Politics & Stuff

[YorkshireBlue 3,118]

3 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

Don't really know what you are talking about. I don't have a presence in social media nor do I watch a lot of news.... liberal or conservative.

My opinion of Trump is only about what I personally saw him say and do. Jan 6 events alone would've been enough, but there is a lot more... so much more.

It wasn't directed at you, just the general nonsense you read in here.

[robsblubot 3,457]

Just now, YorkshireBlue said:

It wasn't directed at you, just the general nonsense you read in here.

Sure, I agree. I'd call some things I've read here a bit on the naive side. Like mentions to the UN, or this fabled world order which some people seem to see. Hollywood in particular has been culpable in creating division IMO. There are some crazy shit coming from both sides, but I still think the right wins it via the sheer number of stupid conspiracy theories.

Another thing that does not gel with me is he (Trump) either wins, or he's been robbed. Sounds like a manager whining after a loss. 😃

So, the very same decentralized (electoral) system that elected Donald Trump became irredeemably corrupt just after 4 years under Trump's presidency. I mean that's the shit Trump and his peers were saying all the fucking time prior to 2020's election.

[YorkshireBlue 3,118]

6 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

Sure, I agree. I'd call some things I've read here a bit on the naive side. Like mentions to the UN, or this fabled world order which some people seem to see. Hollywood in particular has been culpable in creating division IMO. There are some crazy shit coming from both sides, but I still think the right wins it via the sheer number of stupid conspiracy theories.

Another thing that does not gel with me is he (Trump) either wins, or he's been robbed. Sounds like a manager whining after a loss. 😃

So, the very same decentralized (electoral) system that elected Donald Trump became irredeemably corrupt just after 4 years under Trump's presidency. I mean that's the shit Trump and his peers were saying all the fucking time prior to 2020's election.

Politics is a mugs game, funny thing is the people who follow it, cheers, or complain about it are playing the game and don't even realise 🤣 also the left lost as soon as they started letting men into woman's toilets.

Edited August 6 by YorkshireBlue

[Fulham Broadway 16,662]

Trump has wasted no time in attacking Kamala Harris running mate

"Embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California's dangerously liberal agenda far and wide," said Trump

The irony. Trump is the first U.S. president and Republican nominee to be convicted of felony charges. 😃

[Fulham Broadway 16,662]

Armchair thug is first to be convicted for Facebook posts trying to stir up racial hatred during riots: 'Family man', 28, faces jail after urging mob to 'smash the fuck' out of migrant hotel while sat at home 

 

Jordan Parlour, a 28-year-old sign installer described by his lawyer as a 'family man', is the first man to be charged over Facebook posts relating to the violent disorder across the UK.

Parlour - who was unable to take to the streets for violence because he had broken his heel - instead turned to social media to incite protesters to target the Britannia Hotel in Leeds, West Yorkshire. 

Judge Capstick refused Parlour bail and committed him for sentence at Leeds Crown Court on Friday 9 August, where a judge can jail him for more than 12 months.

The judge told Parlour: 'You understand that the matter will have to be sent to crown court.

'In my view you are going to receive an immediate custodial sentence given the nature of the offence and the background and the background climate it was committed against.'

What a silly cunt 🤣

 

[NikkiCFC 7,881]

12 hours ago, cosmicway said:

I 'm not in speaking terms with him and in any case I think it useless.
So any ideas wellcome. What do you think ?

I think he tried to avoid you calling a judge commie.

[cosmicway 1,296]

7 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

I think he tried to avoid you calling a judge commie.

I was thinking of making some bold statements but not take on the judges like this !
After all their commie-ness, rishi sunak-ness a.s.o. was something invisible.
But it's a theory - I have to get hold of the minutes of the trial and read them to understand.

Edited August 7 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,275]

MAGA-Man and Fertility Lad

 

Edited August 8 by Vesper

[Fulham Broadway 16,662]

Elon Musk’s daughter slams dad as ‘serial adulterer,’ ‘stupid’ and ‘desperate’

Wilson, 20, is Musks daughter. Her mother is Justine Wilson, a Canadian author.

