Key Takeaways
While usually stopping short of full-throated approval, Elon Musk has a history of offering coded endorsements to controversial figures on X.
In the latest example, Musk used his platform to question a British court’s decision to sentence the right-wing provocateur Tommy Robinson to 18 months in prison.
In 2018, a U.K. court ordered Robinson, whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, not to repeat claims about a schoolboy that it found to be defamatory.
However, in May 2023, Robinson published Silenced, a self-made documentary about the incident, which repeats the allegation that the Syrian refugee Jamal Hijazi attacked a female student.
As a result of the libelous claim made in Silenced, Robinson was found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
The sentence is not his first, however. Robinson previously served nine weeks of a 13-month sentence for illegally filming in court.
In the U.K., Robinson is most well-known as the de facto leader of the English Defense League (EDL), a far-right group known for organizing anti-Islam rallies that often turn violent.
While Robinson has denied encouraging violence and publicly rejects racism, the EDL has a record of attacking police and members of the public and is widely viewed as a hate group by mainstream British politics.
Moreover, although he has publicly distanced himself from the group in recent years, Robinson remains a key figurehead and ideological anchor for the decentralized movement that has superseded the EDL.
His more controversial statements include describing Islam as a “disease” and claiming that his hometown of Luton had suffered “ethnic cleansing” as a result of immigration.
The EDL leader’s online content was cited by police as a “significant factor” in the radicalization of the terrorist Darren Osborne.
In 2017, Osborne drove a van into a crowd of predominantly Muslim pedestrians in London, killing one and injuring 11 more.
As a self-proclaimed free speech champion, Musk has a history of taking up the cause of right-wing voices like Robinson, who claim they have been silenced or censored by mainstream institutions.
While Robinson’s Twitter (now X) account had previously been banned for violating the platform’s policies on hateful conduct, it was reinstated by Musk in 2023.
Since then, Musk has interacted with Robinson’s posts on several occasions, amplifying the EDL leader’s social media presence and ensuring it reaches a much larger audience.
On the surface, Musk’s support for Robinson is about questioning the court’s decision to send him to prison for repeating claims that may have some justification. (The original libel trial heard evidence from five former pupils at the school at the center of the controversy, all of whom supported Robinson’s account).
But Musk doesn’t select the Tweets he chooses to promote at random. Viewed alongside other posts that promote Germany’s AfD and his frequent anti-immigrant tirades, his latest comment on X brings his worldview into focus.
It is highly unlikely that Musk isn’t aware of who the EDL are and what they stand for. His apparent support for Robinson is a blatant dog whistle that makes one thing clear to its members: “I’m with you.”