Twitter billionaire Elon Musk has taunted former Scottish leader Humza Yousaf and challenged him to file a lawsuit against him. The row broke out on Twitter when Musk described Yousaf as a “super racist scumbag” who “loathes white people.” Mr. Yousaf hit back, describing Musk as a “dangerous race baiter” who “must be held to account.” Yousaf went on to state that Mr. Musk’s wealth does not intimidate him and won’t prevent him from calling out the Tesla chief’s “support for the far right.”
In an interview with a UK Sunday newspaper, the former Scottish leader said he was weighing up all options, including pursuing a legal case against the billionaire. Musk replied, “Go ahead, make my day.”
Freedom of speech is currently a flashpoint issue in the United Kingdom as the government cracks down on what it calls “far-right thugs” who joined with recent anti-immigration demonstrations across the country. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer inflamed the situation further by warning protestors that police would track them down and jail them. Courts were open 24 hours a day to speed through prosecutions of demonstrators, including those who had not engaged in violence.
Elon Musk has fiercely criticized the UK government online and said the British are on the verge of civil war. Remarkably, the chief of London’s Metropolitan Police – the largest police force in the UK – threatened to extradite people from other countries, including the US, if they encouraged disorder in Britain or, ominously, disseminated “misinformation” on social media platforms. The comments were largely seen as a response to Mr. Musk’s tweets.
Humza Yousaf took a similar approach, accusing the US-based billionaire of trying to stoke European wars and labeling him “one of the most dangerous men on the planet.” Yousaf recently resigned from the post of Scotland’s First Minister, having spent much of his career under fire for eroding freedom of speech in Scotland.
Britain’s Free Speech Union has described Yousaf’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act as “chilling.” The legislation, which applies only in Scotland, took effect on April 1 this year and was met with mockery from much of the Scottish public, who used the opportunity to report Humza Yousaf to the police for his previous remarks about white people.
The new laws make it a criminal offense to “stir up hatred against a group of persons defined by a protected characteristic,” which includes race. During the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, which also affected the UK, Mr. Yousaf delivered a speech in which he complained that white people held the majority of senior roles in Scottish public life – a fact most people consider reasonable given that Scotland’s population is 94% white. Police Scotland, perhaps unsurprisingly, refused to take complaints about Yousaf’s words seriously and said they did not rise to the required legal threshold. Additionally, parts of the British media came under fire for matter-of-factly describing those who reported Humza to the police as “neo-Nazis.”
