Updated January 16, 2025 at 1:55 pm ET
Imagine a foreign-born billionaire acquired Facebook, asked its engineers to boost his posts, and then launched a payment system that rewards users for catering to his whims and biases.
Imagine also that the billionaire came across a news report about the death toll following the 2003 allied invasion of Iraq and connected the carnage to the intelligence failures used to justify the war. Filled with righteous indignation, our fictional billionaire says the state and media covered up the entire inflammatory topic.
Elon Musk's belated discovery of an organized child sex abuse network known as a "grooming ring" is how many Britons view it. This is a real scandal: for years, a network of adult men, mainly British citizens of Pakistani origin, trafficked and raped young girls in towns and cities across England, aided by local government and police failures. But the scandal is not new, and journalists haven’t collectively ignored it. “You don’t hate traditional media enough,” Musk insisted at one point in a multi-day post on his social media platform X. Never mind traditional media – Rupert Murdoch’s London era- first revealed the story of a Rotherham child sex abuse gang, 14 years ago.
Musk's shocked reaction to the scandal, seemingly triggered by a viral post on New Year's Eve, makes perfect sense. However, this all came too late and showed his usual self-centeredness: his idea seemed to be that if he If I hadn't heard about this scandal in the 2010s, then surely no one else had either. His ownership of X and his alliance with Donald Trump give him the power to bring any issue he likes into the political conversation. More recently, he has used that power to meddle in European politics, condemning British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, supporting Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party and attacking EU efforts to regulate his businesses. Starmer's right-wing rivals, including Conservative Party leader Keimi Badenock, were quick to echo Musk's interest in the grooming gang - even though Badenock's party was in power when the story first unfolded.
this era The reporting prompted dozens of prosecutions, multiple public inquiries and even a prime-time BBC drama. The story became so well known that a police whistleblower appeared on a celebrity reality TV show in 2018. The news even reached the United States: In 2014, new york times Columnist Ross Douthat observed that "what happened in Rotherham was rooted both in left-wing multiculturalism and in more old-fashioned prejudices about race, gender and class." He believed that the perpetrators Race matters, but so does the status of the victims - working-class girls who are treated by the police as "'prostitutes' who deserve what they get".
Musk's newfound revulsion at the details of the abuse is entirely justified - read the sentencing report if you will. In 2012, a judge among nine men convicted of grooming in the northern towns of Oldham and Rochdale said the "girls were raped in a callous, vicious and violent manner". And added, "Some of you are behaving to satisfy your own desires, some of you are behaving to satisfy your sexual desires." Their money. All of you treat them like worthless people with no respect. "
Child sexual abuse occurs in all human societies, but its form depends on culture. Like school shootings in the United States, grooming gangs are a special type of crime that arises under the legal and social conditions of a specific time and place. These gangs are not representative of the overall picture of what researchers call "group-based child sexual exploitation" - a phenomenon that appears to be dominated by white men in the UK, as you'd expect from the demographic makeup. (Census data shows that the population of England and Wales is more than 80% white; "ethnic Asians" make up about 9% of the population.) However, in the cases that have attracted media attention, most of the sting ring defendants have been Pakistani Bloodline male. Many are associated with the night-time economy, such as running small taxi companies and delivering food. They mainly target disadvantaged girls - girls who have run away from home or live in foster care. We know all this because of overwhelming reporting, victim and whistleblower testimonies, and the bravery of politicians such as Ann Clare and Sarah Champion, two Labor MPs who were criticized by their own side for speaking out avoidance.
It's perfectly reasonable to ask why they are being shunned. In the 2000s and early 2010s, the racial dynamics of grooming gangs made British towns extremely reluctant to confront what was happening. Local communities in South Asia are afraid to report perpetrators among them. The police did not record complaints or actively investigate issues; according to some reports, the 2001 race riots in Oldham led police to emphasize "community cohesion" rather than what they should have been most concerned about - dismantling organized rape gangs, regardless of the perpetrators What are the demographics of the users. White members of the city council fell into a pattern of believing that problems among British Pakistanis were best left to their fellow councilors from that community. "Rotherham is not a very self-interested place and I think that's why the council is overcompensating," a local official told investigators in 2015. "It didn't want to be accused of racism."
