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IT’S GREAT FUN being a billionaire in America. While the rest of us rely on television or video games to unwind in the evening, Elon Musk has taken to interfering in Western democracies for sport.
A real life comic book character, he’s become the answer to the question – what would Tony Stark be like if he grew up in apartheid South Africa and took ketamine? It’s not a pretty sight.
After turning Twitter into his personal fiefdom and linking arms with Donald Trump on his march towards the Presidency, Musk started looking around for his next great wheeze. Much to the delight of men who live in their mother’s basements everywhere, he decided to try to topple the UK government.
His vendetta against Keir Starmer started sometime last year when he shared an online petition calling for another general election. The petition – which was started by a pub landlord in Shropshire who typed the words ‘how to change the Prime Minister’ into Google – ended up with millions of signatures.
Since then, he’s become fixated on the groups of men – primarily of Pakistani descent – who groomed and raped mainly young white women in towns and cities around Britain. Far-right conspiracy theories allege there’s been a cover-up. This line has been parroted by Musk in a series of wild posts on X, accusing the Prime Minister of being ‘complicit’ in the rape of Britain and even calling Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, ‘a rape genocide apologist’.
The sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs has been covered on the front pages of newspapers, television dramas and social media for over a decade now. There have been hundreds of arrests with multiple convictions, while many investigations are still ongoing.
Yet, Musk believes that the world needs him to wade in and shine a light on the scandal. He apparently only stumbled upon the story while doom strolling over Christmas, like a horse tranquilliser-addled Grinch.
The tycoon reportedly thinks that the fate of Western civilisation is at stake, so he’s been speaking to allies about how to destabilise the Labour Party and back an alternative right-wing movement in the UK. Smelling blood in the water, the Tories have weighed in behind him. Leader Kemi Badenoch has regurgitated the accusations in parliament, for which Musk has called her ‘brave and true’. The pair are either unaware or wilfully ignoring the fact that the previous Conservative government already had an inquiry but took no concrete action on the findings.
Badenoch, in case you missed it, is Rishi Sunak’s replacement. Her party were told to ‘be more normal’ if they wanted to find a path back to power, but under her leadership they’ve doubled down on being balls-to-the-wall weird. This is a woman who claimed that while she comes from a middle-class family, as a teenager she worked in McDonald’s therefore ‘became working class’. Like the time I ate a Ferraro Rocher and became an Italian aristocrat.
Spare a thought for Nigel Farage, who must be feeling a little jilted by Badenoch’s budding love affair with the world’s richest man. There had been rumours that Musk was looking at a massive $100 million donation to Reform UK. But Musk has since posted that the party needs a new leader and that ‘Farage doesn’t have what it takes’. Ouch.
They seem to have fallen out over the South African mogul’s support for Tommy Robinson, the football hooligan turned far-right activist who is currently in jail for contempt of court. Spineless in the face of Musk’s wealth and influence, Farage is still planning to attend Trump’s inauguration, having no doubt already spent a small fortune on fake tan for the occasion. Lizard tangerine is the colour he’s been going for lately.
The Tesla owner’s dramatic meddling in British politics couldn’t come at a worse time for Starmer. His approval ratings were already at Liz Truss levels. He wasn’t straight with people during the election campaign about the painful fiscal decisions Labour would need to take in office. The government have so far picked fights with pensioners, farmers and Waspi women, with more battles still to come.
Whoever ends up being Labour’s main opponent in the next election, it should not be this easy for foreign billionaires to distract, influence and manipulate our public officials. Here on planet Earth, people are still struggling with the cost of living, housing and healthcare. We need our politicians to be focused on the issues that matter most to us, not the erratic whims of a megalomaniac desperate to find meaning in his life.
Peter Flanagan is an Irish comedian and writer. You can find him on Twitter @peterflanagan and Instagram @peterflanagancomedy.
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If you thought RTE was a propaganda machine just read The Journal.
