Elon Musk and his platform X played a central role in amplifying Islamophobic narratives around grooming gangs in the UK, a damning new report has said.
The Centre for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) said X had become a “high-velocity distribution channel” for hate speech and conspiracy theories, particularly targeting British-Pakistani men and other South Asian and immigrant communities.
The CSOH report “Racialised Grooming Gangs: Elon Musk, X, and Amplification of Islamophobia in the UK” looks at the tech billionaire’s influence in the debate around grooming gangs earlier this year. In January, Musk repeatedly posted or reposted about child grooming in the UK, accusing the Labour government of not doing enough to tackle it and calling for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips “to go to prison”.
Based on an analysis of 1,365 posts with over 1.5 billion engagements, the report found that Musk’s personal interventions – alongside far-right channels – played a pivotal role in “weaponising” the grooming gang discourse to scapegoat Muslims in the country, particularly British Pakistani men.
That is despite police chiefs saying that most grooming gang offences in the UK were carried out by white men.
“The discourse surrounding the ‘grooming gangs’ – amplified at unprecedented scale by Elon Musk’s interventions on X – illustrates a dangerous convergence between far-right ideologies and the failure of digital platforms to enforce even basic content moderation policies,” the report said.
“This report finds that X became a central hub for the spread of these narratives. In particular, we identified coordinated global activity involving individuals and organisations linked to promoting Islamophobic content. The ‘grooming gangs’ discourse must also be understood as part of the global far-right’s broader search for political legitimacy in a post-2024 UK.”
The report described Musk’s role as “instrumental” in amplifying the grooming gangs narrative, with his allegations against political figures like Keir Starmer offering legitimacy to far-right talking points. Musk accused Sir Keir of failing to tackle the scandal when he was the country’s chief prosecutor, saying he was “complicit in the rape of Britain”.
“His repeated accusations against prime minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party – alleging cover-ups and complicity – offered political legitimacy to fringe actors and injected far-right talking points directly into the mainstream,” the report stated.
“By positioning himself as a champion of ‘free speech’, Musk created cover for the amplification of hate and disinformation, often quoting or engaging with known extremists. His platform served not only as a megaphone for these views, but as a shield against accountability, framing any criticism of disinformation as censorship or political suppression,” it said.
“The myth of institutional cover-up alleges that authorities – including the Labour Party, judiciary, and media – deliberately concealed crimes to protect minority communities or preserve political advantage.
“The aforementioned constructs multiculturalism and so-called ‘political correctness’ as conduits to such crimes, thus positioning diversity itself as a threat. Together, these sensationalist conspiracies serve to racialise sexual criminality, delegitimise and erode public trust in liberal public institutions.”
The CSOH also pointed to another social media trend: sexual violence was being weaponised, with entire communities blamed for individual crimes.
“The scapegoating of Muslim men (particularly British Pakistani men) relies on long-standing orientalist and racist tropes to frame them as collectively (and sometimes solely) responsible for sexual violence,” the report said. Social media posts often portrayed Muslim men as foreign “predators” and accused institutions of shielding them due to “political correctness” and multiculturalism, the report added.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan was among the public figures vilified based on his ethnicity and religion, with the report pointing to attacks by far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
“Tommy Robinson’s X account called Sadiq Khan the ‘Pakistani mayor of London’ despite the fact Khan is a British citizen by birth. The post generated 854.1K views, 31K likes, 7.4K reposts and 1K comments.
The report also claimed to have uncovered what it called a coordinated effort by India-based Hindu nationalist accounts to inject transnational Islamophobic narratives into the UK debate, further fuelling racialised paranoia and online hate.
“Of the 650 posts promoting hate against men of British Pakistani heritage, other South Asians, and immigrants, 107 explicitly Islamophobic posts were linked to X accounts associated with Hindu nationalists.” These posts collectively received a total engagement of 7.96 million views, 251K likes, 84.3K reposts, 12.3K bookmarks and 5.7K replies.
In January, Sir Keir responded to Musk’s attacks, amid mounting calls for a new public inquiry into child sexual exploitation and grooming in Oldham.
Sir Keir said: “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as wide as possible – they’re not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves.”
The Independent has reached out to Musk and X for comment.
