Elon Musk and the phoney far-right narrative of ‘protecting’ women
Elizabeth Pearson, Royal Holloway University of London
Across the 2000s, a series of child sex exploitation cases affected British towns, including Telford, Rochdale, Oxford and Rotherham, scarring the lives of hundreds of children. In 2011, Times journalist Andrew Norfolk reported that networks – so-called “grooming gangs” – of largely British Asian men of Pakistani heritage had trafficked and raped hundreds of mainly girls and young women.
These are facts that are widely known in the UK and have been the subject of multiple investigations. The 2014 Jay report found that authorities had been slow to act, sometimes for fear of being accused of racism.
Police had in some cases blamed victims, criminalising children as prostitutes. Alexis Jay, who also led the 2022 independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, has noted the “appalling and lifelong effects” of abuse on victims.
Elon Musk – the billionaire owner of social media platform X and incoming lead on US government efficiency – has, it seems, just found out about this devastating national scandal.
In a series of posts on X, Musk politicised these crimes to denounce Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “evil”, and to call for a new general election in the UK. He also reposted the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, calling for his release from prison where he is serving 18 months for contempt of court.
Musk portrayed Robinson as campaigning to expose the “truth” about grooming, as though the story had not been subject to widespread investigation, media coverage and public debate.
Of course, women’s rights within our criminal justice and political systems desperately need to be improved. But, Musk is no cheerleader for women and there is no evidence that he is “genuinely incensed” by child sexual exploitation.
Musk has not shown an interest in women’s rights or sexual abuse before. If he had, he might not have accepted a job in the administration of Donald Trump, a man found liable for sexual abuse.
Musk’s newfound interest evidently isn’t in all sex offences – apparently just those perpetrated by “Muslim men” against white women. He has not shown any obvious interest in cases where Muslim women were also abused, nor does he have much if anything to say about abuse perpetrated by white men.
He appears to support women’s protections when they are politically useful to him in fanning division – a common far-right tactic.
Musk has supported far-right actors, reinstating Tommy Robinson to X in November 2023, just in time for him to organise a mass rally at the Cenotaph in London, stoking division and, as I noted at the time, threatening democracy. He has also recently written in support of Germany’s anti-Islam party the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and hosted its leader Alice Weidel in live discussion on X.
By publicising the UK’s “grooming gangs” scandal, Musk has aligned himself with a gendered narrative: it is men’s duty to protect women – even when it means breaking rules or using force. This gender binary – strong men must be ready to use force to protect weak women, especially from hostile alien men – is the core narrative of patriarchal, nationalist, ultra nationalist and also Nazi groups.
It is highly racialised – only vulnerable white women matter – and it relates to class, in that it regards white, liberal women as betraying working-class girls. Musk has singled out Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” and “wicked witch”, thereby putting her at risk.
Exploiting women victims, protecting patriarchy
The recent attack on Phillips reveals Musk’s call to protect women for what it really is: a means to protect powerful men. Feminist women are understood as fair targets, because they challenge a gender order in which men have natural dominance.
Patriarchy protects (some) men by positioning men’s role as leaders and fighters, protectors and providers, for nation and family, wives and children. This is protection without care, which is gendered as feminine, and weak. It is protection as a means of control.
Musk is not in a position of moral authority regarding either protection or care. Before his takeover, social media platform Twitter appeared to care for workers, prioritising health and wellbeing.
The ethos of X is the opposite: Musk has gutted staff numbers, and transformed workplace practices aimed at safeguarding both employees and users. He now promises to do the same across the US government as head of efficiency in the Trump administration.
Social media has always been a space in which women are at risk of both personal and structural misogyny; these harms are amplified through Musk’s approach to X. Musk has sought to amplify the voices of influencers who decry women’s rights.
Musk has reposted Andrew Tate, who police in the UK have linked to an epidemic of misogyny and violence against women, and who has faced charges of rape and sex trafficking. He has allowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes to use X to promote the phrase “your body, my choice”. There is no real protection here, no care – only white men’s control of women.
Race to the bottom
Where Musk leads, others follow. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has recently ceded fact-checking to the “community”, and noted the need for a more “masculine” and “aggressive” corporate culture. Zuckerberg also ended the company’s diversity equity and inclusion policy, which minorities rely upon for some degree of workplace protection.