Wilson took to Threads to call the Tesla and SpaceX CEO a “serial adulterer” who is “stupid,” “desperate” and “not a family man.” She posted the comments alongside a screenshot of an X post in which Musk appears to be praising his own parenting.

“I understand your new angle is this ‘western values/christian family man’ thing but it’s such a weird choice,” she continued. “You are not a family man, you are a serial adulterer who won’t stop fucking lying about your own children. You are not a christian, as far as I’m aware you’ve never stepped foot in a church.”

[KEVINAA 79]

 

 

[Vesper 28,275]

5 hours ago, KEVINAA said:

 

 

what a sick motherfucker!

[YorkshireBlue 3,118]

7 hours ago, KEVINAA said:

 

 

Nice to know you get 10 years for raping a dog, but could only get 4 years for raping a woman...... 

[TheHulk 1,817]

9 minutes ago, YorkshireBlue said:

Nice to know you get 10 years for raping a dog, but could only get 4 years for raping a woman...... 

They deserve it and a lot more, any pile of shit who tortures an animal deserve to be locked in jail lifetime, same with women of course.

[Vesper 28,275]

Lying To Fascists

The norms you want to protect are already gone. The ends don't justify the means, but they do define them. Tips on living in a fascist nation in a time of rising fascist power.

https://www.the-reframe.com/lying-to-fascists/

A U.S. flag flies upside-down outside the house of flagrantly bribed Supreme Court justice Sam Alito.

May 19, 2024

Hey gang. New newsletter today. Over the coming weeks I'm going to release a couple more chapters of Very Fine People ahead of its release, (and I think I'm finally going to get into a cadence with LOST posts for you LOSTheads) but right now I'm continuing my thoughts about Americans who want to kill Americans—or American fascists, or Republicans, or conservatives, or whatever they want to call themselves.

Man it's been rough this week if you're the sort of person who pays attention, in much the same way as every other week. The stuff that's happening makes you sound crazy if you write it out, but it's not conspiracy, it's really just what's happening. We've got a huge cult of creepy religious bigots who are destroying our public schools and our social safety net and our democracy all so they can establish a fascist dictatorship headed by a flagrantly criminal former game show host with a penchant for Nazi rhetoric, in order to harm and control and kill the people their God tells them to harm and control and kill if they want to live in an eternal gated community while the rest of us burn in conscious torment literally forever because we deserve it. They've captured our courts and many of our levers of power in order to enforce their minority rule, and this November we're giving them another in a string of regular opportunities to seize the rest. It's a big yikes, as the kids may or may not say.

Let's distract ourselves with something apolitical—the sporting life. Let's talk about sports hero and recent Super Bowl champ Harrison Butker, a man whose name sounds like it is pretend.

Butker plays American football for the Kansas City Chiefs, in case you didn't know. He is a kicker, which is the only part of football that uses the feet, but ironically is the only part of football that isn't really football. It's a lot like Harry Potter and the snitch; sometimes the game you're watching is suddenly decided by a totally different thing, and everyone just acts like this is normal and cheers and cheers. It's very important to have and use a good kicker, unless you are the coach of the Detroit Lions, but I'm trying to stay off painful topics so never mind.

And, yes, Butker is a good kicker. He is famous for kicking oblong balls as hard as he gets for the ladies on behalf of Jesus, and as straight as we're told he definitely is, and whatever else one might say about him, he certainly can perform that action with proficiency and skill, which it seemingly qualifies him to speak about life, the universe, and everything to young graduates at Benedictine College.

And speak he did! Harrison Butker went wide wide wide right last week, as you might have heard. Butker and his well-groomed prophet beard and his crisp razor part took to the commencement stage and unloaded on a wide range of pro-fascist topics, including fears of a day when it might be illegal to speak aloud (((who killed Jesus)))—which is apparently important to be able to say for um reasons. And he also opined that it is impossible to be a real Christian and also allow ladies to make decisions about their own bodies or receive often life-saving reproductive healthcare, and as almost an aside he took potshots at the medical practices of IVF and birth control, and at the "tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion," which are all very bad things to fascists.

