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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, and I'm filling in for Brian today. Coming up on today's show, WNYC and Gothamist reporter Jessy Edwards will join us. She'll share her investigative reporting into hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual assaults by correction officers on Rikers Island. She found one officer who is alleged to have assaulted 24 different women. Despite that, it appears city officials have been reluctant to investigate these claims.

Plus, in about an hour, we'll be talking about the political beliefs and behaviors of the youngest group of voters in the country, members of Gen Z. It's a big, diverse group and many of them will be voting in their first presidential election coming up this November. Stay tuned for that. We'll wrap up today's show with the news that the New York Botanical Garden lost one of its oldest trees in flooding earlier this week. The Garden's vice president of urban conservation will talk about how losing even one old tree can damage the broader ecosystem and how they're coping with more extreme weather at the gardens in the Bronx.

First, some news from the United Kingdom that you may have missed, given the extraordinary political events in the US over the last several weeks. Last month, a horrific mass stabbing left three children dead in the seaside town of Southport. Fueled by disinformation about the perpetrator of the stabbings, a wave of anti-immigrant violence has erupted in cities across Britain and explicitly has targeted migrants, Muslims, and other minorities.

This is some of the most severe unrest the nation has seen in over a decade. We're going to talk about the extent of the unrest, the role of disinformation in all the chaos and the mood in the UK, plus the counter-protests led by anti-racist activists. Our guest is Max Colchester, UK correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. He's been following these developments closely. He's been writing a bunch of stories about them. Max, welcome back to WNYC.

Max Colchester: Hi. Great to be on.

Matt Katz: Glad you're with us. Can you just start by explaining, giving us a little brief on exactly what happened in Southport? Really tragic. Such a sad incident. What can you share about this knife attack?

Max Colchester: Essentially, a week ago, a 17-year-old boy walked into a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club with a knife and indiscriminately stabbed young children in that club, killing three young girls. He was then tackled to the ground and arrested by police. In the aftermath of this tragic killing spree, the police did not disclose the assailant's name because in the UK, you cannot disclose someone who's alleged to have committed a crime, the name of them, if they're under the age of 18.

In that information vacuum, stepped a huge misinformation on social media where someone came up with the idea that the assailant was a Muslim who'd recently arrived in the UK as an undocumented migrant and was known to security services here. Now, this was false. The person who allegedly did this was not born abroad, was born in the UK, the son of migrants from Rwanda, a largely Christian country.

Nevertheless, this took hold and within a day of this tragic killing, far-right people online were whipping up anger. Soon there were protests in Southport against the police and against the local mosque. That lit a fuse, really. In the following days, we saw looting, arson, attacks on police in a dozen or so cities across the UK in some of the worst violence we've seen, really, here since at least 2011.

Matt Katz: Now, just to back up a second, the motive of the attacker, do we know what that was in any respect?

Max Colchester: No.

Matt Katz: No, we don't know what the--

Max Colchester: We don't know what the motive of the attacker was. The police have said it's not terrorism-related, so it seems not to have been inspired by any particular ideology, but that's all we know at the moment.

Matt Katz: Then the spread of this misinformation that this was a migrant, new migrant, how did this spread so quickly online? Was it just the nature of bad actors on the Internet and then people jumping on that?

Max Colchester: Well, it's a toxic combination of A, far-right commentators who've been allowed back onto a lot of platforms, notably X, formally, Twitter, in recent years by Elon Musk, and have built up large followings there were tweeting this out aggressively and we're using and piggybacking off this rumor to say, "We need to reclaim our streets. We need to protect our society from foreign influences. We need to fight back." This was also being parroted by bots run by state actors in Russia and so forth.

It did tap into an underlying sentiment in some quarters of the population that immigration had run out of control in the UK.

Matt Katz: Sure.

Max Colchester: Because you have to remember, there is a real problem here, or a real issue here, which is that the government essentially has allowed huge amounts of migration in the last two years, up to 2.5 million people have come and settled here and has not found a way to stop people coming and settling illegally in the UK by sailing in small boats across from France. That's one of the rumors after this killing was that the person who did this had arrived in the UK on one of these small boats from France. You had this toxic brew going on and it just span out of control.

