Elon Musk’s Wild Week in the Name of Free Speech

The chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX has fashioned himself as something of a modern day Larry Flynt: a rich guy willing to spend his own fortune as a defender of free speech even if it is offensive to many. 

The late Flynt was a millionaire peddling porn. Musk is a billionaire peddling contentious social issues. They share a flair for attracting attention and taking on high-profile fights. 

The world’s richest man is hankering for battle against anyone trying tell him what can’t be said—including, this past week, the U.K.’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, and an organization for major global advertisers whose spending he wants on X.

Musk’s means of attack are his own X account approaching 200 million followers and a cadre of lawsuits against his perceived enemies, some who have pointed out hate speech and others who he maintains have wrongly stopped advertising on his platform.

“We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” Musk posted as he took aim in court at an advocacy group for advertisers.

His $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter in late 2022 was motivated, he has said, to make it a platform for all kinds of speech, including offensive stuff as long as it is legal. He has said liberal ideals were censoring conservative ones. 

As governments around the world pursue social-media content regulation, Musk is fighting back on free-speech grounds. But sometimes he doesn’t seem to help his cause, for example when he amplifies incorrect information or embraces messy memes and social-media characters with their own baggage. 

The latest self-generated drama for Musk began like it often does, during a Saturday evening as Reply Guy. In response to tweets about civil unrest in the U.K. and claims it was the result of mass migration and open borders, Musk returned to a favorite contention, posting: “Civil war is inevitable.”

That comment swiftly drew a rebuke from the prime minister’s office as the government tried to temper passions erupting between the far right and Muslims. 

The nation has seen riots and protests following the fatal attack on children at a party in northern England late last month that was falsely attributed on social media to a Muslim migrant. 

It was the seventh time since October that Musk had suggested a “civil war” is coming to Europe. One included a response in November to a video on X supposedly showing a clash in London between “British patriots and immigrants” that prompted Musk to weigh in: “Europe appears to be headed for civil war.”

Unlike his recent one, that older tweet didn’t attract the same kind of attention, likely because it was overshadowed a couple of days later when he amplified another X user’s post promoting antisemitic vitriol that trafficked in a similar anti-immigration theme. Amid an outcry, Musk backtracked, saying his tweet was foolish. 

Still, for those advertisers that pulled back spending amid controversies, Musk took aim, infamously telling them to “go f— yourself” and claiming they were trying to stifle free speech on X by withholding their ad dollars.

As the U.K. government pushed back against Musk, the billionaire turned up the volume, focusing on the prime minister and government’s effort to ease the rhetoric on social media.

By Thursday, it was a full-on tweet storm by Musk that included his amplifying a hoax that purported the U.K. government was considering “emergency detainment camps” for protesters.

Musk’s tweet was later deleted amid pushback that he was spreading false, inflammatory information, but not before accumulating more than one million views. 

In another set of tweets, he responded to a warning by U.K. authorities that they were scouring social media for users’ posts—including retweets—that violate the nation’s law against insulting or abusive content that is likely to stoke racial hatred. Musk called the effort “The Woke Stasi.”

On Friday, British judges began handing down jail time in the first of cases of people prosecuted for having encouraged the rioting through social media. A 26-year-old was sentenced to 38 months for urging rioters to set fire to hotels housing migrants. The prime minister said social media wasn’t a “law-free zone.”  

“Support freedom of speech in the UK!” Musk tweeted Friday afternoon. 

The U.K. also has passed a tougher act aimed at holding social-media platforms more accountable for offensive content, threatening massive fines for violations. 

The act, which passed last year, doesn’t go into effect until next year. It was modeled after a similar effort by the European Union called the Digital Services Act, which officials in Brussels say X has violated. Musk has promised to fight the findings. 

Earlier this year, Musk tangled with Brazil’s Supreme Court after it ordered the removal of several X accounts it deemed to be propagating hate speech and false information—claims Musk suggested were politically motivated and in violation of the nation’s laws.  

Musk successfully fought an effort by Australian authorities to force X to remove a video of the stabbing of a religious leader that X argued would have set a dangerous precedent that effectively allowed one country to police the entire internet.

And this past week, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro banned X in the country for 10 days as Musk and others have used the platform to dispute his re-election victory.

As Musk stoked resentments in London, lawyers for X filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against a group of advertisers for their initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media over what X claimed was an illegal boycott of X’s ad business to force the platform to adhere to certain content-moderation efforts. 

The organization, GARM, was created to push for safeguards around content it called harmful to ensure such material wasn’t placed around its members’ ads. GARM shut down days after the lawsuit was filed, with a representative saying its resources are limited.

Musk seems to revel in the fight. 

An X user recently asked how Musk would know if he was winning his effort to preserve free speech. 

“You know it when you see it, kinda like porn,” Musk replied.

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com

Elon Musk Inc.

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