are still in power”, and that the Labour Party “opposes a national inquiry on the mass rape of little girls in Britain for one reason only: it will show they are complicit.”
He has targeted individual British politicians, calling safeguarding minister Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” and claiming prime minister Keir Starmer is responsible for the “rape of Britain”.
I’ve spent close to a decade investigating far-right movements and misogyny in the UK, the US and Europe. Musk’s online activity this week could be easily dismissed as the postings of a bored billionaire who has become fixated on the politics of a country he knows little about. But it’s more than this, it is a clear and frightening demonstration of how today’s far right operates: individual influencers disseminating disinformation across international networks, underpinned by a conspiracist ideology focused on a so-called ‘white genocide’.
This latest row is part of a broader pattern of US and UK far-right extremists weaponising the very real harms done to women and girls, in order to attack democracy, whip up racist hate, and push a genocidal narrative into the mainstream.
Here’s how it happened – and why.
A mass safeguarding and justice failure
To understand Musk’s attacks, we first need to revisit the horrific child sexual exploitation that took place across numerous towns and cities in the UK during the 2000s and 2010s.
The issue hit the headlines in 2010, when five men were sent to prison for grooming teenage girls in the northern English town of Rotherham, followed by a series of arrests for similar crimes in Rochdale, a town an hour away on the outskirts of Manchester.
The arrests and subsequent convictions revealed a clear pattern of sexual exploitation, abuse and rape across the region, which had gone ignored for years. Ignored in part because, rather than seeing them as victims, police treated the girls as criminals, or as consenting to the abuse.
In 2014, a report commissioned by Rotherham Borough Council and headed by professor Alexis Jay, revealed that between 1997 and 2013 more than 1,400 children had been sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in the town, alongside multiple safeguarding and police failings.
These findings, as well as other child sexual abuse scandals, including those where white men were the perpetrators, led then-home secretary Theresa May to launch the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2014, which Jay was appointed to lead in 2016 after previous chairs stepped down.
Similar crimes were investigated in Oldham, Oxford, Telford, Bristol and other cities and towns across the UK. A recent Channel 4 News report exposed grooming and exploitation in Barrow-on-Furness, a northern port town. The details in all cases are extremely distressing.
This potted history tells us two important things. The first is that for years, groups of mainly white working-class girls were raped, exploited and trafficked by gangs of predominantly South Asian men across a range of English towns.
Second, the police and social services catastrophically failed to protect victims, often due to misogynistic and classist stereotypes that blamed the girls for the abuse perpetrated against them.
The 2014 Jay report noted that a reluctance to be seen as racist played a part in safeguarding and policing failures in Rotherham. Similar conclusions were reached in Oldham, while in other localities fears of racism were not found to be a factor.
X is “worst of both worlds”, with a mainstream audience and a free speech policy that is closer to far-right social networks
Although these crimes were pernicious, child sexual exploitation and abuse are not racialised offences. A 2020 Home Office report into ethnicity and grooming gangs found “significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending” due to “limited research on offender identity and poor quality data”.
The report said, however, that “it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending”. One in 20 children has been sexually abused in the UK, and it is worth remembering that white men remain most likely to be the perpetrators.
In 2011, solicitor Nazir Afzal was appointed as chief crown prosecutor in north-west England and began bringing those who committed child sexual exploitation to justice, including by authorising charges against the Rochdale gang that same year. This paved the way for more prosecutions: after men in Rochdale were convicted, Starmer, who was then the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, put Afzal in charge of the national response.
As director of public prosecutions, Starmer also brought in important reforms to try and avoid a repeat of these horrors in 2013: changing official guidance so police were required to investigate the suspect and not focus entirely on the credibility of the victim. He persuaded the judiciary to allocate specialist judges to these cases, reformed how victims are questioned in court, and commissioned research to prove false allegations of rape are rare.
In the same year, David Cameron’s Conservative government published a response to grooming and safeguarding that specifically praised Starmer and Afzal. It said: “Starmer has striven to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault within the criminal justice system throughout his term as director of public prosecutions … His response should provide a model to the other agencies involved in tackling localised grooming.”
This is a part of the history that Musk and his outriders have chosen to ignore, instead amplifying disinformation and spreading a conspiracy of Labour complicity in abuse.
Spiralling hate
Musk’s fixation on grooming gangs in the UK seems to have begun on 30 December, when an X account under the name Max Tempers shared a post from somebody with the username ‘Wolf of Clapham’, who had written: “People should have hung for Rotherham”.
Quoting this, Tempers posted a screenshot of the distressing sentencing details for the Oxford grooming gangs, which was in turn boosted by multiple accounts, such as those of UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin and academic Matt Goodwin. Musk also shared the post, which has now been viewed 13.3 million times.