Matt Katz: You have this tragic incident, the misinformation follows, and then the violence. Were you out in the streets? Did you witness some of these scenes of violence and vandalism?

Max Colchester: The violence was really quite indiscriminate. That's what's really shocking here, was that it was against-- it wasn't even that targeted. There were libraries being burnt down, police stations being burnt down, shops. It was opportunistic and it was being committed by people who had nothing. Not all of them are far-right activists. A lot of them were bored teenagers on their summer vacations, or disaffected locals who got carried away.

It really did light a tinderbox, this tragedy. It's taken a long time to start to bring under control. The one thing, if there is a positive to come out of this, it's that last night we expected another evening of mass unrest with 100 or so protests planned across Britain. Actually what transpired was that there were protests, but they were counter-protests, there were anti-racism protests where thousands of people filled the streets of cities across the country to say, "We don't stand for this and we're not going to put up with it. Stop racism and stop the far-right."

As a result, there wasn't any unrest, which is hopefully going to take the energy out of some of this and bring an end to this period of violence.

Matt Katz: Listeners, we can take your calls on the situation in the UK. Some of the most severe unrest the nation has seen in at least a decade, as well as the role of misinformation, disinformation in this whole thing. If you have ties to the UK, if you live in the UK, you can help us report out this story. Give us a call or send us a text. 212-433-WNYC. The number here in New York, 212-433-9692, and again, we're talking to Max Colchester. He's the UK correspondent at The Wall Street Journal who's been following the story.

Max, you mentioned Elon Musk earlier, and I know that he just, this morning, I just saw he tweeted a-- or made a post on X, as we say now, that was false. He allaged that-- Maybe you've seen this. There was a headline. Tell us about this fake headline that he put out to [unintelligible 00:08:49] today.

Max Colchester: Elon Musk this morning, and we have to say he's been railing against the British government for several days already. This morning, Elon Musk posted basically an image of an article which alleged that the British government was going to deport protesters to an island in the South Atlantic called the Falkland Islands. Now, this article, it looked like an article, was actually completely made up. It was made up by someone who runs a far-right entity in the UK.

This stayed up for several hours. I think if you look at the post in question, it was viewed by around 2 million people before it was-- if you clicked on it, it sort of disappears. What's been incredible here is that Elon Musk has really lent into this whole protest. He's actually become something of an agitator himself. We've seen him repeatedly repeat talking points from the far-right in the UK.

One of the key talking points they have is that there's a two-tier police system in the UK. It's sort of like the opposite of what you guys saw with the Black Lives Matter, is that the police actually go down much harder on white people than minorities, which is false. Anyway, this trope has been pasted all over X in recent days, and Elon Musk has been tweeting away saying, "Hey, I kind of agree with this, and the government should take this seriously." He also tweeted that civil war was inevitable in the UK because of high levels of immigration.

It's been really quite incredible to see him really lean into this whole thing as opposed to-- Most other people would be trying to say, "No, no, we carefully moderate our site and we make sure that extremist content is not promoted." That's what Meta does and that's what TikTok does. Actually, you've got the owner of the site promoting this stuff himself.

Matt Katz: Incredible. You said that he has allowed back some far-right activists who maybe were on the site before kicked off, and he's let them back. I know that's happened here in the US. Is that also the case in the UK?

Max Colchester: Yes. Absolutely exactly the same thing happened in the UK. You saw, there's a fellow called Tommy Robinson who is a figurehead for the far-right in the UK, and he was banned in 2018, by what was then Twitter. Last year, Elon Musk led him back on, and he's now got 900,000 followers. This fellow, he spent time in jail. He's a well-known character. He's a well-known troublemaker on the right, to be honest.

This guy, he's on holiday in Cyprus, Tommy Robinson, right now, and he's firing away these tweets claiming that Britain's going up in flames and that people need to start cracking down on immigration and protecting British values. That's what's happened, is that Musk has been very clear that he wants to protect free speech on his site and that he wants everybody to be able to weigh in equally. The result of that is that a lot of people, it's become a sort of talking shop for some pretty extremist views.