Most controversially, Butker used his time to let all the "ladies" present know that all of them had been led astray by diabolical liars (who may or may not be the same people who Butker believes killed Jesus—Butker wasn't clear on that point). At this point in the speech I was ready to jump on board, because this is an age of diabolical lies and I'm all about speaking simple truths. Unfortunately the thing Butker decided these poor duped lady graduates all needed to know was that they had been mislead into believing that they might have lives and careers outside of their one and only true identity, which is homemaker and mother to the children of some special boy just like Harrison Butker, and that until each of these ladies fulfilled that role, their lives wouldn't really start, as Harrison Butker's wife's life didn't really start until she had Harrison Butker's kids, according to Harrison Butker. But don't take his word for it—she herself says so too. Harrison Butker told us so.

Now it's not a bad thing to be a homemaker and a mother; a lot of people choose that for their lives, and good for them—though it has to be said it's made much harder to be a full-time homemaker these days; due to the sorts of social and economic policies supported by people like Harrison Butker, most moms have to work at least one job. But it really is a hell of a thing, when talking to a bunch of women who have just worked for years to earn their bachelor degrees, that their worth and value will be determined not by themselves—their skills and abilities and intelligence and accomplishments—but rather will be defined and constrained by the sweaty-minded beliefs of pig-ignorant American supremacists like Harrison Butker, who believe that not only do they get to decide when somebody needs killin', but also what each human life is worth and how it should be defined.

What Chiefs kicker and expert sociologist Harrison Butker is saying is something very important to understand. In order to feel truly free, it's not enough for Harrison Butker and his fellow creepy religious bigots to live in the way they as Christians see fit for themselves. They are going to need to force everyone else to live in whatever way they as Christians see fit to force others to live. They'll use democracy and law in order to do this if they can, but now that most decent people have had it with their shit, they'll demolish democracy and law in order to get it, and their boundless hypocrisy will not serve to shame them but only to comfort them as proof that their supremacy will not be bound.

Those young women in the Benedictine audience (and all other women who heard about Butker's speech) might in healthier times be able to just laugh all this off as the ravings of a lone creepy weirdo, but Herr Butker isn't alone. He's a part of a vast cult of creepy religious bigots who as I believe I mentioned intend to control all of our bodies and our lives, and none more than those of us who are pregnant, and—since they believe they own the exclusive right to define what people's lives should be and what those lives should mean, and to decide who lives and dies—they are more than willing to harm and kill people in order to make sure that women are treated like sexy sexy incubators to be controlled by men like Harrison Butker rather than people in their own right, which means that in fascist states like Texas, real women really die rather than receive needed medical care, because their lives are not as valuable as Harrison Butker's sense of supremacy.

The thing is, I started with Harrison Butker's commencement address, but this was just the most recent item to grab. I could have started in a thousand other places.

In a time of rising empowered and enabled fascism, fascism can be found everywhere.

For example, I could have talked about Texas governor Greg Abbott, who just pardoned a white supremacist man who murdered a Black Lives Matter protestor, in an unmissable demonstration of the mainstream conservative supremacist belief that American supremacist lives matter and the rest don't, and that if an American supremacist wants to murder, they should be able to do so for any and every reason, and if the courts find them guilty of their murders, then the verdict will be overturned, and if we protest, they can murder us for that, too, as easily as shooting an exuberant puppy in a gravel pit—which is something that fellow fascist South Dakota governor Kristi Noem bragged about recently, one presumes in order to get in good with the sort of people who demand leaders willing to overlook basic human decency in order to kill what needs killing. Shooting a puppy in a pit sounds like a shocking act when you write it down, or anyway it does if you're not a fascist, but when you zoom out to look at the big picture, it's just another natural expression of the rather openly expressed authoritarian belief in a conservative's right to kill what, who, when, why, and as much as they see fit.