@martin lawlor:
Like RTE they know where their bread is buttered, they’re not going to rock the boat!
@martin lawlor: DOB manipulating Irish Politics for year’s, but you’ll never see a story about that.
@Enoch Kochwomble: Because I believe special lad’s like yourself need a platform to speak, even if it’s waffle, I think you’re great sunshine.
@martin lawlor:
Have you seen Enoch’s new word,Martin, it’s ‘Incel’, he found it on the Internet! I don’t know about you but I’m impressed, when he calls me an ‘Incel’ it really demoralises me,and I realise I’m wrong about everything and shouldn’t even bother! Damn you,Enoch,why do you have to be so smart,it’s not fair!
@Jonn: A 100% Jonn.When you make a valid point like yourself and Enochs response is to just insult you or call you a name,you know what you’re dealing with.He is better off ignored.
Isn’t it funny how the leftist elite getting their knickers in a twist over Elon Musk ‘interfering in democracy’ have been perfectly content for decades for George Soros, Chuck Feeney and Bill and Melinda Gates to spend billions ‘interfering in democracy’. I say let Musk ‘interfere’ to his hearts content, his trolling is driving these clowns round the bend and it’s wonderful to behold!
@Enoch Kochwomble:
Ok Enoch, you’ve gotten your new word out there, and we’re all very impressed, but you’d better run along now, Mammy’s running your bath for you!
@Jonn: Leftist elite as opposed to billionaire working class heroes Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Pulled themselves up by the bootstraps those lads.
@Setanta O’Toole:
What does it matter, rich and powerful people have always sought to set the agenda and influence politics,it’s nothing new! Soros pumped billions into setting up leftist activist groups..colloquially known as ‘NGO’s..to change the course of politics in Ireland and other countries! He’s no more Irish than Musk is, so why is it ok for him to ‘interfere’ but not Musk?
@Jonn: Did i say Musk shouldn’t be allowed to speak on the UK government? My point was lads like you always talk about the likes of trump and musk, smashing the ‘leftist elite’ draining the swamp etc..as if they are any different from the ‘elite’ you claim they are saving us from. They are multi billionaires who care more about enriching themselves than anything. Trumps election added 64bn in wealth to the top 10 richest people in the world, and now he’s telling people he can’t bring the price of groceries down. Ireland has never had a left wing government in power, so maybe Soros should have pumped more billions in.
@Setanta O’Toole:
“Ireland has never had a left wing government”!! You really want to go opening that can of worms? So the government’s of the last ten years that saw a massive,unprecedented explosion in government spending and the size of the state, that chipped away at the concept of private property rights with things like rent caps and eviction bans..which incidentally have had the opposite of the intended effects..that operated basically an open door immigration policy that has the native Irish on track to be a minority by 2050,if not earlier..that introduced gay marriage and some of the most ‘progressive’ abortion laws in the world! This is what you define as a ‘right wing’ government? I’d be curious what you’d define as a ‘left wing’ regime?
@Jonn: FF and FG are both centre right parties. Neither ‘introduced’ gay marriage or the repeal of the 8th amendement. They were both passed by referendum both of which were overwhelmingly voted for by the peoole. It’s called democracy. Fine geal are socially progressive, but fiscally conservative. They kowtow to big business interests and property developers. They are at their core a party of landlords and businessmen. FF crashed the economy bailing out bankers and bondholders to the tune of billions, plunging this country into years of hardship and austerity. They come from a majority catholic and conservative voter base. If you think a few socially progressive policies automatically make them far left you don’t have a decent understanding of the political spectrum.
@Setanta O’Toole:
I remember the gay marriage and abortion referendums..for both on one side you had the massed ranks of pretty much the entire political establishment, with one or two exceptions..all of the huge power and wealth of the NGOs, and pretty much all of the media with the exception of Gript, which was only in its infancy back then and so was largely irrelevant. So it wasn’t so much a contest as a rubber-stamping operation, you were basically told you were a neanderthal throwback if you voted against either proposal! As for Fianna Fail still being a ‘Catholic’ party?? Really,you’re just gaslighting now, give it a rest!
