{"id":206752,"date":"2025-10-17T15:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206752\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T15:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:01:07","slug":"elon-musk-has-turned-his-eye-to-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206752\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Has Turned His Eye to the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk loves responding to posts on X with heart emojis. He\u2019s sent dozens this year alone, often in response to people praising his cars<\/a> or directly to his mother\u2019s posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But this week, Musk sent a heart emoji to Tommy Robinson, the far-right Islamophobic activist from the United Kingdom. Though Musk largely ignored UK politics this year while working in the US government at his so-called Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> (DOGE), he appears to be back across the pond, spending his money and using his platform to elevate far-right extremists.<\/p>\n

\u201cA HUGE THANK YOU to @elonmusk today. Legend,\u201d Robinson wrote<\/a> on Monday, following the first day of his two-day trial for a charge related to counter-terrorism law at Westminster Magistrate\u2019s Court in London. Robinson claimed this week that Musk had funded his defense.<\/p>\n

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was charged under the Terrorism Act<\/a> after he refused to give police access to his cell phone in July 2024 while trying to leave the UK. Prosecutor Jo Morris told the judge<\/a> this week the police believed \u201cthere may be information relevant to acts of terrorism\u201d on the phone at the time. Robinson has pleaded not guilty and claimed the stop was unlawful. A decision in this case is due next month.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on X ahead of the trial this week, Robinson said Musk had agreed to fund his defense. Robinson did not say how much Musk was contributing to his defense fund, but Mark Stephens, a prominent British solicitor who has in the past served as legal counsel for Julian Assange, tells WIRED that if he were covering Robinson\u2019s entire defense, Musk\u2019s bill would come to \u201ceasily half a million pounds [$665,000], maybe more with appeals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Musk posted incessantly about British politics<\/a> at the beginning of the year until his focus was consumed by DOGE. But, following his stormy departure<\/a> from Washington, Musk\u2019s focus on Europe is once again creating chaos. WIRED analyzed data provided by BrightData that shows a significant dropoff in the number of posts Musk made about the UK after January of this year. After he left DOGE in May<\/a>, Musk\u2019s posts about the UK increased dramatically again in August.<\/p>\n

Experts believe Musk\u2019s current outpouring of support for the UK\u2019s far-right is part of a possible concerted effort to destabilize the region politically to prevent onerous regulations\u2014such as the EU\u2019s Digital Services Act or the UK\u2019s Online Safety Act\u2014being used to punish X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk loves responding to posts on X with heart emojis. He\u2019s sent dozens this year alone, often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[995,12387,2955,59,57,58,50,229,1715,56,54,55,35312],"class_list":["post-206752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-elon-musk","tag-extremism","tag-far-right","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-twitter","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}