Musk extends his reach, and that’s all right

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Has any (unelected) figure come to huge power with such rapidity as Elon Musk? Aside from becoming Donald Trump’s consigliere and the founder of United Airlines' new main Wi-Fi provider, Musk has started using his massive platform on X, where he has 211 million followers and owner’s privileges, to inflict all kinds of pain on mostly left-wing British politicians. Immigrants certainly get the job done.

Much deserved pain, in our view.

Whatever you think of Musk’s politics or his affection for Trump, his amplification recently of the serial rape of thousands of mostly poor English girls in towns like Rochdale and Rotherham by organized gangs of mostly Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim men was just the digital thunderbolt that was needed to cast light on one of the most shameful and longest-lasting scandals in British history.

On Monday of last week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a former prosecutor with personal involvement in some of these old cases from around 2010 to 2015, was forced to squirm in front of the cameras as he tried to explain why the British establishment had failed so many of these girls. Starmer defended his prior actions as head of the Crown Prosecution Service and said to reporters that those now calling for a national inquiry on the so-called grooming gangs were seeking to “jump on a bandwagon of the far right,” by which he mostly meant Musk.

It was a pathetic and frankly hopeless defense, given that many of the victims, then as young as 12 and 13 but now adults, simultaneously were all over the British media saying they were not protected and have not received adequate justice.

This is not a new story, but it made little impact stateside before Musk, a reminder of the power of the man’s now-global megaphone. So here is a summary of the details of the crimes and the cover-ups.

Over the course of several decades, these gangs groomed and then raped many teenage (and younger) girls, mostly white, in the towns where they lived. There were thousands of cases in numerous cities, and the record of police and local council response was universally poor. In some cases, the girls themselves were blamed. In others, the parents who tried to help their children found themselves arrested. And in others, incredibly, inquiries and prosecutions were squashed because local councillors were part of the gangs themselves.

There were a few selective prosecutions, but many were dropped and the scope of the problem never had a national reckoning because it was in so many people’s interests to not let that happen. Not that the Conservative central government is without blame. Boris Johnson, for one, failed to grasp the scope of the problem.

There is little that can be said in a family newspaper about precisely what these organized gangs of men did to these thousands of vulnerable, often naive girls, lured into their nets by candy, car rides and other childish treats. Some girls were doused with gasoline and told they would be set on fire if they or their families spoke out.

Some of this, and we stress only some of it, made it into various local reports and media stories. Yet, incredibly, nobody even can say for certain at this juncture how many girls were gang-raped. One inquiry, dealing with only one town, Rotherham in Yorkshire, estimated the number at 1,400 in 2014.

Some intrepid local reporters in several cities talked to these terrified girls at the time. But they did not have the power of Musk when it comes to shaping a broader narrative.

Some nervous European politicians, including Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who does not have 220 million Twitter followers, now are arguing that Musk should not be interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. They have a case. But Musk is a private individual living in a free country and is free to tweet about anything he likes or dislikes anywhere in the world.

Will Musk be a force for good overall? Americans have cause to hope so. We see him as a potentially positive influence on Trump, especially when it comes to matters like immigration and the rejection of MAGA extremism. But we offer no blank check.

The question will be how well Musk uses this new power, whether he commits himself to a higher degree of accuracy before hitting send, which he must, whether he finds ways to hold himself accountable and whether he respects his own limits in a democracy that did not elect him to any office. Musk also has to learn when to say nothing. And he must prove his independence even as he embraces the Trump dance.

Politicians are right to be scared of what he can do, though. And in the matter we detail above, there can be no question that his tweets will be seen as on the right side of history.