@Jonn: so, you can’t think for yourself and have no faith in the rest of the country to do so either, good to know. Do you ever think maybe you are just in the minority with your conservative views? I said that was their traditional voter base, not that they still were a catholic party. Good man for completely glossing over my main points about how beholden to big business, banks and bondholders both parties are, which is about the least left-wing you can get.
@Setanta O’Toole:
All governments are beholden to banks big business and bondholders,it’s the world we live in,unless you want to just turn the country into a Leninist collectivist farm,with turnips and potatoes as currency. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are at most, giving them maximum benefit of the doubt, centrist parties, with Fianna Fail slightly more to the left on economics, and Fine Gael slightly more left on social issues ,LGBT etc! Just look at all the grief they’re getting these days in their centre-right grouping in Europe! More and more they’re the outliers on issues like Immigration and Gaza, their natural home is the centre left grouping,it’s where they belong!
@Jonn: Elon Musk IS the leftist elite! lol
@Thesaltyurchin:
Erm,ok, if you say so!?
@Jonn: Tesla, electric cars. Solar City promotes solar energy, implementing and promoting increase in public transport, Neuro-link set to revolutionise healthcare, trans daughter… he’s a centre-left Libertarian, certainly doesn’t fit the necessaries for either far left OR right, which I enjoy greatly in the context of the current ‘football-fan’ approach to contemporary politics.
@Thesaltyurchin: A trans daughter who hates him and he has now disowned. I notice you left out purchasing twitter and manipulating the algorithm so all the accounts pushing conservative and right wing talking points are amplified over all others. Do you think that might push him slightly to the right? Also, caring about the environment isn’t a political stance. Ironically, the ones that like to paint it as being a solely lefty trait are mostly the ‘football fan’ types you mention.
@Jonn: Musk is just a rabble rouser with money. Like your normal pub local know it all. Full of hot air.
The MSM have shamelessly being interfering in elections for years. What bothers them is they are loosing their power and credibility.
@thomas molloy: Science, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, published research this past June which revealed that most misinformation on Facebook exists among users with conservative views, a phenomena which has no equivalent on the liberal side.
@Dermot Blaine: Probably funded by the Open Society foundation.
@Dermot Blaine: Lol. Sure enough wwwaaasorg/programs/srj/past-and-present-funders You’ll have to fix the link yourself
@Chop Chop: but of course, everything is a big conspiracy.
@Dermot Blaine: It actually is.
So media ignore starmers Labour party actually interfering with the US election sending over 100 activists to campaign. We ignore Biden’s US government demanding Meta remove from all their platforms posts that are true but not their liking. Confirmed in Zuckerberg interview.
We are ok with George Zoros funding NGOs all over world with left agendas ,who are employed by governments to write reports for recommendations they enact.
But all enraged and must stop and individual posting hurty personal views on x.
Get out of town…
Peter does an excellent job of not writing like a comedian. It must have taken ages to clean the article of funny parts.
@Emily Murphy:
Peter knows as long as he has the correct, approved opinions on everything he’ll be given a platform! No doubt he’ll pop up on The Late Late Show and Newstalk in the coming weeks so the presenters can nod along and agree with him,and of course give him an opportunity to plug his upcoming shows! It’s called playing the game!
@Emily Murphy: Maybe he’ll next write a piece about UKs Labour party lobbying for the Democrats in the US election?
@Athena:
I wouldn’t hold my breath. He probably will do a piece saying it was Keir Starmer and not Tommy Robinson who was the first to raise the alarm about grooming gangs. Tommy Robinson made most of the early running,and received dogs abuse for doing so, years before the politicians or the legal system were shamed into taking action!
So too much publicity about child rape is bad now.
@Eric Gaffney: Yes because the UK government and police engaged in a cover-up. Hence all of the damage control they are now doing.