At the same time, GB News, a right-wing channel that has been compared to Fox News in the US, reported that Jess Phillips had rejected requests from Oldham Council for a national inquiry into grooming gangs. In a letter to the local authority reportedly seen by GB News, Phillips is said to have recommended that such inquiries remain local, saying: “It is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene”.
Though this rejection of a national inquiry was the same approach the Tories took in 2022, Musk started to push conspiracy theories and disinformation about the issue, including that Phillips should be “in prison” for her decision. In reality, Phillips, one of the architects of the Domestic Abuse Act, has spent her career campaigning for women’s and girls’ safety against men’s violence and has been praised by survivors of a grooming gang in Telford for “the support and kindness” she showed to them and other victims of male violence.
The more Musk posted, the more other far-right activists and influencers got involved. An increasing number of posts focused on Tommy Robinson, an outspoken far-right activist who founded the English Defence League, an Islamophobic organisation that was active in the 2010s, and who has 1.2 million followers on X.
The term ‘genocidal rape’ is the belief that Muslim men are raping white girls in a genocidal attack on whiteness
Robinson’s own X account sent multiple posts boasting of his campaigning against grooming gangs and the “rape of Britain” – failing to mention that in 2018 he was jailed for contempt of court after his interventions nearly led to the collapse of a trial against members of a grooming gang in Huddersfield.
As far-right influencers with large followings amplified his content, they also pushed disinformation about him, focusing in particular on the 18-month sentence he is currently serving for another contempt of court offence, having breached an injunction to share false accusations about a Syrian teenage refugee.
Robinson’s supporters have wrongly claimed his sentence is linked to his outspokenness on grooming gangs, implying the state imprisoned him to ‘cover up’ sexual exploitation and rape.
Many of those making such claims are highly influential and have large followings. Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (3.5 million followers) posted that Robinson “is in prison because he refused to stop exposing Islamic child kidnapping sex rings in the UK!”. Controversial Canadian academic Jordan Peterson (5.8 million followers) posted that Robinson is “rotting in prison” after he exposed “hushed up mass rapes in the UK.” Influencer Naomi Seibt (365,000 followers) posted Robinson’s “rape of Britain” video and claimed he was put in prison “because they don’t want the world to see the full scope of their tyranny”.
Libs of TikTok (an X account with 3.9 million followers) shared a video of Robinson talking about rape gangs with the caption “and now they threw him [in] prison”, again making an inaccurate link between the video content and Robinson’s contempt of court offence. The Austrian co-founder of the far-right Identitarian movement, Martin Sellner (103,000 followers) posted that Robinson’s “treatment & the gruesome Arab r4pe-gangs” was now getting “the attention they deserve” (the gangs in question were not “Arab”).
According to Joe Mulhall, director of research at HOPE Not Hate, a British anti-racism advocacy group, X has been fundamental in helping rebuild Robinson’s reach after he was previously deplatformed from multiple social media platforms. It has also helped to boost his profile among the US far right.
Mulhall described how X is “the worst of both worlds” in that it has a mainstream reach and audience, while operating a free speech and moderation policy that is closer to the bespoke social networks – such as Gab or Truth Social – set up by the far right. As such, it allows extremist content to infiltrate and influence mainstream discourse.
The disinformation shared on X in recent days has not been confined to Robinson’s criminal history, nor his false claims to have exposed the rape gang scandal, which was in reality covered comprehensively in The Times and elsewhere.
Musk and other far-right figures have repeated an allegation made in the House of Lords that 250,000 girls had been raped by “migrant gangs”. Making the claim, former UKIP leader Malcolm Pearson, who now sits in the Lords as an independent, said the figure was based on extrapolating the number of victims in Rotherham, Telford and Oxford on a national scale, though there is no statistical basis for extrapolating crimes based on specific local factors to a national scale.
The dubious statistic was picked up by Robinson and echoed by US podcaster Don Keith, who demanded mayor of London Sadiq Khan (whom he wrongly called “the mayor of Britain”) explain what and when he knew “about rape jihad in his domain”. Khan is not responsible for local government or policing outside of London and has no jurisdiction over any of the towns where this abuse took place.
The disinformation was also widened to include the much-repeated and debunked conspiracy theory that Starmer failed to prosecute BBC TV star Jimmy Savile in 2009, after Surrey Police investigated three allegations that he had sexually abused young girls. In 2012, the year after Savile’s death at age 84, it emerged that he had abused hundreds of people, mostly children, throughout his life.
In a post that has racked up 17 million views, Musk urged his followers to “connect the dots”, sharing a video in which David Duke-endorsing antisemite Ken O’Keefe claimed Starmer “signed off” on a decision that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Savile.
While Starmer was head of England and Wales’ Crown Prosecution Service at the time, he was not the reviewing lawyer for the case and there is no evidence that he was personally involved in the decision. An official investigation commissioned by Starmer in 2013 criticised both prosecutors and police for their handling of the allegations.
