We will not partake in platforms of hate.
Migrant Democracy Project has seen the spiralling tide of hate across Vichy Twitter since Elon Musks purchase and we have seen Elon Musk himself become the chief purveyor of conspiracy theories and hate. Due to this we have decided to take action and leave Twitter.
Musk is repelling masses of users, boosting conspiracies, shredding all of X’s functionality, harassing transgender users, spreading white-supremacist content, and influencing CEOs in every other sector to be like Musk. He also is fresh off the campaign trail where he effectively ran the Trump campaign in the close of the 2024 election, with his America PAC spending hundreds of millions across the country spreading election conspiracy theories.
As an organisation focused on democracy, voting rights, and migrants justice, we are at the centre of Elon Musk’s crusade against migrants, asylum seekers, and other marginalised groups which he daily discusses mass deporting in the millions. Over the last years he has spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 and 2024 US elections proclaiming illegal immigrants were voting, something that is completely false and unproven despite numerous attempts.
Another MAJOR issue for us is the matter of data security, especially for vulnerable groups. Twitter harvests location data, placing for example migrant communities in danger. Location data is just one part of a massive amount of metadata that is harvested and stored by the platform.
Musk has turned X into what is described as the epicentre of online misinformation. During the UK race riots earlier this year, Musk was at the centre of disinformation spreading declaring that 'civil war is inevitable.'’ Musk also has a major problem with the UK’s hate speech laws and legal system.
Musk is now leading Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE…yes really). This double position of richest man in the world and representative for Donald Trump already has the UK government trying to appease him and UK press pining for our own Trump whisperer Nigel Farage to be granted a special position. To which Elon Musk is happily tweeting his support, and his continued obsession with the UK and EU politics. Along with his dream and desire for Twitter to be the ‘Top source of news in the UK.’
When discussing Musk we need to be absolutely clear, the man follows Nazis, boosts Nazis, and spreads race science and the racist and antisemitic great replacement theory.
He spends his day posting conspiracy theories, sexist memes, manosphere fascist memes, racist content, anti LGBTQ+ content, historical revisionism, QAnon content and fashwave content. But he wants to assure us that he isn’t brainwashed.
He brought back to the platform notorious white nationalists including Nick Fuentes, and of course Donald Trump himself who lost his account after attempting to overthrow the 2020 elections in the January 6th insurrection against the United States government. We have to reckon with the reality that ‘white genocide’ theorists are a part of the mainstream and in the US hold political power. We also have to remember that there are no national barriers between the far right movement, and major UK politicians have been steeped in it and Trumpworld a long time.
Musk is not just the owner of Twitter though, he is a major government contractor in defence, telecoms, and more in multiple countries, and he is directly involved in choosing the new White House cabinet and Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders. Musk also has made himself several dangerous clients like Vladimir Putin and is speaking with him regularly while advocating against Ukraine publicly along with Trump and his family.
In perfect Musk fashion he is using his first week as a Federal Cabinet nominee putting together bigoted memes using his America PAC, reposting with his massive Account on the major social media company he owns and that as widely reported artificially boosts his posts to be seen by nearly all users…because Biden got more views than him.
While all of this might seem chaotic, it also is not. This strategy of mass disinformation and lies is Steve Bannon’s strategy of “flooding the zone with shit.” The idea is that you overload the information space so that your opponents cannot respond to everything, and you never let up. You will remember how one Trump or Boris scandal rolled immediately into another so fast that people would forget earlier ones and new ones fell on top of each other.
There are so many reasons why we need to quit the platform and X Twitter, not only are we complicit in maintaining the power it has in society by using it, we are directly making Musk absurdly richer. When Musk woke up on November 6, he was worth $263.8 billion. When he went to bed he was worth $290.3 billion. “This one-day gain in his net worth exceeded 10 percent. Musk spent $130 million to reelect Trump and got back $26.5 billion; this may be the most profitable single investment of his storied career.”
"Today, Musk has transformed X into a political operation designed to get Trump elected at all costs. That means not only hosting election misinformation, but actively promoting it." Vichy Twitter is a place that can accurately be described as a “white-supremacist hellsite.” It is also a place where Musk aggressively pursues his critiques, especially if they talk about how dangerous of a space Vichy Twitter is now.
It is time to have serious discussion like those raised in, Delete Your Account. For Real This Time. This does not mean everyone do everything all at once, but the conversations must begin and we must take a long term view with our relationships with social media companies and their ideologies leaders. We are collectively entering an ever more dangerous political climate, and the tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley have embraced MAGA. These are the men who own the platforms we have come to rely on, and this means that they have a huge degree of power over our communications capabilities. Near all of these platforms will have moral and ethical issues, but some are far beyond the others and far more influential, especially with policymakers.
Our politicians and institutions have no excuse to remain on Vichy Twitter, and we need to lead an eXodus. We can collectively crush the power of Elon Musk’s X in the UK, but only together and if we can get the politicians and social leaders off of it.
By Hunter Christopher, MDP Digital Organiser
