Elon Musk has deleted a post on X, the social media platform he owns, in which he spread fake news about “detainment camps” being established in the Falkland Islands.
A fake article, mocked up to mimic The Daily Telegraph newspaper’s style, had been shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the co-leader of Britain First, a far-right political party.
The headline of the fake article read: “Keir Starmer considering building ’emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands”.
The byline added: “The camps would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity”.
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At around 10.00am UK time, Elon Musk quoted the original post with the statement: “‘Detainment Camps’ …”.
Musk deleted the post after around 35 minutes, which had by then accumulated over 1.8 million views.
After over 30 minutes, Musk appears to have finally deleted the post No acknowledgement yet This was my last screen-grab, which records just under 2 million views: pic.twitter.com/NcnNEgwtci— Josh Self (@Josh_Self_) August 8, 2024
In recent days, Musk has repeatedly clashed with prime minister Keir Starmer amid far-right rioting in the UK.
Violence spread onto Britain’s streets after the suspect accused of killing three young girls in Southport was falsely identified online as an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK via small boat.
In a slew of tweets aimed at Starmer over the past week, Musk has questioned whether the riots were taking place in Britain or the Soviet Union and even claimed that “civil war is inevitable”.
This latter remark prompted an explicit rebuke from Downing Street.
“There’s no justification for comments like that”, Starmer’s official spokesperson responded at the time. “What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online.”
They added: “We’re talking about a minority of thugs that do not speak for Britain, and in response to it, we’ve seen some of the best of our communities coming out and cleaning up the mess [and] the disruption of those that don’t speak for our country.
“And we’ve seen the response for people that do speak for our country. I think you can tell from that that the prime minister does not share those sentiments.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest election news and analysis.