The ideology
That Musk referred to Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” exposes how this attack is rooted in far-right ideology and conspiracy.
The term ‘genocidal rape’ is the belief that Muslim men are raping white girls in a genocidal attack on whiteness – an attempt at replacement, with the implication being that the gangs intended to impregnate white girls and ‘pollute’ the gene pool.
Other far-right influencers, such as Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who self-defines as a “shield maiden of the right” and has a million followers, used the term “genocidal rape”. Don Keith referred to a “rape holocaust”.
Genocide is central to modern far-right ideology and at the heart of the Great Replacement – a baseless conspiracy theory that posits white people are being ‘replaced’ by migrant people from the Global South. The replacement is supposedly being aided by ‘cultural Marxists’, an antisemitic term encompassing everyone from ‘liberal elites’ to the BBC, human rights lawyers, feminists, LGBTIQ+ people and Black Lives Matter activists.
Sian Norris
Musk has pushed the Great Replacement theory, as have Robinson and other far-right influencers such as James Goddard, who this week urged his 28,000 followers to stop “white Brits from being replaced” and claimed that Labour is “pro rape gang.”
The term ‘rape genocide’ signals that the far right believes the appalling crimes committed by grooming gangs were an act of white genocide, in which Labour – or the left more broadly – was complicit. Similarly, terms such as the 'rape of the UK' evoke a violation of whiteness, an attempt to seize or take away (the archaic meaning of 'rape') the UK from white people.
Within the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, this places those falsely blamed for being ‘complicit’ – people such as Starmer (former human rights lawyer) and Phillips (feminist) – as ‘traitors’ to the nation/race. And what happens to traitors?
A post by US far-right influencer Mike Cernovich dog-whistled a second aspect of modern far-right ideology: Satanic abuse and QAnon. This is another baseless conspiracy theory that believes ‘elites’ are trafficking children and drinking their blood as a source of adrenochrome – a hormone that apparently offers immortality. QAnon, a US far-right conspiracy theory and political movement, urges its followers to ‘save the children’ from these ‘elites’. Cernovich posted in the context of a discussion on rape gangs that “the UK elite are pathetic, they look like blood drinkers”.
Once you understand that the far right is obsessed with “saving the children” to prevent a so-called white genocide, you can start to understand why its focus is on the South Asian rape gangs scandal, not rape and sexual abuse more broadly. There is little comment from the far right on a Cornish rape gang led by white men, or the West Midlands child sex abuse inquiry where the majority of the perpetrators were white. The exception to this is Savile, where the focus tends to be on 'elites', the BBC, and a ‘cover-up’.
The far right has also failed to reckon with its own record of sexual violence, including child sex offences.
HOPE not hate found there “have been at least 20 members and supporters [of the English Defence League, [the organisation founded by Robinson] convicted of child sexual exploitation offences. At least 10 of these were active in the EDL while [Robinson] was still leading it.” HOPE Not Hate went on to state: “While we are not suggesting that [Robinson] had any knowledge of these awful crimes, we can find no examples of him condemning these supporters once their crimes came to light.”
HOPE Not Hate further found that far-right extremist Andrew McIntyre, who was imprisoned for his involvement in the racist riots that raged across much of the UK last summer, has a record of making graphic rape threats. According to HOPE Not Hate, this includes messages on Telegram such as: “I wish to let [redacted] know that I intend to brutally violate her and then bleed her to death”. Musk criticised his prison sentence.
The far right also waged war against feminists and MeToo, claiming the movement was a witch hunt against men in general. Many of its members support men such as Andrew Tate, who is accused of trafficking underage girls (allegations that he denies). Musk oversees a platform where rape threats flourish. And the tech billionaire is working with Donald Trump, even after a judge in New York found a rape allegation made against the incoming president to be “substantially true”.
These are not the actions of a movement that seriously cares about men’s violence against women and girls.
The far right is built on male supremacy, determined to restore a fascistic natural order where women are subordinate to men. Members argue that domestic abuse is permissible and its political parties want to overturn laws protecting women and girls from gender-based violence. It is a movement that is concerned about rape committed by Black and minority ethnic men because it sees such crimes as a form of genocide against white people. It has nothing to say to victims and survivors of male violence.
The tragedy is that thousands of victims of child sexual exploitation and rape gangs have never seen justice, whatever their ethnicity and the ethnicity of their perpetrators. Millions of women and girls endure the horror that their rapists will never go to prison and they will never receive redress. Men continue to rape women and girls with impunity and rape prosecutions are less than 5%.
The far right has no answers for this, as it sees sexual violence only through the prism of race and a genocidal conspiracy theory, not the misogyny and male power which its movement valorises.
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