Walking through the story, experiencing the slow accumulation of details, beliefs, and inquiries in real time, obviously feels a lot different than learning it all at once. One of the main complaints that has emerged since Musk revived the story is that the initial reporting was largely fragmented and too restrained: If white gangs trafficked migrant women, it could spark protests similar to the 2020 murders in the U.S. The event’s reckoning with George Floyd. What constitutes a "reckoning" is up for debate - but I agree that the left would rant about a story like this, just as the right did with this one.
In response, some commentators on the left and right called for a "national conversation" about the gangs. However, this conversation sounds like the tricky part. Will it call for mass deportations of immigrants, as many on Europe's emerging right want? Is radical secularization of Britain the answer? Or a renewed insistence that Britain is a Christian nation? Should the UK enact a "Muslim ban" or turn away asylum seekers from Muslim-majority countries? When liberals still feel uncomfortable engaging in this topic, it's because they sense these shadow arguments are just out of sight.
While Musk is powerful enough to draw new attention to the Rotherham scandal, polls show a majority of Britons view his intervention as opportunistic. The owners of Many of Musk's posts call for unbelievable scenarios, such as a king dissolving parliament or the country holding new elections, which makes it feel like Musk doesn't research the topic in depth before picking up his phone to post.
Nonetheless, the Conservative opposition, led by Badenock, pandered to him, calling for a new national inquiry to "connect the dots". This is a reversal of the Conservative Party's position a year ago - when the party was in power and had the ability to commission any inquiry it deemed necessary. (In 2019, future Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that investigating historical abuse would be “throwing money against the wall.”)
Badenock's decision to echo Musk's line also minimizes Conservatives' work did The government should take steps to crack down on rape gangs. Former chancellor Rishi Sunak set up a "grooming gang task force" which helped police arrest more than 550 people. The Conservatives also acknowledged that some sentences for gang members were too lenient and proposed creating a new aggravating factor in sex crimes involving grooming. This is likely to be included in this spring's Crime and Policing Bill, along with a mandatory reporting measure requiring social workers and others to notify police if they suspect a child is being abused. Despite these advances, Badenock understands that calling for new investigations is one of the few ways opposition leaders can attract attention. (Today, Labor backed down, promising a "rapid audit" and more funding for local investigations.) Just as activists on the left sometimes refuse to believe a civil rights victory has been achieved - instead continuing to remain in a politically lucrative position A permanent state of war - so the right won't claim victory because it has forced Britain to take these gangs seriously. Conservatives want to fight, not win.
Interestingly, Britain's other right-wing party, the Reform Party, has had a less harmonious relationship with Musk than the Conservatives in the past few weeks. Reform Party leader Nigel Farage joined Badenock in calling for a new national inquiry into the gangs. But he refused to meet one of Musk's special demands: to normalize pseudonymous provocateur Tommy Robinson, whom the far-right believes is responsible for public grooming scandals. Robinson, whose real name was Stephen Christopher Yaxley Lennon, was no folk hero. A founder of the xenophobic English Defense League, he risked ruining one of the sting trials by filming the defendants outside court. He is also a convicted mortgage fraudster currently in jail for contempt of court in a separate case.
Robinson desperately needs mainstream support to shed his reputation as a villain, and Musk has embraced his cause. "Free Tommy Robinson!" Musk announced on X. He also accused Farage - who has sought to exclude racist "bad apples" from the reforms - of distancing himself from Robinson. Musk complained that Farage “didn’t have what it takes.” The billionaire appears once again out of touch with British politics: Farage is a leading supporter of Brexit and the most successful ever leader of Britain's populist right. The Reform Party won more than 4 million votes in last year's election and is expected to make huge gains in May's local elections.
To the relief of many in the UK, Musk appears to be moving on to other topics, including the California wildfires. His intervention created an unmanageable situation for liberals. Yes, his interests are opportunistic. Yes, he spread conspiracy theories as well as real scandalous details. But at least part of his instinctive reaction was correct: this was, and is, a scandal that embarrasses Britain because era 2012 Assertion. This was not a hidden incident, thanks to the many victims and whistleblowers who brought it to light starting over a decade ago. They deserve to be recognized for their bravery.