One of the reasons the moral panic around ‘grooming gangs’ gained such momentum is because of the way that it represents an amalgamation of so many racist fears, writes Afroze Zaidi. [GETTY]
After interfering in the US general elections, billionaire Elon Musk has recently turned his attention to British politics. In a series of tweets last week, he decided to broadcast the message that the UK government was not doing enough to tackle ‘grooming gangs’.
To his over 200 million followers, Musk tweeted that safeguarding minister Jess Phillips was a “rape genocide apologist”. He then went on to attack PM Keir Starmer, saying he had been “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”.
Setting aside my personal views on Starmer or Phillips, it’s easy to see how Musk’s statements could be described as not just inaccurate – but also defamatory. But of course, one of the many unfortunate consequences of the existence of billionaires is that their wealth makes them immune to any possible legal action against defamation. This effectively gives Musk carte blanche to say what he likes with no accountability – and there’s little doubt that he has capitalised on this impunity.
It was reported that during a “three-day posting binge”, Musk tweeted about grooming gangs almost 200 times. He appears to be on a mission to further racist, anti-immigrant propaganda in general and Islamophobic conspiracy theories in particular. Predictably, he has been supported in his endeavours by Reform and Tory politicians, most notably Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, and the right-wing British press.
Though unsurprising, Musk’s racist rampage should raise alarm bells for a number of reasons. To begin with, he isn’t an ordinary social media user – his significant following and control of a platform with over 600 million monthly users, grants him almost unparalleled visibility. This also makes the implications of him tweeting out misinformation or racist conspiracy theories exponentially worse.
In response to the billionaire’s ‘grooming gangs’ comments, Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said people like Musk were “normalising prejudice, and all to create division through the spread of disinformation”.
At this point one might ask: what could Musk, literally the richest man in the world, have to gain by ‘creating division’ and controlling the spread of information on a global scale?
The answer is simply that in addition to Musk being a centibillionaire – and not unrelated to this fact – he is also a raging narcissist. While, on one hand, Musk’s interference in the political domain is predictably linked to a desire to maximise his profits, it is further connected to a pathological belief that he is always right.
Much has already been said about Musk’s narcissism and his highly fragile ego. These insights shed light on both his perpetual need for control and a sense of entitlement that is only exacerbated by his $427 billion net worth. They also go some way towards explaining Musk’s ease with using the word ‘genocide’ in entirely inaccurate contexts while he silences pro-Palestine voices.
When someone like Musk gains ownership of a platform like X/Twitter, the consequences are especially disastrous for society’s most marginalised groups of people. YouTuber Mother Jones is one of the people who have looked into the implications of Musk’s unchecked racism. In March 2024, he posted a video describing how Musk’s boosting of (thoroughly debunked) racist conspiracy theories has caused racist accounts to gain “tens of thousands of new followers”.
And this is why it is so reckless of people like Kemi Badenoch to agree with Musk as though his concerns about victims of sexual assault were expressed in good faith.
While calls for an inquiry into so-called grooming gangs make sense on the surface, they further a myth of ‘political correctness’ providing protection for Asian perpetrators. They also overlook two significant realities: firstly that eight out of ten victims of sexual violence are attacked by people known to them, and secondly, the conviction rate for rape in the UK has remained alarmingly low in recent years.
Like several other tropes, the “grooming gangs” narrative is a tired one which re-emerges periodically in the news cycle in order to stoke panic among a readily racist and Islamophobic public. And no amount of debunking and myth-busting, no argument or logic or research, is enough to make bad-faith actors see the error of their ways.
One of the reasons the moral panic around ‘grooming gangs’ gained such momentum is because of the way that it represents an amalgamation of so many racist fears. In the form of Pakistani men, people see a convergence of the savage brown man, the immigrant who won’t assimilate, and the morally bankrupt Muslim.
For those on the right, and those with power in a white supremacist society, Pakistani or Asian men become an easy target. Any demands for them to face accountability then become less about the victims, or about women and girls in general, and more about furthering a racist and xenophobic agenda.
Afroze Fatima Zaidi is a writer, editor and journalist. She has a background in academia and writing for online platforms.
Follow her on X: @afrozefz
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