Matt Katz: What are some of the actual groups and political parties on the far-right that are involved here?

Max Colchester: Well, that's the thing about the UK, is the UK isn't like other European countries, like Germany. You've got the AFD, or even France, which obviously, Le Pen's movement have kind of gone a bit more mainstream, but started out on the far-right. In the UK, there's actually a kind of proud tradition of anti-fascism. Historically, it's kind of been on the fringe.

In recent years, you've seen a sort of, some people say that there's this politician called Nigel Farage here who promoted Brexit and is very close to Trump, who espoused anti-immigrant views. Some say he's now managed to normalize this debate, all these questions over immigration. There isn't really a far far-right mainstream political party in the UK. That's why I think a lot of people were surprised by this, because I think for years, everyone thought the far right were a sort of busted flush, and they didn't really have much sway here. Suddenly, to see all these protests in the street has shocked a lot of people.

Matt Katz: It doesn't seem to us over here on this side of the Atlantic, as organized as maybe in Germany or France, the far-right. There's not a figurehead. There's not somebody that we would often recognize.

Max Colchester: No.

Matt Katz: Interesting.

Max Colchester: I think that's what's made it really hard to police, actually. When you talk to officials trying to control this, it's not like there's the head of a group you can go and talk to and say, "Guys, please tamp this down a bit." It's really figureheads firing away on social media and then loose groups of people on Telegram getting together to basically organize a ruck a fight. It's very hard to know where these guys are going to pop up or what exactly they're going to target or how many of them will actually show up. It's proved a real difficult one for the authorities to manage.

Matt Katz: We have a caller who has another idea about who might be driving some of this unrest, some of this violence. Jay in White Plains. Good morning. Thanks for calling in.

Jay: Hey, I was born in Rochdale, so I know Southport. Used to go up there and you walk in the sand and you have oil all over your feet. I think there's two things going on here. First of all, being on social media, you can attract a lot of people just by being extreme. There's another underlying structure to this.

Matt Katz: This is The Brian Lehrer Show. You're listening to Matt Katz filling in for Brian today. I'm a reporter with WNYC in Gothamist and you're listening to our conversation with Max Colchester, UK correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. We're talking about far-right anti-immigrant riots that are going on. We just lost that caller who was born in Britain and he used the word that we don't use on the radio here in the US.

Max, we had to lose that gentleman, unfortunately. Is he still on the line? Hey, Jay, thank you. We had to cut you out for a second.

Jay: Sorry about that.

Matt Katz: That's okay. You were talking as if you were at the pub and that's the environment we're trying to create here, but we got to keep it clean for the kids home from school.

Jay: Thanks, mate. I just want to make a comment. I think there are extremists that take advantage of just being extreme and attracting people because they do. The BBC has done some pretty good articles on that two or three years ago. At the same time, I think governments are using these people and finding ways to incite the problem. It's remarkable how everything just exploded at once.

I'm not sure I believe in everything exploding at once in the way it did in Southport and around the country. I don't remember the last time anything was as bad as this. Maybe it was the mods and the rockers, I don't remember. It just seems to me this is more ill-intentioned by an underlying structure which uses these individuals to create the chaos. Here endeth the lesson. Ciao very much.

Matt Katz: Thank you very much, Jay. Max, any thoughts on this? This is a local says it's--

Max Colchester: He's got a point in the sense that the last time we saw something like this was mods and rockers in the '60s and '70s in the UK during a period of economic deprivation, tough times economically. There's no doubt that Britain is in the midst of a cost of living crisis. It's been affected by high inflation and you know the causes of that, the hangover from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and so forth, and people are really hurting.

