Jonathan Freedland writes:

One man is missing. Of course, it’s good that so many of those responsible for a week of terrifying far-right violence are facing an especially swift and severe form of justice – but there’s one extremely rich and powerful suspect who should join them in the dock. If the UK authorities truly want to hold accountable all those who unleashed riots and pogroms in Britain, they need to go after Elon Musk.

To be sure, direct guilt belongs to the culprits on the ground, those currently being fast-tracked in their hundreds through a usually glacial court system – moving from arrest to charges, trial, conviction and (heavy) sentencing in a matter of days. Guilt belongs to those who surrounded hotels housing migrants and refugees, attempting to set them on fire and threatening to kill those inside. It belongs to those who saw fit to trash and loot not only shops, but also libraries and advice centres, many of them lifelines for those who have next to nothing. It belongs to those who smashed and threatened mosques, terrifying those within and whole Muslim communities beyond with a kind of menace many will have heard about in stories passed down from parents or grandparents, but which they will have hoped belonged to a long ago past.

And yet, consider how all this happened. It began as it always begins, with a lie – in this case, the lie that the wicked stabbing attack on a children’s dance party in Southport, which left three little girls dead, was the work of a Muslim migrant who had come to Britain on a small boat. I say “always” because this kind of lie has been told for the best part of a thousand years. [Continue reading…]