Or I could have started with supreme court justice and longtime bribe enthusiast Sammy Alito and his upside-down flag, the one from a few years back that indicated that he and his wife (whose life started I'm not sure when; maybe we should ask Harrison Butker) are fully captured by the most unhinged parts of the popular "stop the steal" conspiracy, which insists without evidence that the last election was stolen from Don Trump, even as Alito rules in what is supposed to be an unbiased way from the highest court in the land on matters related to this election and the next, and on the fate of the criminal would-be dictator at its center. Alito and his robed gang are modern American fascism's real bulwark—the final reason that this cult of creepy religious bigots really could get their way in the end. There's no law these justices can't abrogate, no protection of citizens they can't demolish with a wave of a manicured hand, for whatever reason they want to make up, because (as any NFL kicker or Quiddich seeker can tell you), sometimes the game you've been watching has to be decided by some completely unrelated thing, so that the protagonists can win a game they would otherwise lose.

This makes American fascists bold. They are very clearly intending to make IVF and birth control illegal, and they're talking openly about punishing women for having abortions, and tracking the movement of pregnant people, and criminalizing gay and trans people, and outlawing even talk of diversity and inclusion, and they're setting their sights on new goals: talking about how the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, and how women getting the vote was a mistake, and other openly fascist stuff. And they're coming for our Social Security, and they're demolishing our public schools and our libraries. And so on and so forth, as far as the eye can see. They call it "making America great again." There are hats and stuff.

One of the most unhinged things these fascists (or conservatives, or whatever they want to call themselves) intend to do is round up and deport some 20 million people. This is the sort of proposal that should get you put in a Hannibal Lecter mask and strapped to a gurney, but nope; public criminal and Republican presidential candidate Don Trump, who just as an aside has also promised a government purge, promises his mass deportations, and people cheer for it as if he'd just kicked a 60-yard field goal. They're using "replacement theory" as a rationale for all this. And "replacement theory" is a vile antisemitic lie that makes up a load-bearing pillar of Nazi political theory, and among conservatives (or fascists, or whatever they want to be called) it's a very popular Nazi theory, and a perfectly good reason to round up and "deport" a proposed 5% of the country—that's 15-20 million people—which is going to have to involve trains and concentration camps in case you haven't read up on how these sorts of things go, but which, even if you don't give a shit about the human lives involved, will also crash the economy.

When Nazis are on the fringe, you have to really work to be a Nazi—you gotta get out the arm bands and tiki torches and flags and strut around protected by whatever cops couldn't get the day off to join you—the same row of cops who'll someday be beating up anyone who protests you; but once Nazis are in the state capitals and the national government and the high courts, all you need to do in order to be a Nazi is just be willing to go along, and it turns out most people are willing to go along with whatever. And after a while, it's just the air you breathe and the water you swim in, and it takes effort to not be a Nazi. And who likes effort?

Fascists know this, by the way. They always do. They're always looking for ways to move out the margins of permission when it comes to harming and controlling people, to make normal today what wasn't normal yesterday.

What I'm saying is, we have to realize that we're living in an increasingly fascist land, and start to understand what it means to be antifascist people in a fascist land, and start to think about the effort that will take. We are going to have to understand that we are dealing with people who have fundamentally and foundationally broken the social contract, which means we are going to have to treat them as if they have broken the social contract. This means we need to treat people of bad faith as if they are people of bad faith, to begin with. And this means acting in bad faith toward them.

This means lying to them, as a start.

I'm not kidding.

I understand that lying to fascists is a controversial thing to say, by the way. It's extremist, in a way that Sam Alito's stop-the-steal flag will never be. It's dangerous talk, in a way that Harrison Butker's speech could never be. It is hostile and accelerationist and aggressive in ways that a plan to deport 5% of the nation isn't. I think this tells you what sort of things are instinctively treated as normal and what things aren't.

