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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Alex Hern UK technology editor

Elon Musk’s journey from humanitarian to poster of rightwing memes

Elon Musk
Around 2020, Musk became a frequent poster and had his first brushes with the world of factchecking. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Once, the chief executive of one of the world’s largest companies approvingly sharing a fabricated headline published by the leadership of a fascist party would have been news. For Elon Musk, it was just Thursday.

Unusually for Musk, his post, a retweet of the Britain First co-leader Ashlea Simon sharing a fake Telegraph headline about detainment camps in the Falkland Islands for the English rioters, was deleted shortly after being sent. In the 30 minutes it was live on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter that he bought in 2022, it managed to rack up almost 2m views.

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