As Silicon Valley is dominated by men, Zuckerberg’s remarks are essentially a call to those men to push back on liberal culture. His comments drew praise from Tate.
In an age of strong-man politics, where young men are choosing role models from a marketplace of competing masculinities, hypermasculinity wins. Young men aged 18-29 voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the US elections, supported by men’s rights activists in the online “manosphere”. Musk knows this.
Musk has money and social media power, but he is a “tech bro” – a “nerd”. Exploiting the horror of British child sexual exploitation scandals has enabled him to attempt to assert himself as a protector of women – a hero of the forgotten.
He has amplified a far-right political position, and the voices of far-right actors he believes embody this, like Robinson. But Musk has no moral authority to speak on the protection of women, or on care more generally.
Those British politicians cynically lauding Musk’s apparently protective stance on women to attack the government – and the UK’s parliamentary democracy – should recognise this is nothing but hypocrisy. And, from that perspective, Musk has no authority to dictate the political agenda on girls’ and women’s rights in Britain, or anywhere else.
Elizabeth Pearson, Programme Lead MSc Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies, Royal Holloway University of London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Lynx in Scotland: why illegal attempts to reintroduce lost species are surprisingly common
George Holmes, University of Leeds; Darragh Hare, University of Oxford, and Hanna Pettersson, University of York
For more than 500 years, no lynx had roamed the British countryside. That changed with the recent release of four of these large cats in the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland.
This was an action that is widely assumed to be linked to attempts to reintroduce species that had been wiped out in Britain, as part of a wider rewilding movement. Supporters of these reintroductions typically want to atone for past extinctions, and want to create richer, more dynamic ecosystems.
The lynx were soon recaptured, with one dying shortly after. For now, foxes and badgers remain Britain’s largest predatory mammals.
While many conservation organisations are working with the authorities to bring back species, from microscopic fungi to half-tonne bison, some people are reintroducing them without seeking guidance or approval. In fact, such illicit and unregulated reintroductions are surprisingly common.
Illicit beaver populations have sprung up across Europe, from southern Italy and Spain to Wales, Scotland and England. The phenomenon is so widespread it is referred to as “beaver bombing”, now matched by “boar bombing” in Scotland and across southern England.
In Britain, there have also been illicit reintroductions of smaller mammals, as well as insects and wildflowers that are much easier and cheaper to obtain, transport and release. Wildflower seeds and butterfly pupae or eggs can be easily bought online and delivered to your door, then let loose during a nice country walk.
Transforming political debates
Illicit and unregulated reintroductions matter. They can lead to new populations of previously missing species – there are over a thousand beavers living in the Tayside region of Scotland, for instance, widely thought to descend from beavers deliberately, and illegally, released in the early 2000s. In England, the New Forest population of pine martens are similarly thought to originate from illegal releases in the early 1990s.
This can transform political debates. While there were proposals to reintroduce beavers as an experiment before the illicit Tayside reintroduction, self-sustaining populations increased political and public support for more widespread, approved releases. The presence of wild beavers in Scotland changed what was a theoretical notion of having beavers into something more tangible that the public could relate to, and it forced decision makers to address the issue rather than avoid it.
Illicit and unregulated reintroductions can be controversial. Farmers and other land managers do not always take kindly to new species popping up on their land without warning or consultation. In Tayside, beavers have been killed by farmers who were angry at the damage caused to their properties by dams and burrows.
All this sheds light on important differences among conservationists. As these reintroductions are illicit, it is difficult to have clear understanding of who is behind them, and why. We are aware of only one case – of beavers in Belgium – where an illicit reintroducer has been publicly identified and prosecuted. But they reflect a frustration with official reintroduction processes and regulations, seen by some as too slow, bureaucratic and risk averse.
Opinions within conservation range from seeing illicit reintroductions as reckless and harmful to lauding them as heroic, game-changing acts. This reflects real disagreements on what species belong in a given country, and how reintroductions should be done. Releasing animals and plant material is considered a major biosecurity risk by some, whereas others see this as overstated.