There's a strong current even among people who aren't part of our nation's popular and empowered cult of creepy religious bigots that what's more important even than opposing creepy religious bigots is dealing in good faith with them. The idea here I think is that good faith will create good faith.

And there is a strong current to treat fascists as if they are normal and fascism as if it is normal, as a way of trying to hold on to normalcy. I think the idea is that behaving as if abnormality is normal will create normalcy; that pretending that unsafe things are safe will create safety.

And there is a strong current to avoid dealing with people of bad faith in bad faith, as if it was only extending good faith on limitless credit that creates our morality, when the truth is that grounding our morality in a respect for the limitless art that every human represents is what creates the conditions that allow good faith to exist in the first place.

After all, these people can't be fascists—that's crazy! This is America!

We can't treat them as if they are fascist. Treating people as if they are fascist is what happens in fascist countries.

We have to work with them, even if they are fascist. After all, how can we live in a society with them if we can't work with them?

Lying is wrong, even to fascists. After all, the ends don't justify the means.

This is the thing that makes me flirt with despair the most, I think: when people who claim to want good things start with the premise that people like Sam Alito, who have already proved that they are acting in bad faith, are not acting in bad faith, and then proceed to let absolutely nothing change that opinion. Who tell us that we need a strong Republican Party. That the way to deal with police impunity and militarized brutality is to give the police even more money. That despite all the corruption, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas aren't corrupt because they just can't be. That what open fascists want isn't fascism because saying that fascism is fascism is extremist and dangerous in ways that fascism itself is not.

It's how you go along with the current. It's how fascism rises; on a tide of goodwill.

Here's what I want you to understand today: These Americans who want to kill Americans have, through their intent and actions, already destroyed the thing you want to protect. What you want to protect is already gone. The reason we can't live in a society with them is not because we have any intention to harm or kill them, but because they are eager to kill so many of us that they are willing to destroy society to do it. Either they get their way, and society is no longer accessible to most of us, or they don't, and everyone including them gets to access society. Therefore, I think they shouldn't get their way or be treated as if they should. These are people who intend to destroy whatever they need to in order to rule over our lives to secure their own personal enrichment and comfort, and are so confident in their success that they announce their intent. They do not care about you, and they certainly do not care about your good-faith efforts beyond the extent to which they make it easier for them to seize control. They will never give you credit for working to find their rationales reasonable. They will never return the benefit of the doubt you extend. Our mission is not finding ways to work with them. Our mission is finding ways to sabotage their efforts and keep their targets as safe from them as we can.

Here's what I want you to understand today: The ends do not justify the means, but they do define them. Lying is usually wrong. It is bad when people lie to capture the Supreme Court because they want to establish a dictatorial theocracy, for example, or if you are for example a New York real estate developer and you want to commit billions in fraud. But lying is not always wrong. Do you think people on the Underground Railroad who hid formerly enslaved people sometimes lied to the nascent police officers hunting them? I think they did. Do you think they lied to those in their communities who they knew would report suspected slaves on the run? I think they did. Do you think that was wrong of them? I don't. Do you think they needed to justify the lie? I don't. What people are actually trying to do is what matters. Apply moral clarity to your thinking, and behave accordingly.

We are dealing with people who have proved that they are not safe—who insist, loudly, that they are not safe. They'll cheer when your murderer gets pardoned, and then they'll bring him up on stage to celebrate him. Our mission isn't to tell the truth to them. Our mission is to make it as hard as possible for them to do what they intend—as much as we can, wherever we are, however we are able.

So, again, I think it's time to lie to this cult of creepy religious bigots who intend to harm and kill in order to control and define our bodies and our lives, and to decide who lives and dies, and to harm and kill those of us who don't suit their liking.

I think the lies to tell fascists are situational, but I have a few principles to suggest which might hopefully guide us.

First: Fascists don't get to know our intent unless it helps. When somebody disagrees with you on core matters of worldview, it's distressing. The urge is to share your way of thinking, in order to come to a better understanding. This is how good faith operates. With fascists I recommend something different. When somebody reveals their alignment with the rising tide, stop acting as if you are having dealings with somebody on an equal footing and with good intent. Start acting as if you're dealing with somebody whose intentions you want to disrupt.