@Chop Chop: Soy boy Flanagan seems to think enough has been done.
The left are the real fascists
@common sense: Under a UK left wing government in 1971 the top rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%. A surcharge of 15% kept the top rate on investment income at 90%. In 1974 the cut was partly reversed and the top rate on earned income was raised to 83%. With the investment income surcharge, this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%
@common sense: Both extremities want to force us to live a certain way. For me there is no left and right only people who want to go back and people who want to go forward. Different spectrum entirely.
Watching the journal and the left in general race to defend muslim rape gangs is sickening to read. Your time is coming and 2025 is going to be the year.
@Adam H2022: story first broke in 2002 and a large proportion of the most prominent voices speaking on it now didn’t give a shit until Elon Musk, a South African living in America had to tell them what was going on in their own country. Now they are outraged. They are more concerned with the ethnicity/religion of the perpetrators, and getting traction on twitter, than the plight of the victims.
You can take a white south African out off African but the racist is ingrained
@Robert Halvey: Islam isn’t a race.
It was once said that winning a general election in the UK required the backing of the Murdoch news empire. Today, Musk, uses his X platform to amplify his worldview including directly attacking the UK and others’ governments. Big Tech’s platform power has become a political weapon, enabling figures like Musk to attack politicians, while suppressing journalistic free expression. Musk and Zuckerberg (while publicly claiming that they wish to protect free speech), are in fact aligning their corporate power with the political interests of the second Trump administration.
Nice to see that the Journal has taken on someone to provide a bit of satire to cheer us up.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of your billionaire’s agenda, Elon.
@Iano C: What misinformation is the Journal peddling now? The police & councils admitted they covered up/ignored the grooming gangs for fear of ‘upsetting race relations’. Get your facts right.
Musk is an Accelerationist and is employing the same strategy as Trump, it’s the quickest way to drag us, kicking and screaming into the future. I’m interested to see how far he can go. We get nothing done, because we’re stubborn, this is the problem with all our lazy political elite, he see’s the pace that China are developing the future, we’re so far off it’s pathetic.
Why wasn’t it? Spent enough time interfering in our own the last few months.
When the type of person who bends the knee to Musk reads these facts, their tiny minds explode in rage! Convicted fraudster Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was the person who did the most to get grooming gangs off the hook with his ‘protests’ outside the courts. Also, as mentioned at the beginning of the piece, The UK Times, the best known newspaper in the UK, covered the grooming scandal on it’s front page and had weekly articles on it for months, at the time it happened! It’s so easy to feed a false narrative to the knee-benders on Twitter and Facebook and they’ll believe it without question, ironically these people call themselves ‘truth-seekers’, lol.
@Jacintha Dumbrell: Good ‘Christian truth’
@Thesaltyurchin: Not Amen!
I love your cheek implants.
How much did the ffgs give him back in the day teacher’s where sacked for playing rugby and our version off a drug lord and his runt took the knee we need another civil war
@Enoch Kochwomble: Wake you’re Mammy up to make you’re breakfast,maybe that will cheer you up.
@Enoch Kochwomble: I was gonna suggest he puts down the crack pipe.
@martin lawlor: Education is key. “You’re” means “you are,” like in “You’re my best friend.” “Your” shows something belongs to you, like in “Your phone is ringing.” If “you are” works in the sentence, use “you’re.” If not, use “your.”
@Sal Paradise: Brilliant Sal,I feel enlightened.Thank you for taking the time to educate me.
@martin lawlor:
Remind his mammy to cut his toast into ‘soldiers’ the way he likes it!
@martin lawlor: You’re welcome. Education doesn’t stop here.
Go Elon, the centre left MSM are the real conspirers.
If you ever wondered just how many people are deeply ignorant of basic information and don’t understand the context of the events being opportunistically seized on by the deeply unscrupulous and even the truly deranged…Elon Musk’s supporters, apologists, etc.
Chips in every head ..
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