There's no doubt there's deprivation in the UK. Social services are not what they were, people are suffering. Is there a system exploiting that? I suppose you could claim there is. You could say that there is an element of the far-right that is piggybacking on that general feeling of dissatisfaction and blaming those ills on migrants, which is an age-old issue, which is to say, if you're struggling, it's because a foreigner has taken your job or has taken your council house or taken your place in the hospital bed. That's an age-old tactic and it is very effective. You can see how that could take root. Yes, there is an underlying trend there.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, the UK government, effectively, unintentionally, pretty much let in 2.5 million people into the country in the last two years. It didn't control migration properly. It tried to juice the economy by letting in a lot, a lot of workers. That, again, has given the far-right ammunition. It's made the job easier for the far right. Say, "Look, we've lost control of the borders. Everything's going wrong here. The economy's not delivering for you guys. It's because all the foreigners arrived."

Yes, there are underlying trends here. I think those who just say, "Oh, these people are just kind of-- you legitimize what they're doing by pointing to the underlying trends. Well, I don't necessarily agree with that. I think there are underlying trends and you can say that people are dissatisfied with their daily lives, but obviously this kind of violence is totally, totally wrong.

Matt Katz: Can you give us a quick reference? Mods and rockers, a little historical reference for those of us who aren't necessarily familiar with that term. That's something Jay mentioned. Most violence [unintelligible 00:18:33]

Max Colchester: It's sort of like you punks, I suppose, is how you guys would [unintelligible 00:18:37]. There was a movement in the '60s where you saw punks and other groups kind of clashing famously on the beaches in the south of England. That was during a time of economic difficulty in the UK.

Matt Katz: We're going to take a short break when we're back. More of your calls. Stay with us.

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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Brian. If you're just joining us, my guest is Max Colchester, UK correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. We're talking about far-right anti-immigrant riots in the UK. Let's go right back to the phone lines. Kate in Manhattan. Good morning, Kate.

Kate: Good morning. First of all, Matt, your podcast is so good, it stopped me going to sleep. I couldn't turn it off. If anybody's hearing what I'm saying right now, you've got to listen to Matt's podcast. It's phenomenal.

Matt Katz: That's very kind, Kate. Thank you very much. Inconceivable Truth is the name. Thank you so much.

Kate: [laughs] Back to this nonsense. I'm raging as a British person who lives in New York watching this. I'm really angry. Part of this reminded me of Trump being elected after Obama. The right-wing nut jobs lost their government a few weeks ago, and the people that were using appalling rhetoric against immigrants are out of a job. Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, the irony there being, of course, them being immigrants or being the children of immigrants, but this whole thing about we're going to ship immigrants to Rwanda, that's why it's red meat to these right-wing lunatics.

They don't have anybody now representing them in government. The fact that the previous government failed on immigration in every way, shape, or form, I guess facts don't matter to these people. Part of this, I see, was an opportunity for them to lash out because they don't have their friends in government anymore. The other thing is, I haven't stopped laughing about Tommy Robinson complaining that he was doxxed on the Isle of Crete. You're a main, big part of the problem, and you're upset that people know where you are. You're not even in England. You're hiding out. You're doxxing immigrants.

This is what it feels like. I'd love the Island of Crete to have kicked him and his family out and him to be sent home to face the music. We'll see what happens. I'm really glad that you're talking about this today.

Matt Katz: Thank you very much, Kate. Really appreciate you calling in. That's interesting. Two points there. First of all, Max, there was a recent election in the UK. Is this some sort of rebellion against the ousting of the Tory government, the new prime minister, Keir Starmer? The recent elections, are they playing out in these anti-immigrant riots that we've been seeing?

Max Colchester: I really don't think so. I don't think this is a reflection of the latest elections. I think the call is absolutely right that the previous government approached the immigrant issue in a cack-handed manner by both claiming to crack down on immigration while allowing in record numbers of migrants, which guaranteed that everyone felt disaffected by the outcome there. If you were anti-immigration and you voted for people on the basis that they would crack down on immigration and they actually let in more people than ever before, that's bound to make you feel disenfranchised and annoyed.

I don't think it's a response to a political issue. This Tommy Robinson character, which again, the caller was just talking about, he held a rally, I want to say, in end of June, he held a rally and he'd been pretty quiet. Tommy Robinson had been around and he'd been kicked off X in 2018 and he was in the margins. Then he comes back on X, he starts to build a following and suddenly in June, it was quite interesting that he did a big protest outside the houses of parliament here in London. I remember going along and it was just packed.

