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The Trend With No Name

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer finally struck back at Elon Musk for reviving the Pakistani Muslim child gang rape scandal that both the British Labour and Conservative government are accused of ignoring. It is a scandal that could bring down a British government. In defense Starmer portrayed himself in heroic terms. "Elon Musk has called for Sir Keir Starmer to be jailed because he was chief prosecutor during the grooming gangs scandal, but the PM says he changed the law to help victims."

Starmer calls Elon misinformed on grooming gangs, in a signal probably designed to intimidate British conservatives rather than Musk. For while Starmer's writ may not run in Texas, it runs in Birmingham.. And he is playing the nationalist card too and recalls the movie lines: "unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent." But Starmer must be wondering what Elon's game is. Is he taking up the cudgels for the raped girls out of personal outrage or has he calculated that Keir, facing economic and structural decline, has a chink in his armor in the grooming gang area?

It is common knowledge that France and Germany are facing a political crisis and their governments will soon change. In Canada Justin Trudeau announced he is resigning. Biden in America will be gone before January is over. Starmer in facing the Ghost of the Groomers must be wondering if its reapparance just as the liberal order is collapsing is mere coincidence or a part of a trend the media has not yet named.  Starmer already senses a plot, denouncing the "bandwagon of the far right." But it was embattled Emmanuel Macron across the channel in France who made the case for the existence of a wider conspiracy. "Emmanuel Macron took a not-so-thinly veiled swipe at Elon Musk on Monday, accusing him of meddling in European politics and backing what the French president called a 'reactionary movement' across the world."

It is doubtful that Elon or Trump started the fire. "It was always burning, since the world's been turning." Trump's first term and Brexit were already harbingers that something was wrong. But the fire this time will not just singe the toes of the liberal political order but potentially incinerate it. Nobody wants to be caught in the flames. Former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak argued that if anyone turned a blind eye to the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs who some have  estimated at victimizing up to 250,000 mostly white British girls, it was not he. The finger points:

 "Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, was the only PM who dared to take on child rapists in England. He launched an unprecedented crackdown on child grooming gangs, leading to the arrest of over 550 offenders. However his determined efforts to root out systemic child exploitation were overshadowed by political backlash and culminated in ... his replacement -- ironically a figure accused of enabling such crimes during a prior tenure as chief prosecutor."

Nobody wants to be the fall guy for the British establishment's failure, but there's got to be one and it might as well be Keir. A voice may be echoing in Starmer's head which sounds like Elon's and it probably goes like this: "Let's give 'em the gunsel. He actually did ignore the grooming gangs, didn't he? