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According to the feverish visions of some in the US at the moment, England has undergone a radical transformation. Gone are all those entrancingly acerbic dowager duchesses, curtseying maids, wizards and crumpets. Right now, asylum-seeking grooming gangs are roaming the North unchecked, while in Londonistan, the Metropolitan Police takes its instructions from Mullahs. Communist judges are throwing middle-aged mothers into prison for having senior moments on Facebook; busts of Winston Churchill are festooned with pride flags; and Keir Starmer is rarely seen upright, preferring to take the knee wherever possible.
To the presumed horror of the English tourist board, Elon Musk has joined in, taking a break from trying to set off nuclear bombs on Mars by putting a metaphorical one under the discourse here instead. According to him, the UK is now beset by “two-tier justice” and “civil war is inevitable”. Over the past fortnight, he has sent out a stream of posts and memes, deriding various attempts by Starmer and his Director of Public Prosecutions to strike fear into the hearts of would-be miscreants, by telling them of the grave consequences they face for carrying out riots or inciting them online.
And it is the latter that has got Musk especially worked up. Communications offences in UK law have long included sending “grossly offensive” and “indecent” messages, as well as obscene and threatening ones. Last year’s Online Safety Act also criminalised knowingly false messages intended to cause “non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience” without “reasonable excuse”. Meanwhile, the Criminal Justice Act generally requires that racial or religious hostility be treated as aggravating factors in criminal conviction, resulting in heavier sentences than otherwise. Pleading guilty also means the decision can be faster than when guilt has to be established at a trial.
Accordingly, there have been some swift and draconian-looking judicial decisions over the past few days for Musk to highlight for his avid followers, contrasting them with apparently lenient criminal cases involving immigrants to the UK. “It’s 2030 in the UK, & you’re being executed for posting a meme…” goes one typically restrained post. Retweets have included memes merging the British police with the SS, and one jokily showing Starmer as a Nazi — a bit unfair when you remember it was the Conservatives who brought in the Online Safety Act in the first place.
Another meme, comparing a photo of an extremely blonde woman surrounded by black men in their underwear with another of a white policeman in the midst of Muslim community leaders, went out with the words: “Found this pic of the British justice system.” Immediately underneath, he wrote: “This meme could get you 3 years in prison in the UK (actually)”. One assumes Musk is partly worried about his business model: also according to the Online Safety Act, Ofcom now has the power to fine him 10% of a year’s worth of “qualifying worldwide revenue” for what users get up to on X.
Soberly raised, there are various angles one could use to attack the moral legitimacy of giving someone three months in prison, say, for the use of two emojis on Facebook — a brown face next to a gun — or for writing “blow the mosque up with the adults in it” in an online community group. You could question the use of aggravating factors in sentencing about speech. You could argue that illegality should depend on establishing a causal link between a particular post and an instance of violent unrest, rather than just positing a vague counterfactual. Many racist posts on social media during times of rioting are caused by the riots rather than the other way round, yet the system doesn’t reflect this.
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SubscribeSounds suspiciously like an example of ‘moral equivalence fallacy’ to me – a condition often occuring in the aftermath of a bout of involuntary libdemmary.
“…..we are all “two-tier”. It would be good if our justice system were not.” So many words used to point to the truth. But glad she got there 🙂
My thoughts exactly when I hit the final paragraph. But she did manage to slip in the boogeyman Putin for no reason. I know he is what she says but it’s so tiresome to see it slipped into a story that has nothing to do with him. I’m sure there are other boogymen out there. Or is he the closest we’re allowed to use to being non-white?
Sometimes I imagine Vlad sitting in the Kremlin, being told what he’s being blamed for now. He must have a right old laugh. It must also be quite flattering to be blamed for things which would have required vastly greater ingenuity and resources on your part than you actually have.
You would think a man with such power and influence, putting a US President in power, would have conquered Europe by now.
Without a bogeyman, the left have nothing to build their lies on, it also says look at me I fight injustice for you.
We are not all two tier. It’s primarily the left that holds people to different standards, based on race.
There’s actually a term for that sort of thing, which we’d been told for years is wrong.
“…different standards, based on race”. Sounds like the US justice system to me (black executions for murder vs white ones etc).
African Americans, per data from the FBI, commit over half of all criminal homicides in the US, despite being less than 13% of our population.
They are also nearly half of all homicide victims.
Kathy honey. There is one big difference between Elon Musk and Sir Keir Starmer and UK administrative state and the average bobby. Elon Musk is a private citizen with no power to arrest, try, and imprison and they are gubmint officials with the full force of government power behind them.
And Sir Keir and his pals and pallettes are exemplars of the modern educated ruling class, that experts agree is about the most unjust ruling class in history — Stalin, Mao, Hitler excepted. I suspect, Kathy honey, that as you are a fully fledged member of the educated class, you are a little blind to this. Not a lot, just a teensy, weensy bit.
Sounds like this moron could have used a wee bit more education before posting this garbage!
Ironic
He’s making a good point. One can be opposed to the government stifling free speech, and be a private business owner who has policies regarding what is acceptable for employees to say regarding their employer. Its a pretty weak point on KS’s part.
Chrissy Chanty, sweetie…
Chrissy sweetums darling, if you look at power less from a formal/legal point of view and more from a factual point of view, Musk has more power than the UK government could ever dream of.
“Musk has more power than the UK government could ever dream of.”
Not for those in the UK.
Musk might have more influence, but he doesn’t have the ‘Law of the Land’, nor the resources of the state, and whosoever stands behind it.
Err, that’s precisely what I was saying when I spoke of the difference between formal/legal power and de facto power. The UK government has formal/legal power over you, but the UK is embedded in a globalised world where there are other powerful non-state actors capable of exercising considerable influence on what happens in the UK while not being bound by its laws or forming part of its institutional framework.
This is why the global and national elites are wetting their pants so much about Musk. He is the leading light in a new virtual world where individual private citizens can have more power than actual states and the instruments that national/supranational actors have at their disposal to constrain him are limited and – from their point of view probably – inadequate.
EDIT: I would also like to add that the elite pants-wetting seems to be driven by a fixation on social media as the CAUSE of trouble, for example the riots in Ireland/UK, which is erroneous. There are multiple causes, including the perennial sore point of sky-high immigration levels. Frustration builds up over time and then spills out when the appropriate trigger comes along (Southport, Coolock) – social media is the catalyst which fans the flames once lit by such a trigger. By fixating on social media as the cause of all ills, elites show that they are either incapable or unwilling to a) understand the proper chains of causation and b) address and try and sort out the actual underlying causes of discontent…which in turn shows their lack of courage and backbone and willingness to do the job for which they were elected, i.e. to govern.
Exactly. Prefectly put, clear description of how cause and effect works and how the elite seem too dim to realise . Thank you
I don’t think they’re too dim, I think they fear the consequences of facing up to reality. Because then things get very messy and very complicated and challenging and it will involve admitting that the governing class have messed up. Sticking it all on social media and obsessing on Musk and X is them trying to sidestep the quagmire. I suspect we will now see a crackdown on debate and dissent to desperately try and keep a lid on discontent and pursue the strategy of denial. But with the best will in the world, I think it’s a sticking plaster that will make things worse in the long run.
Absurd statement, bereft of logic.
Would you like to explain why you think that? Just throwing that out at me seems a bit of a cop-out.
A two-tier cop-out, to boot!
You want me to justify the view that Elon Musk does not have more power than the UK government? Wealth, executive power, geopolitical influence, soft power, employment, law-making, global leadership, climate change, gender laws, economic policy etc etc etc. On every single metric, the government of the 6th largest economy in the world yields more power and influence.
I agree that Musk is powerfu and very importsnt but not with the hyperbole. Space X and Tesla owe a lot to government subsidies, they are not even wholly organic.
That’s just plain wrong. Musk does not have the power to put people in prison. You can’t separate those things casually out – formal/legal vs factual.
Of course you can, if you look at the situation in terms of the different types of power which exist. It’s an argument and a perspective like any other. You just don’t agree with the approach which is fine, but it’s more interesting if you actually justify the response.
Different types of power? I understand that. But, you can’t compare the power of the state to legally use force to compel people to behave or be put in prison with a person who provides a platform for people to say whatever they want, for good or ill.
No. This situation does not fit into your ‘types of power’ relativism.
Claiming that one platform of many has more power than the government of Britain is a great way to greatly reduce one’s credibility.
Only if you take the narrow view that the formal and legal power of the state is the only real power.
But what have we seen in recent weeks? Elon Musk has a following of 193 million, more than twice the population of the UK. When he draws attention to the goings on in the UK and starts talking about two-tier policing, then almost in an instant, the vision many people around the world still had of GB with its nice, fair, unarmed Bobbies on the beat is severely damaged, maybe destroyed forever. With his tweets, Elon Musk applied a huge blow to the UK government’s credibility in the world stage in a way that another country cannot (or would not, because diplomacy). That is some considerable, but very real power, no?
Why are you assuming that all of his 193m followers agree with him?
She’s a middle class intellectual from a privileged background. They will inevitably close ranks in a class war such we are living through now.
Humm!. I’m agreeing with her and I was born in a workhouse.
Are you 150 years old?
Workhouses were not abolished until 1948 at the point when the NHS was established. I was born before that date.
Being born in a workhouse (?) does not mean you can’t be middle class. The mere fact of commenting on Unheard suggests that’s exactly what you are.
Actually so was I, this one:
https://www.bury.gov.uk/asset-library/imported/jericho-workhouse-booklet.pdf
In 1947 it was operating as a maternity hospital.
Yes the one I was born in was operating as a maternity hospital for the destitute. This was in Wales. There was a war on, and there were many products of the deparate one -night-stand deposited in such places.
My education, classical, was the free gift of the grammar school system. Whatever The left has desended into today, it’s contribution to the poor and incidently the female via an NHS and a grammar school education was a mark of good government. Human potential not wasted because of poverty or of being female.
A time, like no other, when poor girls were educated en masse. It’s never happened before in history. Someone should write about it. I have a picture of all the children in my nursery class. Everyone of the girls, (I don’t know what happened to the boys, separate grammar schools) became professionals. These were the daughters of window cleaners, factory workers, odd jobs men, with mothers who cleaned for a living.
This was historically an amazing time. It needs to be looked at carefully.
Yes, the Labour Party was set up to help the working poor: a point that needs preserving for the archives because the opposite is now true. 🙁
Sadly true.
In what sense Left created Grammar School system?
Was it not Labour government which abolished Grammar School system in mid 70s?
Alan, Thank you for that link, it’s really interesting. Good to meet a fellow workhouse baby. We were strong babies with a good immune system because if you weren’t you died. As a friend once said, ” Back then there were only two kind of babies, live ones and dead ones.”
Chrissy darling – “the most unjust ruling class in history…”. I suggest that you study a tad more history as that is so ridiculous as to destroy any point you make that might have some validity.
‘Kathy honey’. What the?
Never ceases to amaze how some will advertise how out of touch they are.
Oh, don’t be such a pompous old bore!
Calm down sweetheart
Love this comment!
I am actually curious, could you share who those experts who looked into the “educated ruling class” are? Is it just those in ruling positions or should anyone with a graduate degree who reads books (like the author) be viewed with suspicion now?
Oh Chrissy Chanty, sugar plumb, that’s a bit harsh.
That’s my favourite typo ever, Elaine.
Typo? Dyslexia has its creative side. 🙂
Good points, but less of the patronising, please.
I doubt KS will be in the least offended, she’s had much greater idiocies to put up with. Chantrill just exposes himself as one of the lesser ones.
“Educated class” is giving them far too much credit. The term managerialists better captures the ruling class of mid wits who basically follow the crowd and never have an original or intelligent idea of their own. Many highly educated people are opposed to what is being done to civilization.
Great post.
I mostly like her articles but this one is utter garbage.
Thinking that Musk is the main problem facing uk and the West in general and not woke, globalising blob trying to force us into modern slavery with prison sentences when expressing views contrary to approved narrative is insane.
You lost me at “honey”. Your response might have had merit, were it not so patronisingly sexist.
There are living people who remember when Britain, alone, held off the Axis juggernaut for almost two years.
If that was in the present day, British officials would probably arrest Churchill for upsetting Adolf Hitler.
Don’t make a fuss about the tremendous expense incurred, nor the obliteration of your society, nor even the worst crimes imaginable at the hands of new arrivals.
If you do, then the state will punish you, instead.
Actually, there were also a few Canadians, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Indians and such fighting the Axis in 1939-41.
Very true. It was Britain and its then empire which held the line. As well, the Nazis had bitten too much to go much further and soon fell on their hubris on the Eastern front.
The Nazis and their followers were a bunch of fanatical cranks. Unfortunately, it took mass death and destruction to prove the point.
They beat Soviet Russia without lend lease and it isn’t even close.
The point was that had not Britain fought against Germany, then no one would have.
The Polish would like to have a word.
They did, on September 1-2, 1939. They suffered a terrible fate, but the word here is “held off.”
Only Sept 1-2? You are grossly underinformed, the Polish Underground State and Armia Kraiowa never surrendered and contributed to the war effort the entire time. The British ‘held off’ on their promise to support Poland in the event of invasion.
” The British ‘held off’ on their promise to support Poland in the event of invasion.” That is odd. Where did I get the impression that the British declared war on Germany after Germany invaded Poland?
Funny, have you ever read Koestler book, scum of the earth? In it he describes the befuddlement leftists felt that Churchill wasn’t doing a deal with Germany.
And Indians fighting for the Axis too.
Including the Indian Volunteer Regiment of the Waffen-SS
Indeed. This is a terrible article/take on the situation in UK
Don’t forget the Rhodesians who contributed the highest per capita level of manpower to the Allied military effort of any nation in WW2.
There were also a few American volunteers and a lot (ship loads) of American supplies, often running German U-boat gauntlets. A lot of American merchant mariners lost their lives prior to the US officially entering the war.
There is a difference, quite a big one, between making’a fuss’ and rioting!
What about BLM and Leeds riots?
Did we have instant (in)justice?
No, Starmer was taking knee to BLM racists.
Clear double standards from two tier Kier.
What a load of ‘woe is me’ twaddle.
In addition- remember a significant number of Brits supported Moseley whom Winnie locked up pretty sharpish. Had the Wehrmacht got across the Channel we’d have had the same proportion of Right wing collaborators as the French. One of the things we can be most grateful for is Churchill knew it and stopped it. Nonetheless I sometimes wonder if the great grand children of Moseley types over represented in Unherd subscriptions?
Mosley was an sarly Blairite, with his Third Way, and pro Europe ness.
Early…
I could not find the numbers but pretty sure very few British citizens were locked up during WW2. Instead MI5 monitored and prepared for their arrest in the event of invasion.
It was c700 for category 18b. (Slightly separate but alot more perceived Aliens were interned, some who’d had strong anti-facist credentials but were just of wrong nationality). You are correct that MI5 then closely monitored others.
However much like the SS and the Millice were able to recruit so would have happened had the Wehrmacht got across the Channel into a British equivalent. Remember Moseley had 5000 Blackshirts march on Cable St (and famously get beaten back). There were plenty of Brits who’d have gone along with Nazi had the chance arisen.
Mosely himself was released in 43 to much uproar. The Aristocracy looked after it’s own.
Very one sided view of history.
Main collaborators of Nazi Germany was Soviet Union and European Communist parties.
It was not just provision of grain, oil and other raw materials for German war Machine in 1939-1941 but allowing Germany to test their armour and other weapon system on Russian territory in 1920s and 30s.
Communist party member were involved in sabotage of French War effort.
In the US, the International Longshore Workers Union, led by Harry Bridges, opposed lading ships with material destined for Britain until, vertiginously, they became supporters on the news that Germany had invaded the USSR. My sympathies are strong for the brutalized people of the Russian Empire. I have no admiration for the USSR’s government. It reaped what it had sown.
Orwell pointed out that support for the Fascists and Communists was pretty small in the 1930s. Mosely went from Labour to Fascist like Mussolini. Mosely obtained support from a certain section of society. However, a large part of the professional and upper classes had a dislike for Prussianism and the Kaiser and thought Mosely a complete and utter s… . Most professional and upper classes( Edward VII) preferred the lightness and gaiety of French culture and found the Prussian/German bombastic and overbearing.
The Communists supporting strikes in factories up to June 1941 probably did more damage than Mosely and The Peace Pledge Union hindered discussion for preparations for war from 1936. Lansbury was removed as leader of the Labour Party because of his pacifism.
The reality was that very few people realised the threat of Hitler up to Dunkirk and their were many reasons given for not preparing for war.
What a ridiculous post.
P.S. Hard to argue with anything in the main article.
I remember it was the American colonists who threw of the yoke of your tyranny that saved your butts twice in the great wars of the twentieth century.
I believe the intervention/aid/military presence of France, Spain and Holland amongst others may have contributed to the American colonists victory however just the cause of said colonists.
Maybe, but turned up late…twice.
Better late than never.
Without USA you would be speaking German or Russian now.
Without England you’d be speaking Iroquios
The Americans wouldn’t have showed up at all if the Japanese hadn’t bombed Perl Harbour.
Maybe if the American capitalists hadn’t so supported Hitler, the USA would not have needed to ‘save our butts’.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm
“If that was in the present day, British officials would probably arrest Churchill for upsetting Adolf Hitler.” Or at least, the self-righteous would call for an immediate ceasefire to the bombing of Berlin and Tokyo (what did the Japanese really do wrong, anyway?) because of civilian casualties.
What the British officials do do now is to arrest people for upsetting terrorists with affinities to nazis!
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000
I just liked it better when the tech bros mostly stuck to the tech realm and didn’t arrogantly assume they could tinker with the social or communication spaces in the same way.
What do you expect from social inept, sociopathic nerds with a god complexes with terrible people skills and an awful understanding of how humanity works who think that they are the smartest people on the planet. Who treat human nature and society’s problems as if they were a bad result of awful coding or an engineering problem that could be easily fixed despite the fact that human nature is far more complicated than and not very malabile. These are people who have too much time and money on their hands and have ran out of goals or material needs or wants they no longer need to achieve or strive for. Made even worse by the fact that these people are often suffer from a huge chip on their shoulder and suffer from an inferiority complexes with deep resentment and overcompensate with a towering ambition. Despite what Elon and his ilk think, They really just one side of the technocratic professional managerial elite that dominate us, but are in heretical rebellion against the dogmatic pretentions of that class and hyped up on the drug that is anarcho capitalism.They want all the power but no responsibility or accountability, The only thing that separates them from the rest of them is that they don’t have the risk adverseness and lack of imagination typical of numbers of that class and don’t want to be constrained by the stifling safeguards that members of that class depend upon to protect themselves from consequences of their action because they regard them as to constraining their desires. People like him just don’t want to be part of the system or even in charge of it, They want to be the system itself and replace the previous one with themselves being the last man standing and do whatever they please and everything from rules to truth being relative to them. People like him are not our measiahs, because the cure they are offering is worse than the disease itself. Elon may care about the issues of censorship, but hisreasoning is self-centered and doing a good reason for selfish gain. Beware of false prophets.
He’s a savant, dude. Why is anyone taking the social commentary of an Autistic savant so seriously? You just went into a Nietzsche like rant about a guy that’s absolutely maximized his potential. His scientific accomplishments are mind blowing.
The guy is clearly not driven by “pure greed.” He takes a stake in the companies that he’s helped develop because he wants to assure the outcome is maximized. He’s losing money with X/Twitter. If he was motivated by pure greed he would have never acquired that company.
I don’t even know what you mean by “taking no responsibility or accountability.” What does that even mean? He has tons of both and he gets tons of heat. You can’t clump him into a Marxian analysis like he’s just a typical owner or landlord.
Of course he’s driven by pure greed, recently he forced the board of directors of Tesla to pay 56 billion dollars in compensation to him, despite the fact that the EV market is it a difficult place right now, and that’s even more especially more true for Tesla right now, especially The fact that it’s stock has consistently kept falling quite some time now and is pivotal to house the company funds itself. His compensation is now up from 20 billion in compensation, despite the fact up until several years ago, Tesla was not profitable and is now profitable but only barely so. His whole reasoning behind why he thought he deserved itbecause he said that he was getting “bored” and dissatisfied with Tesla and thought that he deserved more money is a means to keep him motivated and gave a subtle threat that he might develop AI products with another company instead of with Tesla. What a good businessman would have done in his place in such a situation that the company and industry finds itself in, would content himself with his current pay and maybe even take it a s pay cut to keep the company on a good footing as well as set of good example for the rest of the company. And threatening to develop products with another company especially when your business now needs more to stay a float or even profitable, It’s pretty indicative of low character and of awful morality. And his actions so divided the board, that they took him to court over the matter but they lost. Also Elon musk did not invent anything, He’s nothing more than an entrepreneur who saw emerging technologies and knew how to exploit and market them. He is not an engineering or scientific genius, he likes to pass himself off such and probably believes himself as one due to his narcissism. He never invented Tesla cars nor to even created the company. He bought the company up, made the company financially sustainable by roping an investors and reorganizing it. And of course whitewash the history of it and it’s original founders and took credit for everything, did the same thing with PayPal, he was not the founder of the company he was a co-founder, and though he did lead the company but only for a brief time before he was kicked out do to conflicts with management and the investors and mismanaged the company. Also, Elon musk is not autistic he has Asperger’s, which is on the autistic spectrum of disorders but is not autism. Also I’m not even sure he even has Asperger’s, because he is a pathological liar. I have known people of Asperger’s and they’re not rude arrogant jerks like he is, they’re disorder doesn’t cause them to be that way. They are people can be thought of as pathological nerds, They have strong encyclopedic knowledge and interest in certain topics yet their social skills are deficient, They are socially avoidant and don’t require human interaction to the same extent as regular people. Despite how all they can come off as odd as result of this, they’re less likely to behave anti-socialy as a result of that like Elon does, Elon absolutely craves social interaction due to the incessant need to validate himself due to a lack of self-esteem and personal insecurity as a result of narcissistic tendencies, which is why he probably bought Twitter in the first place, it gives him a massive online space that he can control and use to to be the center of attention. Even if he has Asperger’s as he says he does, it doesn’t give him an excuse behave the way he does and doing so makes people with Asperger’s look bad. Elon behaves the way he does because he’s a sociopath who happens to have Asperger’s at the same time if he has the letter. I will concead that he husbanded The development of some groundbreaking technologies, and he’s right on censorship in the abstract, and that he can be a useful ally but we shouldn’t trust him completely and we should keep him at arm’s length and be weary of him.
I literally couldn’t get through this walk of text, stream of consciousness rambling manifesto. I’ll restrict my remarks to the portion of the wall I could read. Musk made a bet on himself in 2018 – that he could get Tesla stock to increase from a valuation of $60 billion to at least $650 billion, a 983% rise, while making it profitable over ten years. Shareholders approved the pay package. Why? Because he increased their investment 983%!!!
Show me on the dolly, where Elon Musk touched you?
Greed isn’t such a sin as ideology, and some people do get tired of the excess that greed brings.
Wow 001! that was quite a marathon. Are you qualified in psychiartry? As for Asperger’s, my understanding of this term, experientially, is just a simple description of your average man and boy.
“They want all the power …”
People don’t like to be interrupted, told what to do, especially after the event. That’s everyone, not only those of a conservative disposition.
So, without a functioning democratic government, where we expect laws to be tolerable and known beforehand, it’s natural to eliminate interruptions, especially those that are irritating, targeted, and appear from nowhere.
And those running Tech companies who have probably ‘postponed gratification’ and studied STEM subjects, instead of descending into naive political discourse during a Micky Mouse degree course, respond by protecting their business. Who wouldn’t?
These company boards might respond poorly to irritants, but it’s the politicians that set the stage for all of us, and they haven’t a clue about any industrial process, how businesses work with people, or even the Laws of Physics.
I think you’ve missed the point entirely. Musk isn’t trying to achieve power, but simply to prevent those who have power from abusing it in the way that his competitors and our current government are.
Nothing’s imposed on you, unlike government. The difference between you and him is that he has a larger audience.
And that’s where they’d probably still be if governments hadn’t decided to enforce their own censorship and messaging priorities through the digital platforms in question.
You can’t have this both ways: the only way for these guys to stay out of politics is for politics to keep the f**k away from them.
Ok Progressives- Musk is Autistic or in Progressive terms, “Neurodivergent.” He is not an emotional thinker or driven by hatred. He speaks in straight forward terms. If he doesn’t realize a joke is crass…maybe it’s because he is Autistic. If he’s being hyperbolic about a political situation, maybe he doesn’t realize it. This used to be understood. Does he not fit the stereotype of “Neurodivergent” well enough to be given the benefit of the doubt?
Most savant type geniuses are socially awkward. Why not have intellectuals calmly and rationally in good faith talk to Elon Musk and tell him why he is wrong. The guy is not a Conservative, he’s the Electric Car guy! We’re talking here about one of the most brilliant scientific minds in history. That is not a disputable fact.
Elon Musk is a genius, but not in science. He has a genius for analyzing problems in a business and solving them, not by himself, but through enlisting the efforts of others.
In other words, he’s not a brilliant individual contributor as much as as a brilliant leader. Science has nothing to do with it.
Donald Trump is the same way. So was Steve Jobs. And Henry Ford.
Ironic, isn’t it? The country that crows about individuals and the American spirit can’t handle them.
How so? From Edison to Jobs to Musk people have flourished in the US, building world-dominating businesses. How’s the UK doing on that score? How about the rest of the EU? Thought so.
A little bit defensive there I think. My point wasn’t that you didn’t have them but that you, for some reason, try to pull them down. Maybe you don’t really comprehend the idea of the individual. You’ve certainly crucified a few.
Great post.
What global business was created in EU in the last 40 years apart from SAP?
UK did better with ARM, autonomy and DeepMind but there is no City support for long term investment, so business is sold to, mostly, USA companies or private equity.
If Trump is such a business genius how come his businesses have gone bankrupt so many times?
What’s a business genius?
Not someone who can go bust running a casino!
So you don’t know?
and was banned in late 1990s by then Citibank, for having any accounts !
Degree in physics, apparently has an IQ of 155.
I’d say that’s pretty bright and quite capable of solving engineering problems (as he has).
He’s clearly also bright enough to recognise and hire really bright people and recognise engineering talent.
I think there’s very little in common between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
People who have worked for Elon Musk say that his engineering decisions never work out. He is very bright, but his talent is not in engineering. It’s in his drive to get things done. Same as Donald Trump.
I’m no fan of Elon Musk. When he sold Zip2 to Compaq he stabbed in the back a guy I had worked for, and I have seen him do the same many times since. Like Steve Jobs, he is a jerk.
But I am writing a book on innovation in carmaking, and Elon Musk is amost as innovative as Henry Ford was. He built the electric car industry.
What is innovative about electric car?
Whole business model is based on government subsidies.
In UK there are very few private buyers of electric cars.
80% of sales are driven by tax breaks.
People did not switch from Nokia to Apple or Android because of government subsidies.
They switched because of superior technology.
We should allow consumers to choose.
Not force them to overpay for electric cars because of government dictat.
Good point about innovation and the electric car. Elon Musk built the electric car industry, but he didn’t bring much innovation to it. Much like Henry Ford and his Model T, Elon Musk and his Tesla cars rely more on the optimization and economies of scale of mass production than they do on agility and innovation. And Tesla has sucked its fill of subsidies at the government’s teat.
I agree with you that the electric car industry should be based on innovation and consumer choice rather than just economies of scale and government subsidies and mandates. That’s the argument I have been making for 20 years now, with my book on that subject coming out next year.
Wasn’t his first start up just him and his brother? Zip2 conceived of by Elon and brought to life in a place where the two of them lived and worked. Musk is an ideas guy, not just a good leader. He is also not too shabby around things like coding?
Yes, the first startup was initially just Elon and Kimbal Musk, with a third founder who provided money but did not do as much work. They changed the name to Zip2 when a venture firm invested $3 million, and brought in a new CEO Rich Sorkin to provide more adult management as they grew to over 70 employees.
There was friction between the Musk brothers and the others at the end, so they sold the company to Compaq for $305 million and people went their separate ways.
Yes, Elon Musk is smart, and has some good ideas. But his ideas are not what makes him a success. He needs other people to do the work of giving his companies real products. His genius is not in ideas, but execution.
Henry Ford was the same way. Some people credit him with inventions relating to the car, but he never invented anything. He was all about execution, getting things done. Steve Jobs, the same. Donald Trump, the same. These men focus not on ideas, but process.
Aah but the lefty academics feel once they have applied a cool label to a group, they are the experts on the group and only they can truly represent the group’s views. Rachel Gunn (Raygun) considered herself an expert on break dancing. She considered herself to have a greater understanding of breakdance than regular people who just do it. Musk shatters the delusional academic bubble as he speaks for himself and refuses to defer to lefty academics and their ideology. Raygun shattered the delusional academic bubble by exposing it to the general public. Claims Raygun is being bullied by those who would protect the lefty academic bubble is the typical response intended to silence criticism. There should be a formal government inquiry into how and why she managed to make such a mockery of the Olympics at governmental expense, it all seems rather fraudulent.
Musk is a businessman not an engineer, still less a scientist.
He is not scientist he is businessman.
How great only future would tell.
I live in West London.
My neighbours who used to buy Tesla (not only car in a family) now buy electric Porsche like Tycan or Audi.
I think that electric car industry in Europe and USA is dead end without subsidies either for geopolitical (China) or technology reasons (where is the grid capacity).
There are many companies as listed above which are better than Tesla at making cars.
When battery range issue is solved (in about ten years time) what is the USP of Tesla?
Tesla would be worth 20 billion max in 2035.
When Elon Musk and Donald Trump are your heroes then you have taken some very bad turns in your life.
Or perhaps heroes with feet of clay are preferable to the Machine Politics Elite who care nothing for you and everything for themselves?
The collective mind despises and fears the independent thinker. And it doesn’t take much, even with feet of clay, to cause anxiety in them.
Champers you’re onto something there mate.
You presumably think you have nothing to learn from them.
It probably at least explains the histrionic, batshit-crazy intellectual effluent of which you seem to have an unending supply.
Please don’t tell anyone that owns a Tesla that Musk isn’t a hero, you’ll be inviting no end of online abuse.
Nobody (on here at least) regards Trump as a hero. They don’t support him because they like him. They support him because they despise and distrust you. Seems a pretty reasonable position to me. What are you complaining about?
I think she has developed a case of musk derangement syndrome. I think all you need to know about the guy is that he thinks the media is biased and is trying to do something about it. And he’s right about the problem.
Yes, all true, but he’s trying to do something about this genuine issue WHILE being the head of the most powerful messaging platform on earth.
I would gladly do it but I misplaced my 40b dollars.
Then who would be clean enough for you to take on the task?
And you were fine with the group that was running Twitter before Musk, who were basically a propaganda arm for the US government and wokeism.
I agree with KS that we have elevated people like Musk into some mythical status. He is a flawed human being, just like the rest of us. He has accomplished much in his life, and has reaped the rewards and responsibilities that go with it.
He also owns one of the most influential information networks in the world, losing about $40 bill in the process. He did it to support free speech. In a heathy society, we should appreciate information providers that push back against the state. That’s what they should all do. There’s a reason the state targets guys like Musk, while ignoring Facebook and Instagram, which are at least equally responsible for spreading misinformation about the riots.
He didn’t do it “to support free speech” – he did it for his own aggrandisement and vanity
It’s probably a combination of both – a feeling that he’s supporting free speech and vanity. People can act from multiple motives. And very few of us are without some sort of vanity (posting comments on here probably indicates at least some trace).
I show my appreciation for Elon’s support of free speech by buying the blue check mark. Thank you Elon Musk.
“The UK unambiguously has two-tier policing, at least in one sense: it has aggravated offences and non-aggravated ones. We also have a judicial system focused on maintaining public order and so likely to engage in example-setting, and politicians across the board who agree that visibly harsh sentences have a generally deterrent effect.”
Way to obscure the uncomfortable issues which need to be properly discussed (and which wound Elon Musk threw salt in in his own inimitable, rather OTT way)!
That you have aggravated and non-aggravated offences is to do with the way your legal system is structured (and has been for decades). The police are simply there to uphold and ensure compliance with those laws, they do not create those categories. To use that as an example of two-tier policing is simply absurd and not the kind of thing I expect from an intelligent person like Kathleen Stock.
The same goes for the punishments meted out by the British justice system. This is more a matter of the legal philosophies of punishments and the possible objectives of those punishments (general deterrence, individual deterrence, rehabilitation, repaying the debt to society that the perpetrator created by causing harm etc.) which underpin the criminal law and the criminal justice system generally (and which policing is then shaped by).
Agreed. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies. If you wanted to increase division and resentment then by all means have special categories of ‘Hate Crimes’ – it is unlikely to change the minds of people found guilty of Hate Crime and probably inflames them.
On the other hand if there were only ‘crimes’ then that sends a different message.
Hate is only one category of mens rea, and it gets way too much attention as if it is the worst or only one.
My study of criminal law is now a long time ago but I have no hesitation in saying that “hate” is not a category of mens rea. Intent, recklessness, negligence – those are the ones I recall.
An odd article. Stock says Musk is wrong and proceeds to make his case for him. Admittedly in more words than a tweet.
But isn’t this article also a little hypocritical? Anyone who has read a lot of Kathleen Stock knows that she is only too well aware that Western Liberalism has disappeared down a mad ‘Social Justice’ wokeified rabbit hole – a thought policing rabbit hole – and that Britain is in the vanguard of this madness. Its university sheep-dipped virtue signalling intelligentsia have “hypnotised the liberal middle class with ex-cathedra incantations of pseudo-values so absurd that – only a few years ago – would have seemed like they must be just kidding. They have been groomed, at the West’s most prestigious schools and universities, to such pitch-perfect self-righteousness that it would never even occur to them that they might be imposing their ‘pseudo-values’ on a public with little realistic means of democratic resistance….” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
At the root of the article there remains this genuine question, which is, what is the legitimate interest of government in punishing speech? I can think of two examples. One is shouting “Death to Jews!” in a crowd. (Or “Death to Muslims!” if you prefer.)
The other is a 19-year old on a roof telling his 17-year-old brother, “Kill him!” at which point the younger brother shot dead the policeman. The elder brother was hanged for murder (if I remember correctly).
I believe that the first is protected, though odious (and could be a public order offense of inciting a riot) the other validates a murder charge.
The point is you need a verifiable opportunity to do the harm at hand to escalate “hate speech” to a crime. Don’t criminalize intent, only action.
But that’s just my view.
Policeman: “Give me the gun”
Bentley (19); “Let him have it”
Craig (16) – shoots and kills the policeman.
Bentley – hanged;
Craig – served 10 years in prison.
Yes…but my comment wasn’t focussing on any such specifics of a free speech policy. I just felt that Stock’s article was ignoring the bigger elephant in the room….the wholesale ruin that the virtue-signalling, proxy-guilt-tripping Left (of which this latest Labour government is a prime example) has brought down on our civilisation.
I think she is trying to do a stream of consciousness thing.
There, fixed that for you.
We in Britain are incapable of adopting an outsider’s perspective to view ourselves, which includes the writer here.
Observers from western Europe would be appalled by the state authoritarianism on display were they to overcome the language barrier and witness the legislation, government pronouncements and judicial actions of the month of August this year.
Since we’ve been the victim of much of the second hand cultural extremism brought over from the US, it’s right that another outsider casts a pointed view on what is happening with our weak governing class and unbalanced state institutions.
Many in Britain are capable of adopting an outsider’s perspective, if only because they feel outsiders themselves and they are ‘appalled by the state authoritarianism on display’ currently, and in the past. That’s why there is so much frustration.
It’s “Fog over the Channel, Europe cut off” mentality.
It reads as a bit of play-the-man, not play-the-ball. It’s pretty clear that free speech is under threat across the world (Brazilian courts vs Twitter is a nastier case, but also look at the EU, Germany). What’s more dangerous is that educated people have stopped understanding and recognising the importance of free speech – which is ironic, given the Iraq War, the Covid lab leak, Russia Collusion hoax and a host of other ‘official’ misinformaton campaigns, gaslighting and off-the-books censorship NGOs.
Remember, free speech is totally incompatible with fascism or totalitarianism or any other authoritarianism – you can’t be a fascist if you support free speech – it even used to be required left-wing thinking as Freedom of Speech was the first of FDR’s Four Freedoms.
There will be bad speech – people believe all sorts of things that are wrong, they make mistakes, they get emotional, the dramatise, they rage (and that’s just modern art) – but the counter to bad speech is more speech. Musk at least puts that principle on the line, and pays the fines. The debate shouldn’t be about Musk, but about whether we have been manipulated to abandon free speech as the first principle of a free world.
100%. And the ruling class have the best interests of the world at heart, or at least they pretend they do. They say, “The world is far too dangerous to allow crackpots to inflame crowds with false rhetoric. By controlling speech we will force everyone to get along. Except oppressed classes. They can say anything at all.”
There seems to be a similarity of names of this writer, and someone driven from work by the people like Starmer and the UK police.
Regardless of Musks personal life he did free X people to fight against the rabid woke scum.
Pity they did not take sdvantage of the opportunity, they elected the worst elements to government., now here we are looming destruction of a way of life that built the modern world.
Kathleen is one of the reasons i subscribe to Unherd and although i find the way The Times generally writes about him as completely deranged, balanced concern about the role of big tech is needed.
However, people who read Unherd but not people who read The Times may have heard of the Twitter files, may have followed Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger’s deep dive into the way the federal government in the US weaponised twitter. Readers and cetainly Kathleen will remember social media cancellations and rules on Twitter for gender critical beliefs. Those more open minded readers may remember thinking and posting about a seemingly far fetched coincidence that the epicentre of covid-19 was a city in China where gain of function research on coronaviruses took place, and then being banned, cancelled, accused of conspiracy theory, and the role Twitter played in that debacle.
Here’s the thing. Musk took back control of just one of the outlets that was used to implement all that and instread of demarcated ideological and mainstream narratives what you now get is a messy version. As thats the difference between the two models. Control and ordered vs uncontrolled and messy. There is very little middle ground, other than the appropriately high bar of inciting violence.
Off on a bit of a tangent here but bear with me. We are in this situation for a number of reasons. The most important one being the arrival of the New Labour and the quadrupling of immigration numbers without direct electoral consent. During the same period there has been the growth of electorally unaccountable bodies such as Quangos, NGOs and Think Tanks who have engaged in a form of social engineering, think of Common Purpose or “Nudge Units” for example.
Responsibility has been inverted; the emphasis is on the driver to look out for the pedestrian (it’s less of a shared endeavour). the same regarding immigration, it’s the existing population who must adapt rather than have newcomers integrate. It’s similar with other minority groups particularly the LBGT community. Actions and policies from central and local governments, and of course policing have come to reflect this.
The police are there to uphold the law, not show favour and to be above politics. To the general public it appears this is no longer the case when it comes to protest groups. “Taking of the knee”, officers wearing feather boas and dancing alongside Pride marches, rainbow coloured patrol cars, and press briefings with Arabic greetings, this is where the perception of “Two Tier” policing comes from. There is a strong argument however that this is a counter action to the heavy handed, discriminatory policing of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
With the accelerated pace of cultural change, 24/7 rolling news, the abandonment of many journalistic standards and the arrival of social media; it would take an event such as the one in Southport to lead to the chaos we saw in several English cities. Fueled by individuals seeing it as an opportunity to promote a cause (or their “brand”), or for others to vent their frustration toward a political class that no longer listens to them.
The quality, training and leadership of our police, and their physical fitness is woeful, but I never forget the old adage I learned half a century ago when told by one of my Company S’arnt Majors ” No such thing as a bad Guardsman, Serrrr…. only bad Officers”.. and the police force does not have any ” Officers”!
Careful Ms Stock, the Unherdists might love you for pricking the ‘trans rights’ bubble, but how very dare you criticise the Great Musk, who is bankrolling the Great Trump, here to save us from the “rabid woke scum”. Project 25 will be here to save us all from democracy!
I would agree that the phrase “rabid woke scum” is arguably oxymoronic. If Woke people genuinely believe the outrageously silly beliefs in question then they are Woke, possibly “rabid” in the sense of being mad enough to take it all seriously, but they are at least not scum.
On the other hand, it is pretty clear that many people who espouse Woke ideals know perfectly well that the whole thing is a crock of sh*t but realise that it is a good way of recruiting useful idiots to a political agenda. These people are arguably not Woke and not “rabid” because they are acting quite rationally. They are, however, scum.
Project 25 will be here to save us all from democracy
In the UK we have a government ‘elected’ on a non-existent manifesto by 20% of voters who haven’t been offered any kind of meaningful choice for at least twenty years. Meanwhile accountability has disappeared entirely from both local and national government.
In the US government is run on instructions from a couple of hedge fund managers and some tech nerds with little or no input from the deplorables.
I don’t think there’s much of a ‘threat from democracy’ on either side of the Atlantic.
You can relax.
Nailed it again and entertained in the process. Quality
I’m not sure about the timeline involved here: Elon Musk was a big financial success well before he met Tallulah Riley. He made multiple millions from his first owner-investor project Zip2 in the late 1990s, and made his first billion from Paypal a few years later. So he would have been treated somewhat deferentially by most people for well over 25 years at this stage.
As to the rest, although I’m quite an admirer of anyone with Musk’s obvious talents, I do still think he’s borderline reckless at times with his own self-publicity. He’s well known to like the waccy-baccy so maybe that partly explains it. The worst example however, for me, isn’t the politics he’s espoused lately, it’s that poor British man he called a paedophile on Twitter when the guy saved the schoolboys trapped in a tidal cavern, because he wouldn’t try out Musk’s idea of a submarine as the solution. I know the guy sued and got a small settlement, but I think Musk ought to have apologised a damn sight harder than he got away with.
Musk offered to help without knowing all the unfolding facts about the tunnels and the caves. The British guy immediately got smart and derogatory. I remember it well and the Brit deserved the blowback.
Nuclear bombs to get to Mars, no? Not on Mars, but as proposed by NASA in the 60s,70s, but abandoned because of unscientific hysteria about the danger of nuclear explosions in space ( ljke, you know, the sun).
Some wisdom here.
Some wisdom here. Excellent, Kathleen.
What an incredible revelation! We all cherry pick our data and employ two-tier judgements. Good of this writer to clarify that we’re all biased. But Musk and Trump really are bad people? Right?
Just about sums it up. KS seems to have lost her way recently.
More from the Christmas loving turkey.
Took me a minute… 😉
So, along winded way of saying that yes, Britain is indeed the grip of a racist anti-white ‘establishment’, but let’s not mention it directly.
“phantasms” no less. Reading a bit too much Butler?
Well, Musk hasn’t banned Nick Lowles from X, so perhaps he really means what he says about free speech.
All that stuff Kathleen Stock ticks off as imaginary in the first paragraph are plainly real. This is unlike her. Has Keir Starmer’s new policy of intimidating foes into silence worked on her, too? (Can I be arrested for saying that?)
The American founding fathers knew from bitter experience that England, despite its Magna Carta, would oppress those who vocally objected to state abuse. Thus, they enshrined the two most important amendments in our Bill of Rights, the First and Second.
Kathleen Stock uses autistic genius Elon Musk’s eccentricities to claim that Great Britain isn’t ackshully experiencing an Orwellian nightmare (Julie Sweeney, anyone?) and the two-tier Just Us system isn’t ackshully turning a blind eye to heinous crimes committed by Muslims whilst punishing natives.
I’m bl**dy sick of articles like this. Your country has gone full Animal Farm. The spotty, noodle-armed police run away from a lone knife-wielder but arrest a woman silently praying on a sidewalk. Your ludicrous prime minister would look perfect in Nazi Hugo Boss.
I was once proud that my maternal and paternal ancestors were English. Now, I’m very grateful they got on those ships at Plymouth and settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s. Where are YOU going to go, now that your country is lost to you?
Sadly all too true. Animal farm is apposite; the legal basis for the two tier policing is the “equalities act” which could be summed up as “everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”.
I’ve never been tempted to join the rebel colonies in North America or the ex cons in Australia before, but perhaps there’s something in it after all.
“Accordingly, there have been some swift and draconian-looking judicial decisions over the past few days..”
It strikes me as strange that a Ms. Stock is trying to gaslight us by referring to the Online Harms Act and other similar legislation as though it was reasonable and appropriate and referring to “draconian-looking judicial decisions…”; they’re not draconian looking, they are simply draconian.
According to him, the UK is now beset by “two-tier justice” and “civil war is inevitable”.
Musk is correct on the former and that may precipitate the latter. Nothing else need follow that line of the story, which by the way, is NOT about Elon Musk. He did not create the current conditions, nor does he have the power to silence and/or arrest people.
Question for KS. If Musk was removed from the equation, leaving just the likes of Starmer and Rayner to make the laws on free speech, would this enhance your ability to comment and interrogate sensitive social issues? If not, then support Musk, even if it’s 70/30. Nobody is perfect.
Self absorbed white middle class women are the problem. If an issue doesn’t benefit them, it doesn’t exist. I’m in Canada watch youtube feeds of white working class peaceful protesters getting years in prison. It’s outrageous, but what is more outrageous is the denial of what we see with our own eyes.
As one of your country’s more prominent citizens said, a lot of people believe they would have hidden Anne Frank when it is far more likely that they would have turned her in.
What does the director of the Lesbian Project do? What exactly is the Lesbian Project? Does being that, provide a “two tier system” of reference for this essayist to analyze the rather obvious causes for unrest in England?
Thank you so much Kathleen for putting into words what most of us here in the UK know to be true.
We owe more to Musk than Stock realises:
https://reaction.life/elon-musks-victory-against-garm-is-a-big-win-for-online-freedom/
Stock’s reply casually admits the fact of two-tier policing the major premise and then seeks to posture her way out by sniffing derisively at Musk. Fatuous argument.
In the US, we have always had a “two-tiered” free speech approach. Speech that is overtly dangerous or outright incitatory of the overthrow of the government is not permitted. Recently, the application of the latter has been reversed. That is the problem. The US government appears to want the USA to fall. Just like the UK.
Lets not forget that Ms Stock being in the right on one issue doesn’t make her any less mad on all of the others. Once a leftie loony, always a leftie loony.
Elon Musk was prior to Twitter one of most successful Entrepreneurs of the previous 25 years.His success was based on being ahead of the curve and putting his money where his mouth was not once but several times.If he is warning of civil war coming to the UK people should be debating his fear not trying to arrest him.
A homeless mother of 5 just got 20 months in prison for pushing a wheelie bin at a policeman.
‘This week, for instance, former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf called him “one of the most dangerous men on the planet” responsible for “the most wicked evil possible” in amplifying “far-Right white supremacist ideology”.’
Musk responded by declaring he might look at what Humza had said in private communications.
Remember, if you send a ‘private’ message on Facebook or Twitter, it is not as private as you think.
And as Humza found out, Musk might decide to unseal private communications…..
I suspect Musk also might be hypocritical in some of his business ventures, like his official environmental concerns in sustainability and that EVs are part of the solution in “saving the planet“. Maybe it was just a really great way to make lots of money by plugging into the current political philosophy of Man Made Climate Change and receiving lots of money from international governments for his projects. I was recently told by an engineer, that Musk’s original idea wasn’t even the EV for mass consumption, but to design a perfect vehicle for Mars. Now the EVs are considered essential for environmental sustainability.
During his online chat with Trump, the two were carefully tip-toeing around this subject, trying not to offend each other. Trump, who probably believes, that Man Made Climate Change is a scam to help the distribution of wealth according to socialism and also, that giving up of fossil fuels will be the death knell to US manufacturing and the consumer. I had to chuckle, when Trump said, that Elon certainly must be in need of lots of fossil fuel to make his “beautiful cars”….
But both are firmly united in fighting the “Machine”, a slogan, which Elon recently put on his T-Shirt.
Overall I believe Musk is huge one man force for good, when he bought Twitter and exposed so much of the “Machine’s” corruption and false information, which was so blatantly exposed in the Twitter files. There are no more fake algorithms, excluding scientists and independent journalists, who speak out, and at least he is trying to have a platform, which resists censorship and streams of biased content. The community notes are a brilliant new idea.
Like many of Elon’s followers on X , I was delighted in the way he put down the little nobody from Brussels. LOL !
Am I the only one having a hard time figuring out if this article is parody or serious?
People used to write books, others would read them, and when enough people had read, digested, and absorbed the ideas, if the book was meant to be influential enough, journalist and academia would write about it. Some might even make a movie or two, and the book’s ideas could make a significant impact on society. But now, anyone can post a comment, and we lose our minds over it. Perhaps if all these journalists weren’t constantly writing about one person’s impulsive, unconscious posts at all hours—especially after a drink or two—our nervous systems wouldn’t be so drained. Journalists, or whatever we call them now, seem to have run out of “original” things to write about, so they’re just commenting on what others have already said. It’s strange how a mere utterance has become a weapon of mass hysteria. I am even starting to think the followers are bots…not real people! I do not know one person who knows a person who knows another person who may read a comment online and then go out and riot! do you?
A wonderful final paragraph!
Professor Stock has herself been a victim of injustice and attempts to suppress free speech in the UK during her tenure at Sussex.
Unlike many who have been driven to one extreme or the other following mistreatment, Stock has had the courage of her convictions and has retained an honest (and satirical) view of events: Britain is not exploding into civil war since rain calls off play for riots, we’d need a prolonged drought for that to happen here.
To add to Stock’s observation that “we are all two-tier”, demographic/ethnic injustice depends – literally – where you stand.
Since ethnic minorities make up the majority in London, and the minority of white British people who live there are, on average, better paid, London (and other large city) dwelling people from ethnic minorities experience the worst treatment from police and other authorities.
In poorer regional towns including those that saw rioting, the majority are white British and therefore the majority of low income people in those towns are the same, and hence the most unfairness and poor treatment is experienced by this group.
Both groups’ view of their own disadvantage is truthful. A measure of empathy between the two (and those in the middle classes who support one or the other) would help.
What a terrible article. The attempt at a faux-centrist both-sidesism falls flat for anyone who thinks briefly about it. Elon Musk – a man with strong opinions and multiple private companies, is just as dangerous to free speech as the Starmers of GloboCorp who pull the marionette strings of most social media companies, (don’t) control our borders, can forcibly take our money (taxes) or devalue it (printing money) at their whim, and write the laws around what we can and cannot say and do, and control the application of those laws.
The idea that she is somehow saying “one side is just as dangerous as the other” is beyond ridiculous.
Ms. Stock writing about this issue is about as helpful as Jordan Peterson writing about nutrition. (less so, in fact, because at least he is logical). Just because she figured out the trans issue doesn’t mean she is smart, or an expert on anything outside of that realm.
Being a Professor of Philosophy would normal be considered a good sign of intelligence and rational thinking. How do you score?
> According to him, the UK is now beset by “two-tier justice”…
Really? He was the first to think this?
That was stupid
“After a decade of institutionally adopted white guilt in many quarters, it is indeed possible that sometimes the judiciary punishes white offenders disproportionately relative to other ethnicities for the very same crimes”
That throwaway sentence is the crux of the matter. When we are seen to be NOT equal before the law then it’s game over for our society.
We need to address this PDQ or we’re stuffed.
“Right now, asylum-seeking grooming gangs are roaming the North unchecked, while in Londonistan…..”
Sounds pretty accurate to me!
Defending censorship is pathetic. This article is an excellent exhibit.
OK you can criticise Musk, and I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, while being incredibly thankful for his defence of free speech – but why the deranged photo? Unherd, I thought you were better than this.
I thought that stunk also. Its a cheap juvenile shot, much like drawing a mustache on a picture. If you go through any video clip of a person, frame by frame, its easy to find ugly fractions of a second of anyone. To post that as the lead picture shows a vindictive, childish mind.