There were thousands, I think around 6,000 people had come to this protest march outside parliament. Then he does another one just before the tragic killings of these girls in Southport, and 30,000 people turn up. He's obviously managed to start to build some energy back into his movement. Now, whether thats because he's got a bigger platform on social media or whether that's because they're tapping into something real, I dont know. It was quite notable that there was a sort of energy building behind him even before this tragic killing. He's really milking it now.

Matt Katz: He's not in England. He is on an island. Why is that?

Max Colchester: This is crazy. It's completely bananas. He's supposed to go face trial for defamation in a complicated case, but he's effectively been accused of repeating a defamatory statement. He then left the country a couple of days before he was due to appear in court, which happens to be a couple of days before this tragic murder in Southport and went to Cyprus and has been tracked down to a five-star resort in Cyprus, in the Mediterranean where he's been lying on a sun lounger firing off incendiary videos about what's going on in Britain.

I think now he's moved to Greece. I think he's last spotted in a cafe in Greece. This guy is touring around on his summer vacation while effectively stoking unrest. It's quite something.

Matt Katz: Wow. Wow. Working remotely and stoking violence. Incredible.

Max Colchester: Exactly.

Matt Katz: Alim in Queens. Hi, Alim, is that. Are you there? Alim?

Alim: Yes. You got it, brother.

Matt Katz: Great.

Alim: Hey. How you doing?

Matt Katz: Doing good. Thanks for calling.

Alim: Big fan. Thank you. Right, so my sister, she's a doctor in the UK. She's a hijabi Muslim. I feel like your guest failed to mention the, essentially, you could say, attacks on mosques and how the local community defended them and how a lot of this is shifting to-- I'd say if I just go to X and look at Tommy Robinson's post, the majority of the vitriol being spread is tied explicitly to an anti-muslim bias and kind of how Tommy Robinson very clearly is tied to zionist entities and Israel specifically. Not even a conspiracy. If you can observe and read, then you can see it for yourself.

Kind of the UK cuts arms sales to Israel, and then all of a sudden, Tommy Robinson, who's very heavily tied to them, is spewing out nonsense about Muslim immigrants, this and that. When the top 18% of the immigrant population isn't even Muslim, the top number one is Polish people. Number two is India, where the majority population is Hindu, and then Pakistan, so on and so forth.

I feel like he neglected to mention a very important aspect of it, which is the anti-Muslim bigotry, like hijabi woman having their hijab ripped off, mosques being essentially attacked, which is all on video and well-known.

Matt Katz: Thank you for calling.

Alim: Why not mention the Muslims?

Matt Katz: Thank you very much for calling. I appreciate it. Max, can we get a fact-check on that?

Max Colchester: Yes, sure. It is anti-Muslim for sure. I think one of the insidious things about what's happened to the far-right in the UK is it used to be a fairly-- it used to be a skin color-based racism. It used to be the far right was just if your color, your skin color is a certain way, then you're not welcome in the country. Obviously, actually, what Tommy Robinson's done is said, "Actually, no, no, I'm not racist. I don't hate you because of your skin color. I just want people to assimilate in this country. I want people in this country who espouse British values."

Muslims, do they have the same values as us? He says no. He's done it in a way which is very insidious, which is to say that, "Well, I'm not racist. I just want British people, British values to persist." That's what we've seen. He's not stupid. He's not going on X saying, "Attack a mosque." He's just constantly posting stuff out there, putting stuff out there, saying, basically making out that the Muslim culture is barbaric and that Muslims have fundamentally different values to Christians and that the more Muslims we let in, the more we are going to damage the Christian values of Britain.

He puts this stuff out, and this is what he's churning out day after day. He's not saying, go and burn the mosque or beat up the police or anything like that. The way he does this is he says the main trope, actually, on the far-right, which, again, is very interesting, is that they always say, "We want to protect our children." Like, "These people, these foreigners, they're coming for our girls, they're coming for our kids."

