\n<\/p>\n
Downing Street has condemned Elon Musk for using \u201cdangerous and inflammatory\u201d language at the nationalist protest organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson on Saturday. But will \u2013 or should \u2013 the X owner face any consequences?<\/p>\n
While he called for a \u201cdissolution of parliament\u201d and a \u201cchange of government\u201d, the comments that attracted particular scrutiny were when he told the crowd: \u201cThis is a message to the reasonable centre, the people who ordinarily wouldn\u2019t get involved in politics, who just want to live their lives. They don\u2019t want that, they\u2019re quiet, they just go about their business.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy message is to them: if this continues, that violence is going to come to you, you will have no choice. You\u2019re in a fundamental situation here.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, that\u2019s the truth, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are two main statutes that apply to public pronouncements that encourage or incite violence in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
The first is the Public Order Act 1986, section 4 of which applies to \u201cthreatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour\u201d directed towards a person. But crucially it must carry the threat of provoking \u201cimmediate unlawful violence\u201d.<\/p>\n
The second is the Serious Crime Act 2007. It has provisions, which also cover Northern Ireland, that relate to encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence. But the person must believe the offence will be committed and that their act would encourage its commission.<\/p>\n
As Musk did not make any reference to a racial group, his comments did not fall within legislation covering such speech.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Hall KC, the UK independent reviewer of terrorism legislation and independent reviewer of state threat legislation, told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme that Musk\u2019s comments would not have broken the law. \u201cPoliticians use martial language all the time, don\u2019t they?\u201d Hall said. \u201cI mean, metaphors such as fights and struggles are pretty normal. And he was talking about it contingently, wasn\u2019t he? He wasn\u2019t saying: \u2018Go out immediately.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
By contrast, police have said they are searching for a man who said on camera that \u201cKeir Starmer needs to be assassinated\u201d and \u201csomeone needs to shoot Keir Starmer\u201d.<\/p>\n
The laws reflect the balance that the government maintains on free speech, which is a qualified right under the European convention of human rights, meaning it can be restricted for certain reasons.<\/p>\n
While many will argue that Musk\u2019s rhetoric will have harmful consequences, by, for example, requiring the threat of \u201cimmediate unlawful violence\u201d parliament has set a threshold that inflammatory speech must cross to constitute criminality.<\/p>\n
Different countries set different limits on free speech. While the US often claims to have absolute free speech, Donald Trump\u2019s administration has cracked down on pro-Palestinian voices as well as political opponents. Musk also claims to be a free speech absolutist but under his stewardship, X has been accused of censoring content to placate authoritarian governments in India and Turkey.<\/p>\n
Last year, Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months after admitting stirring up racial hatred when tweeting about hotels housing asylum seekers: \u201cMass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care \u2026 if that makes me racist so be it.\u201d That offence under section s19(1) of the Public Order Act requires the person to intend to stir up racial hatred or for that to be a likely consequence.<\/p>\n
Last month, the suspended Labour councillor Ricky Jones was found not guilty of encouraging violent disorder after he called at an anti-racism rally for far-right activists\u2019 throats to be cut.<\/p>\n
The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, like Reform UK, claimed the cases showed \u201ctwo-tier justice\u201d at work despite the fact that Connolly admitted her offence and Jones was acquitted by a jury.<\/p>\n
The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, has said the government should rule out any future contracts with Tesla and and block Musk from being granted a licence to supply energy to British homes. While Musk is no longer on great terms with Trump, the prospect of Starmer making such a move as the US president visits the UK seems remote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Downing Street has condemned Elon Musk for using \u201cdangerous and inflammatory\u201d language at the nationalist protest organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson on Saturday. But will \u2013 or should \u2013 the X owner face any consequences? What did Musk say? While he called for a \u201cdissolution of parliament\u201d and a \u201cchange of government\u201d, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3018,91,8305,175,1371,7696,11332],"class_list":{"0":"post-21504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-break","9":"tag-elon","10":"tag-farright","11":"tag-law","12":"tag-musk","13":"tag-rally","14":"tag-remarks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}