Guardian Writers Want X’s Musk Arrested; Brazil Shut Down Access

The far-left Guardian has published three articles since August 12 calling for the arrest of X owner Elon Musk because he permits free speech on the social media platform.

The most prominent anti-free speech leftist to appear was former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

Another piece linked Musk to Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who was arrested in Paris on charges that the platform permits users to trade child pornography.

And ex-Twitter executive Bruce Daisley called for the arrest of Musk because he permits content that violates British law.

Reich Unhinged

Reich’s 1,100-word rant appeared Saturday, and hysterically warned that Musk is “out of control.” Musk, he wrote, “is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth … into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.”

Reich fumed that Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump for president, helped form a Super PAC, and permitted the GOP presidential nominee’s return to the platform. The leftists who ran Twitter before Musk purchased it removed Trump because of the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. They complained that Trump’s posts would incite violence.

Reich also fretted that Musk is soliciting votes for Trump and even hired a Republican to help. 

To falsely claim that the two would be “governing together if Trump wins a second term,” Reich observed that Musk told Trump he would “help out on [a government efficiency] commission.”

Something called the Center for Countering Digital Hate accuses Musk of posting 50 false election claims on X this year. 

“Musk is supporting rightwing causes around the world,” he wrote, and is to blame for the “far-right thugs” who “burned, looted and terrorized minority communities” in England because “misinformation” spread on X about the stabbing of three school girls in June. “Musk not only allowed instigators of this hate to spread these lies, but he retweeted and supported them,” Reich wrote.

The former Clinton hireling is particularly exercised that Musk has rightly “prophesied a future civil war related to immigration. When anti-immigration street riots occurred across Britain, he wrote: ‘civil war is inevitable.’”

And so on and so forth.

Thus does Reich expect consumers and advertisers to boycott X and Tesla. But that’s not enough.

“Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” while the Federal Trade Commission should police Musk and sue him if he doesn’t “take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals.”

“Musk’s free-speech rights under the first amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest,” Reich wrote.

“Elon-alike” Arrested

The following day, The Guardian zeroed Musk again. A scribette called Carole Cadwalladr is tickled that French cops collared Durov, and clearly said that Musk should be next.

“It was a breaking news alert to lift the spirits and make the heart sing,” she began. “A tech billionaire arrested as he stepped off his private jet and detained by the French authorities. Happy days!”

And so let’s get on with it, she continued:

Because while the UK police have been charging individuals who incited violence online during this summer’s riots, the man who helped to fuel its flames — Elon Musk — has simply tweeted his way through it.

It turned out — because you can’t have it all — that the man arrested and subsequently charged in France this week was not Elon. It was his bro-in-arms, Pavel Durov, an Elon-alike who founded the encrypted messaging app Telegram, though for the casual observer it can be hard to tell where Durov ends and Musk begins.

“A Fragile Narcissist”

On August 12, former Twitter exec Bruce Daisley wrote that Musk is a “a fragile narcissist” who stays up too late using his own platform. He’s particularly incensed that “Musk himself has taken on the aura of a teenager on the bus with no headphones, creating lots of noise but not exactly winning people over.”

In fact, he is winning people over, which is why Reich, Cadwalladr, and Daisley want him shut down.

But forget that small truth.

“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,” Daisley continued. The answer is obviously no, and boycotts are not enough. Like Reich and Cadwalladr, he wants Musk behind bars:

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. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his team should reflect if Ofcom — the media regulator that seems to be continuously challenged by the output and behaviour of outfits such as GB News — is fit to deal with the blurringly fast actions of the likes of Musk.

Beyond that, Daisley wants to silence “certain voices,” such as British rightist and patriot Tommy Robinson. 

Brazil Shuts Down X

On Saturday, Brazil did what the three writers want done. The nation closed access to X for Brazilians because, the platform’s X feed said, it refused to “censor [Judge Alexandre de Moraes’] political opponents. These enemies include a duly elected Senator and a 16-year-old girl, among others.”

“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment,” the post by X’s Global Government Affairs continued:

Even after she [the representative] resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.

We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.

X vowed to publish the judge’s demands.