What you see often, he'll go, "I want to protect our kids. Therefore, we need less migrants because the migrants are coming for our kids." That kind of thing. That is a unifying rallying cry for the far-right, which is incredibly insidious and obviously completely wrong. That's how he operates. They have been targeting mosques. A lot of what's out there on social media is patently anti-Muslim. It's been very shocking to see how that has been amped up and allowed to just flow across social media.

Matt Katz: Do you know anything about the callers allegations that the far-right is also affiliated in some way or supportive in some way of Israel?

Max Colchester: Well, I mean, there's been these allegations that Tommy Robinson is affiliated to Israel. Look, I would be careful about this. I think this guy will take money from anybody, frankly, and has taken money from everybody. I would be careful to start saying this is some sort of Israel motivated plot against the Muslim population of Britain. I really, really don't think that's the case here. I think this is effectively a bunch of grifters stirring the pot to very devastating consequences.

Matt Katz: Deidre in Brooklyn. Hi, Deidre, thanks for calling in.

Deidre: Hi. Very excited to be on. I was born and raised as an expat in London, and I lived there throughout the '90s and early 2000s. It was really this period of time when it was this completely globalist, cosmopolitan golden age, where we all thought that all of these cultures were coming together and mixing. The UK was an incredibly tolerant place.

One of the things that I've noticed as I've come of age, as an adulthood, I graduated university in 2017, and so Brexit and Donald Trump happened in the same six months, which was wild, is that like a dawning realization of there's a lot of the British public who feel very disaffected, I guess, by the economy, by the growth that we've had. There's sort of an inherent part of UK history that I think gets missed, that it's always been an island. It's always been an island and had an inherent inside-outside mentality in terms of its history.

Even though it was an empire, because it was an empire, amongst people that I know, although they haven't been rioting amongst people that I know, especially older generations, they feel as if it's easy to blame outsiders for the fact that Britain is no longer this power, or they feel like there's a sort of inherent superiority to being British that underlies the idea that people need to assimilate, that, I think, is driving a lot of this. It's not completely out of nowhere, I guess, is my point based on my--

Matt Katz: No, that's really interesting, Deirdre. Something almost isolationist in the psychology of the country, based on its geography and history. Max, do you have any thoughts on Deirdre's point?

Max Colchester: I think these things are never black and white, but I really fundamentally think, and you can see data on this, Britain is a very tolerant place. People are kind. This is not a place where racism is widely accepted. You can see since the '90s, there's been lots of polling on attitudes. You can see people have become much more socially liberal, much more accepting. I think you saw that last night. You saw thousands of people across the country coming out into the streets to say, "We're not accepting of this."

British culture's very-- the Brits love rules. They are fair play. They don't like the idea of mob rule or thugs. A strong part of the British identity is rooted in what Britain did in the Second World War, where many people look back at what their grandparents or great-grandparents did to fight fascism. There is a sort of inherent repulsion to that. I would sort of contest the idea that Britain in recent years has become sort of nativist in some way.

Has the right-wing potentially become more adept at tapping into a segment of the population who feel that way? Maybe, but I don't think as a whole that society is somehow becoming much more isolationist as time goes by.

Matt Katz: Let's take one more caller before we let you go, Max. Tim in Weston, Connecticut. Hi, Tim.

Tim: Hey, thanks for taking my call.

Matt Katz: My pleasure.

Tim: First thing I just wanted to talk about was my understanding is it was the attacker of those children was 17 years old, and he was either autistic or had some kind of mental issues, too. I heard that on the BBC, so maybe Max can confirm that. More importantly, I wanted to talk about, what I'm concerned about is Elon Musk. X is now become this open channel for hatred, misinformation. Even he is fighting with the British prime minister and saying revolution or race riots are coming, and he's inciting it.

It's happening also in the US. I already feel it, and it's really, really frightening me because a guy like that's got so much power. My understanding is Britain is working on laws because they are allowed to take down posts and they have to monitor. In the US, that's been relaxed a lot, but they can't-- I don't understand why they can't go in there right now. My understanding is they have some type of law that's being worked on, but take down these posts or even take down X when things like this happen.

