Washington, DC (May 12, 2025) — The Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) has released a new report, “Racialized Grooming Gangs: Elon Musk, X, and the Amplification of Islamophobia in the UK,” which examines how Elon Musk and global far-right networks converged on X to transform the “grooming gangs” discourse into a flashpoint of racial panic and Islamophobia, eroding social cohesion and undermining public trust in democratic institutions across the United Kingdom in early 2025.
By examining 1,365 X posts and over 1.5 billion engagements between January 2024 and January 2025, CSOH uncovered the weaponization of racialized conspiracy theories against Muslims, British Pakistanis, other South Asians, and immigrant communities.
Key Findings
- CSOH documented and analyzed a total of 1,365 posts on X (formerly Twitter) pertaining to the ‘grooming gangs’ discourse and the broader racialized panic in the UK. The total engagements for these posts were calculated by summing views, likes, reposts, replies, and bookmarks.
- Of the 1,365 posts on X, 157 were published between January 1 and December 31, 2024, while the remaining 1,208 were posted during the peak discussion period from January 1 to January 30, 2025.
- The dataset received 1.51 billion views, 11.50 million likes, 3.17 million reposts, 625.18K replies, and 347.04K bookmarks, with a total engagement of 1.53 billion.
- 51 X posts by Elon Musk around the ‘grooming gang’ discourse received a total engagement of 1.2 billion.
- Islamophobic and racist posts promoting hatred against Muslims, British Pakistani men, other South Asians, and immigrants dominated the discourse, accounting for 650 out of 1,208 posts (53.81%) on X in January 2025. The discourse repeatedly links ‘grooming gang’ crimes to entire ethnic and religious groups.
- A total of 578 posts (47.85%) alleged that authorities deliberately concealed crimes to prevent public backlash and protect the Labour Party’s voter base.
- Of the 578 posts alleging an institutional cover-up, 45.5% placed blame on the Labour Party, 13.5% on the judiciary, and 9.6% on the media.
- A smaller portion—123 posts (10.18%)—argued that diversity and progressive policies promoting multiculturalism contribute to crime and societal decline.
- Posts by India-based Hindu nationalist accounts comprised 9.6% of the dataset, with 116 posts. The majority of their posts promoted hatred towards British Muslims.
CSOH finds that the “grooming gangs” discourse coalesces around three harmful themes. First, Muslim men—particularly those of British Pakistani heritage—are racialized as collective perpetrators of sexual violence through entrenched orientalist tropes. Second, a powerful myth of institutional cover-up accuses British authorities of hiding crimes to protect minorities or preserve political advantage. Third, attacks on multiculturalism frame diversity and “political correctness” as the root of social decay, pitting majority and minority communities against one another.
We found coordinated activity by UK based far-right figures like Tommy Robinson and international far-right actors—ranging from Visegrád24 and Radio Genoa in Europe to OpIndia in India—to amplify this hate campaign, illustrating how X is actively facilitating transnational alliances among extremist movements.
Under the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023, X, as a Category 1 service, is legally required to undertake comprehensive measures to mitigate the dissemination of illegal and harmful content on its platform, which includes conducting thorough risk assessments to identify and address content that could incite hatred against Muslims, British-Pakistanis, South Asians, and immigrants. The content also clearly falls within the OSA’s definition of “Illegal Online Harms,” posing both a threat to public order and a risk of foreign interference under Ofcom’s Illegal Content Judgements Guidance (ICJG).
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