Next: Understand that we are not trying to change fascist minds. Fascists can change their minds if they want, and we should remain open to the possibility and celebrate if they do, but we are not trying to change them—we are trying to thwart them. Do what makes sense in the situation. Sometimes that's an argument. Sometimes not. Sometimes, if they want to talk, let them. Ask them to go on. Ask them to expand on what they mean. See how far out there they'll go; it's probably pretty far.

Next: Use what you learn. What do you do with that information? I think that depends heavily on time and place. Sometimes it's going to be good to make it known publicly. Sometimes it's going to be better just to know it yourself, to understand how you need to deal with the person going forward, or to surreptitiously warn others, or maybe just keep yourself safe. Maybe if you're in a very specific placement, some point where the fascist rubber meets the road, what's needed is a bit of misinformation or malicious compliance. Sometimes all that's needed is a well-timed disgusted glance, honestly. As I mentioned, a lot of people are just going along with the growing current, and all they need is continual reinforcement of the fact that going along with the current means decent people are going to think things of them they'd rather not have thought about them.

These cultish fascist religious creeps aren't normal, and what they want isn't acceptable. They know this, too, I think, deep down. It's why they act as if they are oppressed even while they are more empowered than pretty much any other group in human history. It's why it's not enough for them to be free to live in their way, which they are, but also feel compelled to cleanse their view and their world of anybody else living in any other way without being appropriately punished.

Finally: Act to keep people safe and free, against those who would harm them and control them. This should be our guiding light. I think it will be a clarifying one. I've spent a couple months talking about using differentiators to separate ourselves from fascists by doing what they can't. This is the ultimate differentiator, the ultimate thing that fascists cannot do.

OK, I'm done. Let's bring this whole thing to a thudding crash.

Stay safe out there.

[Vesper 28,275]

[Fulham Broadway 16,662]

Isaac Hayes the latest musician to be angry Trump has used his music - he joins a long list. 

A letter sent to Trump and his campaign team, shared by Hayes’s son Isaac Hayes III, threatens Trump with legal action if he continues to use the 1966 Sam & Dave song, written by Hayes and David Porter. It alleges copyright infringement, and also demands $3m in licensing fees incurred from the use of the song between 2022 and 2024.

The letter, from lawyer James Walker, alleges that the Trump campaign “wilfully and brazenly engaged in copyright infringement”, and continued using the song “despite being asked repeatedly not to engage in such illegal use by our client”.

Walker alleges that the song has been used so frequently that the $3m figure is “heavily discounted”. The letter also states that if a resolution is not made and a lawsuit is then issued, the Hayes family will demand damages of $150,000 per use of the song.

On Saturday, Hayes III wrote that Trump – who has previously been filmed dancing to Hold On, I’m Comin’ – used the song in a Montana rally despite being asked not to. “We will now deal with this very swiftly … Donald Trump represents the worst in integrity and class with his disrespect and sexual abuse of women and racist rhetoric.”

In 2022, the Hayes family criticised Trump for using the song at a National Rifle Association convention, less than a week after the Uvalde school shooting, where 19 students died. “Our condolences go out to the victims and families of Uvalde and mass shooting victims everywhere,” they wrote.

On Saturday, Céline Dion rebuked Trump over the use of My Heart Will Go On in the same Bozeman, Montana rally, though did not threaten legal action. “In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use,” a statement read. “And really, THAT song?”, it added – Trump had been widely mocked for using a song commonly associated with a sinking ship in a campaign rally.

Dion’s Titanic soundtrack ballad was the latest peculiar and even comical musical choice by the Trump campaign in recent years. The Smiths’s Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, a naked and vulnerable plea, was played at a rally in January, prompting the band’s Johnny Marr to write: “I never in a million years would’ve thought this could come to pass. Consider this shit shut right down right now.” Michael Stipe of REM said “do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign,” after It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine) – a cheerily apocalyptic song – was used in 2015.