In America, get ready, man. It's coming. I think that our next election-- In Britain, they don't have guns, like we have in America. Wait until you have these armed racists running around America and shooting people and intimidating people. Thank God Britain has got gun control. Anyway, I'm very, very concerned. I'm interested what your guys' thoughts are.

Matt Katz: Thanks very much. Appreciate it, Tim. Max, it's not just that Elon controls his platform and has let people back on. He also has almost 200 million followers. I get his posts even though I don't follow him. It's an extraordinary megaphone to the caller's point. Is there anything that Britain can do based on the structure of its laws, maybe compared to ours, to, I don't know, control the misinformation on social media in general and then specifically address Elon?

Max Colchester: Well, there is law that's actually. They passed a law not that long ago called the Online Safety Act, which is somewhat frustratingly, hasn't actually come into force yet. They haven't actually really started using it but yes, there is legislative power coming down the line, which effectively forces social media companies to adhere to their own terms and conditions and moderate their own platforms effectively on the threat of fines if they don't.

That's how they're going to try and tackle it, is to say, "Look, if you guys don't police your own sites properly and moderate the stuff on your sites properly, then we're going to fine you." That's how they're going to try and tackle that. There are, of course, hate speech laws and so forth in the UK. If you incite hatred in the same way, if I incited hate in the pub or I go online onto Facebook or X and incite hate, I can be arrested for that and they have, they've been arresting people, quite a few people recently, to try and stop this behavior.

You're right. It is quite incredible that the owner of a major platform in the US is essentially entered into a war of words with the British government on the side of people who are appearing to be causing illegal behavior. It is quite astounding. I think we've seen Musk in Venezuela doing the same thing, except he's on the side of the rioters against the Maduro regime.

Britain, it's really-- I was amazed, I don't follow Elon Musk, particularly. Professionally, I use X, but I don't write about Twitter. I was just blown away when I saw these tweets coming out, these posts coming out, trashing the British prime minister, saying there was going to be civil war, saying that the police in Britain doesn't police white people fairly compared to ethnic minorities, repeating openly fake news, putting out pieces of-- posting to millions of people, pieces of information that are patently false. It really was quite eye-opening.

I think the British government's been taken aback. All they can do is really go and politely ask that X do a better job of policing their site. Obviously, if X don't want to, then there's not really that much they can do. I think it's really shown actually the limitations of what governments can do to try and curtail these sites. Another big one is obviously Telegram, which is being used to organize a lot of these protests, and again, the government can't really do much to force Telegram to better moderate. They just have to hope that they'll do the decent thing.

It has really exposed that this channel of communication is very, very hard to control. In America, I think there are even less efforts to try and restrain it. Maybe your listener is right. You guys should be prepared.

Matt Katz: I was going to ask you about that in terms of just being prepared not only for the misinformation but also for the very palpable political concern about migrants. This is something that the right-wing here is rallying about and that this idea that migrants are streaming over the border in mass numbers. I know you're on the other side of the pond there, but do you see parallels here just in general in terms of that political sentiment? Is there things that we should be looking at?

Max Colchester: I think obviously in America you've had-- the problem actually is arguably much worse in America because in Britain the numbers are actually quite small. The number of illegal migrants is very small compared to what you guys have on your southern border. Also, the fact that, let's be honest, the Biden administration didn't seem to have really tackled that issue particularly aggressively for a long time. I can see how that festered.

Going back to false information, who knows what? You guys are about to have a very tense election in November. If the person who owns one of the major social media platforms, decides that election wasn't won fairly and decides to start weighing in on that, that could get ugly.

Matt Katz: Wow. Well, we will leave it there with that not-so-positive sentiment, but also really appreciate this insight, this perspective telling us about a story that we've been not following as closely because we've been dealing with our own politics here. Max Colchester, UK correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, really appreciate your insights and you coming on The Brian Lehrer Show.

Max Colchester: Thank you very much for having me.

[00:40:19] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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