Thank you for this article! We all do want the system to work for us at the expenseof others. It’s sad how predictable and tribal right and left responses to events has become. An article with sober balance like this has become a rare thing.
Somehow this article seems to ignore the more immediate issue of the actual level and causes of violence between whatever factions or groups seem to be at each other’s throats. I am personally close to absolute on free speech. But regardless of what others’ tolerance of speech is, at some point when people are killing each other, what names they call the other side don’t really matter. The impression is that bands of muslims (immigrant or not) are running roughshod over sections with little or no consequence, while others, due to what seems to be acquiescence by the police, are protesting and perhaps trying to do what the police are unwilling or unable to do. If there is any truth to this, it is pretty easy to imagine what the results will be, depending on who will get the upper hand.
Without social media the public would not know about how far Victoria Police officers’ long tradition of criminality has evolved, thanks to 21st century technology.
Australia likely never had functional law-enforcement, our most dangerous criminals have always been police officers like Mario MARCUCCI. MARCUCCI crimes don’t show any statistics.
Dozens of MARCUCCI ride obviously expensive, LOUD motorbikes with swapped/unregistered licence plates, drunk on their risk-free criminality, terrorising crime witnesses in our own homes. Since 2015 in my experience, when I stopped silently waiting for a stalker ex-coworker to grow bored of committing crimes against me, as per expert advice.
By 2009 the MARCUCCI were breaking into my home & car while I worked long hours using tools civilian locksmiths could not compete with. Using technology in crimes against me far beyond what civilian experts even knew about at the time remained a key feature of MARCUCCI crimes against me. One example is a Faraday Cage breach (1) in 2022. This was doable, far from trivial.
Crimes against me became worse, not better 2009-2014, hence I started speaking out. Victoria Police officers’ participation in the stalker’s crimes became obvious in 2019, while Victoria Police forced me to fight at court in an admitted silencing attempt, tried to entrap me twice & showed off their uniforms participating in the very crimes they were trying to silence me about with the court case. I won. Prosecutors bluff.
I never even dated the stalker ex-coworker, I was only 1 of at least 7 of his concurrent targets just from our shared workplace, the Victorian Electoral Commission 2009-2012.
What Raymond T. HOSER documented 25 years ago (2) at an extremely high personal cost became far worse, as I have been forced to experience (3) since 2009. Government/military-grade resources in Australia’s organised crime arsenals (4) enable Mick GATTO to indeed “stop anyone doing anything” – as he bragged in a 60 Minutes episode (5) about Australia’s largest union being infiltrated by organised crime.
My last, forced crime experience behind locked doors, on my own, in the home I have owned in Clare O’Neil’s electorate since 2001 was today, 17 August, less than 3 hours ago – a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, without any risk of prosecution. Remotely induced physical harm incidents against me started, when I declared self-representation at court in 2019.
There is no authority in Australia to which it would be safe, let alone effective to try to report what technologies are making the law irrelevant, since crime victims could not even prove that they suffered an assault via well-known DARPA technology (6), let alone anyone being able to prove the criminality of those, who use this technology for contactless extortion.
Devastating crimes being unpunishable is an existential threat to civilisation as a whole. The crime capabilities the MARCUCCI are showing off with the bone-chilling innocence of a toddler showing off a new puppy can & no doubt do affect people anywhere on planet earth, because the technology is portable. I found this out on the 9th of July 2022.
#ididnotstaysilent
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Remove spaces from URLs:
(1) https :// blog .avast.com/exploiting-air-gaps-avast
(2) “Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, (736 pp.) Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8
“Victoria Police Corruption 2”, Raymond T. Hoser, (800 pp.) Kotabi, 2000. ISBN 0-9586769-7-6
I scanned the first book Victoria Police corruption into a pdf in full, when I realised how closely crimes against me match the documented strategies used by criminal Victoria Police officers. I share this pdf with Hoser’s permission via the Adobe website:
https :// acrobat .adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:ef8f1806-0cfc-417c-8def-68349ad37aa7
(3) https :// www .linkedin.com/pulse/perfect-crimes-y-australia-katalin-kish
(4) https :// www .linkedin.com/pulse/contactless-extortion-australia-katalin-kish-upqyc/
(5) https :// youtu .be/EuoWv-VKvy0
(6) https :// militaryembedded .com/radar-ew/signal-processing/darpa-officials-to-present-keynote-addresses-at-ims-2024
I don’t see the alleged hypocrisy in the Tripp episode.
An employee of a company never has free speech, and I don’t think any advocate of free speech would require it.
If a receptionist answered the phone with “What the f**k do you want, you Kant?” they’d be fired. You could reasonably describe their actions as sabotage.
There is a power imbalance there, as there always will be when people pay you to do what they want. Employment has a peculiar power structure.
Free speech advocates oppose the imposition of limits on our speech by our elected officials and their departments.
We understand that we’re not being paid by the government to do a job. We understand that they are there because we, the people, elected them. Free speech is a logical consequence of the power structure that is democracy; the top of that structure is the people, not the government.
Or that’s how it should be, and people are rightly fighting to ensure it is.
This is what corrupt establishments do; attack the victim. Lie. Contort facts.
Civilisation needs its mavericks to make progress. If they expose the truth to the light, then so be it. If governments were less devious, and more honest,with the people, irrespective of the consequences, then they would be taken more seriously and even respected. Real leadership is about respect and trust, which leads by example. More than one way to skin a cat….
There are too many highly educated mediocre bitter Western women who act like crabs in a bucket. They think by tearing down great men they somehow accomplish something.
I wonder why this article has triggered a lot of chat about the last two world wars? Obviously a lot of people with long memories of what they thought was happening.
To go back even further, you could say that industrialisation which brought people in from independent living in the country to be managed in factories so that the owners could make a lot of money was that start of gaslighting the public.
I am not a go back to the Stone Age person but by persuading people to give up small aspects of control in their own life, for the promise of more security and comfort, the result is what you see.
Our overlords are no longer happy with just controlling a small population, the greedy so and so’s want to control the world; but in such a way as they are not seen as the baddies. The only way to do this is through law and gaslighting, so that the turkeys vote for Christmas of their “own free will”; except of course it isn’t really, because most people including me are not in a position to, or have the salient facts to, make an informed decision.
The most important thing though is to get us to believe we are, hence the gaslighting.
I understand why the author does not like Elon Musk and of course he’s in it for himself, everyone knows that. But being selfish doesn’t make what he says wrong.
After your experiences Kathleen, I thought you would have understood. Maybe the population needs a better kind of Robin Hood; but someone has to speak for those whose voice is being rather viciously strangled.
Herbert Marcuse , a highly educated man believed in censoring those opinions contrary to his own. Nazis and Communists such as the Khymer Rouge have included highly educated people, all who were happy to kill those with whom they disagreed. The least censorious people I have met are men who work in heavy engineering and women factory workers who have not been educated beyond minimum leaving age. The women tend to have a robust bawdy sense of humour.
So he is human? Well that makes his efforts to protect free speech all the more admirable. A superhuman could have done it easily.
For someone supposedly so well educated she appears ignorant of the following.
Malcom Muggeridge being sacked by the Guardian for reporting on the famine in the Ukraine in the early 1930s and Orwell’s essay ” The Prevention of Literature ” written in 1946. Orwell attended a PEN meeting where no writer criticised censorship. The freedom of the press means the ability to criticise and oppose. The Left wing have been censoring non- left wing opinions at university since the late 1960s and was favoured by Herbert Marcuse. At Sussex it was nearly impossible for anyone to hold any views that were not left wing.
“The History Man ” was typical of most humanities departments of new universities from the late 1960s onwards.