There are also concerns about genetic contamination. While regulations and recommendations say that animals and plants for release should be a close genetic match for those which existed in a place previously, to ensure that they are best suited to the conditions, other conservationists say this is a pedantic irrelevance given climate and other environmental changes.
Many conservationists also worry about whether released animals are able to cope with the shift from life in captivity. Given that lynx in the wild are extremely shy, the ease by which the Cairngorms foursome were captured shows they were too tame to survive in Scottish woods.
Likewise, the black-veined white butterflies that have appeared in the past few years in south-east England, the first UK sightings in a century, probably came from unlicensed releases, but are thought unlikely to breed and survive. Yet, the thriving beaver and pine marten populations show this is not always an issue.
Coexistence is difficult
Predators like lynx are the most contentious reintroductions, because they are big enough to target livestock and scare humans. Coexistence between people and predators is difficult, involving careful strategies to minimise harm and create trusting relationships. Of all the different ways a predator might come back to an area – natural colonisation, a planned reintroduction or an illicit release – the last is most contentious because such relationships and strategies are missing.
That’s why existing campaigns to reintroduce lynx to Scotland are strongly condemning the Cairngorms release. They see it as undermining their work to carefully build bridges with farmers. Judging by reactions of land managers to illicit beaver releases in Scotland, it may also generate opposition to any kind of reintroduction. By feeding into narratives of “arrogant” conservationists, it might undermine support, especially in rural communities that may one day have to live with reintroduced lynx.
If conservationists want to see a free-living, healthy and self-sustaining population of lynx, they’ll need to build careful relationships with local people and other interest groups. They’ll need to put forward a clear idea of how to live successfully alongside lynx, and what to do when either people or lynx overstep the mark. Illicit reintroductions are unlikely to get us there.
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George Holmes, Professor of Conservation and Society, University of Leeds; Darragh Hare, Research Fellow, Department of Biology, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, and Hanna Pettersson, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, University of York
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
No 10 blocks beaver release plan as officials view it as ’Tory legacy’
Do aliens exist? We studied what scientists really think
Peter Vickers, Durham University; Henry Taylor, University of Birmingham, and Sean McMahon, University of Edinburgh
News stories about the likely existence of extraterrestrial life, and our chances of detecting it, tend to be positive. We are often told that we might discover it any time now. Finding life beyond Earth is “only a matter of time”, we were told in September 2023. “We are close” was a headline from September 2024.
It’s easy to see why. Headlines such as “We’re probably not close” or “Nobody knows” aren’t very clickable. But what does the relevant community of experts actually think when considered as a whole? Are optimistic predictions common or rare? Is there even a consensus? In our new paper, published in Nature Astronomy, we’ve found out.
During February to June 2024, we carried out four surveys regarding the likely existence of basic, complex and intelligent extraterrestrial life. We sent emails to astrobiologists (scientists who study extraterrestrial life), as well as to scientists in other areas, including biologists and physicists.
In total, 521 astrobiologists responded, and we received 534 non-astrobiologist responses. The results reveal that 86.6% of the surveyed astrobiologists responded either “agree” or “strongly agree” that it’s likely that extraterrestrial life (of at least a basic kind) exists somewhere in the universe.
Less than 2% disagreed, with 12% staying neutral. So, based on this, we might say that there’s a solid consensus that extraterrestrial life, of some form, exists somewhere out there.
Scientists who weren’t astrobiologists essentially concurred, with an overall agreement score of 88.4%. In other words, one cannot say that astrobiologists are biased toward believing in extraterrestrial life, compared with other scientists.
When we turn to “complex” extraterrestrial life or “intelligent” aliens, our results were 67.4% agreement, and 58.2% agreement, respectively for astrobiologists and other scientists. So, scientists tend to think that alien life exists, even in more advanced forms.
These results are made even more significant by the fact that disagreement for all categories was low. For example, only 10.2% of astrobiologists disagreed with the claim that intelligent aliens likely exist.
Optimists and pessimists
Are scientists merely speculating? Usually, we should only take notice of a scientific consensus when it is based on evidence (and lots of it). As there is no proper evidence, scientists may be guessing. However, scientists did have the option of voting “neutral”, an option that was chosen by some scientists who felt that they would be speculating.