So many other musicians have opposed Donald Trump using their music in rallies that they collectively have their own page on Wikipedia. Some of the most prominent include Adele, the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith; the estates of the late Leonard Cohen, Luciano Pavarotti and George Harrison have also voiced opposition.

Trump frequently used Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World at rallies, prompting the Toronto-born musician to write an open letter in 2020 in which he acknowledged he didn’t have legal recourse to block the use, but stated: “You are a disgrace to my country … Your mindless destruction of our shared natural resources, our environment and our relationships with friends around the world is unforgivable.”

Guardian

[Vesper 28,275]

[Vesper 28,275]

Elon Musk should face arrest if he incited UK rioters, says ex-Twitter chief

Bruce Daisley calls for ‘beefed-up’ online safety laws and compares tech billionaires to unaccountable oligarchs

• As an ex-Twitter boss, I have a way to grab Elon Musk’s attention. If he keeps stirring unrest, get an arrest warrant

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/12/elon-musk-should-face-arrest-if-he-incited-uk-rioters-says-ex-twitter-chief

Elon Musk should face “personal sanctions” and even the threat of an “arrest warrant” if found to be stirring up public disorder on his social media platform, a former Twitter executive has said.

It cannot be right that the billionaire owner of X, and other tech executives, be allowed to sow discord without personal risks, Bruce Daisley, formerly Twitter’s vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, writes in the Guardian.

He said the prime minister, Keir Starmer, should “beef up” online safety laws and reflect on whether the media regulator, Ofcom, “is fit to deal with the blurringly fast actions of the likes of Musk”.

“In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines,” Daisley writes, arguing such sanctions could impact the jet-setting lifestyles of tech billionaires.

The UK government has called on social media platforms to act responsibly after violent unrest swept through the UK following the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday dance class in Southport last month. The prime minister has blamed social media companies for allowing the spread of false claims that the attacker was an asylum seeker and police are increasingly going after those suspected of using online posts to incite violence.

In one post, Musk wrote: “civil war is inevitable” in the UK, language that the justice minister, Heidi Alexander, described as “unacceptable”. Musk has called Starmer “two-tier Keir” and a “hypocrite” over his approach to policing. Musk also shared a false post suggesting Starmer was planning to set up “detainment camps” in the Falkland Islands, a post he later deleted.

Daisley, who worked at Twitter, now X, from 2012-2020, describes Musk as someone who “has taken on the aura of a teenager on the bus with no headphones, creating lots of noise”.

He adds: “Were Musk to continue stirring up unrest, an arrest warrant for him might produce fireworks from his fingertips, but as an international jet-setter it would have the effect of focusing his mind.”

“Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media,” he argues.

Daisley says: “The question we are presented with is whether we’re willing to allow a billionaire oligarch to camp off the UK coastline and take potshots at our society. The idea that a boycott – whether by high-profile users or advertisers – should be our only sanction is clearly not meaningful.”

He continues: “In the short term, Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability for their actions under existing laws. Britain’s Online Safety Act 2023 should be beefed up with immediate effect.”

Referring to X’s algorithm, which he said prioritised Musk’s own tweets, he writes: “Musk might force his angry tweets to the top of your timeline, but the will of a democratically elected government should mean more than the fury of a tech oligarch – even him.”

Ofcom should have the right to demand certain voices, “like Tommy Robinson’s, are deplatformed”, he argues.

He continues: “Despite the attempts to position ‘free speech’ as a philosophical conviction, the reason for its popularity among tech firms is pure and simple – it is cheap.

“The approach taken by tech firms is less about deeply held principles and more about money – as evidenced by the growing support for Trump in the San Francisco venture capital community.

“We’ve hesitated from labelling tech billionaires as oligarchs because the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey wielded their political power gently. Asking oligarchs to be accountable for what their platforms permit is straightforward and entirely possible.”