Only 12% chose this option. There is actually a lot of “indirect” or “theoretical” evidence that alien life exists. For example, we do now know that habitable environments are very common in the universe.
We have several in our own solar system, including the sub-surface oceans of the moons Europa and Enceladus, and arguably also the environment a few kilometres below the surface of Mars. It also seems relevant that Mars used to be highly habitable, with lakes and rivers of liquid water on its surface and a substantial atmosphere.
It is reasonable to generalise from here to a truly gargantuan number of habitable environments across the galaxy, and wider universe. We also know (since we’re here) that life can get started from non-life – it happened on Earth, after all. Although the origin of the first, simple forms of life is poorly understood, there is no compelling reason to think that it requires astronomically rare conditions. And even if it does, the probability of life getting started (abiogenesis) is clearly non-zero.
This can help us to see the 86.6% agreement in a new light. Perhaps it is not, actually, a surprisingly strong consensus. Perhaps it is a surprisingly weak consensus. Consider the numbers: there are more than 100 billion galaxies. And we know that habitable environments are everywhere.
Let’s say there are 100 billion billion habitable worlds (planets or moons) in the universe. Suppose we are such pessimists that we think life’s chances of getting started on any given habitable world is one in a billion billion. In that case, we would still answer “agree” to the statement that it is likely that alien life exists in the universe.
Thus, optimists and pessimists should all have answered “agree” or “strongly agree” to our survey, with only the most radical pessimists about the origin of life disagreeing.
Bearing this in mind, we could present our data another way. Suppose we discount the 60 neutral votes we received. Perhaps these scientists felt that they would be speculating, and didn’t want to take a stance. In which case, it makes sense to ignore their votes. This leaves 461 votes in total, of which 451 were for agree or strongly agree. Now, we have an overall agreement percentage of 97.8%.
This move is not as illegitimate as it looks. Scientists know that if they choose “neutral” they can’t possibly be wrong. Thus, this is the “safe” choice. In research, it is often called “satisficing”.
As the geophysicist Edward Bullard wrote back in 1975 while debating whether all continents were once joined together, instead of making a choice “it is more prudent to keep quiet, … sit on the fence, and wait in statesmanlike ambiguity for more data”. Not only is keeping quiet a safe choice for scientists, it means the scientist doesn’t need to think too hard – it is the easy choice.
Getting the balance right
What we probably want is balance. On one side, we have the lack of direct empirical evidence and the reluctance of responsible scientists to speculate. On the other side, we have evidence of other kinds, including the truly gargantuan number of habitable environments in the universe.
We know that the probability of life getting started is non-zero. Perhaps 86.6% agreement, with 12% neutral and less than 2% disagreement, is a sensible compromise, all things considered.
Perhaps – given the problem of satisficing – whenever we present such results, we should present two results for overall agreement: one with neutral votes included (86.6%), and one with neutral votes disregarded (97.8%). Neither result is the single, correct result.
Each perspective speaks to different analytical needs and helps prevent oversimplification of the data. Ultimately, reporting both numbers – and being transparent about their contexts – is the most honest way to represent the true complexity of responses.
Peter Vickers, Professor in Philosophy of Science, Durham University; Henry Taylor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, and Sean McMahon, Reader in Astrobiology, University of Edinburgh
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
YMCA has never been gay, says the song’s lyricist and singer
Victor Willis of Village People says the hit is an anthem to Black male friendship – and his wife threatens to sue those who say otherwise
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YMCA appeared on Village People’s third album, Cruisin’. It was an international smash hit, getting to No 1 in 17 countries on its release in October 1978. A much-loved staple at sports events, wedding receptions and student discos, it has sold 12m copies. In 2020 it was preserved for posterity by the National Recording Registry of the US Library of Congress as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”, and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
That same year, Donald Trump started playing it at rallies, and has done so consistently ever since, often dancing to it and another Village People hit, Macho Man. While most musicians have reacted with horror to Trump using their songs, Willis says that YMCA has “greatly benefited”.
Willis said on Facebook: “The financial benefits have been great … YMCA is estimated to gross several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song. Therefore, I’m glad I allowed the President Elect’s continued use of YMCA. And I thank him for choosing to use my song.”
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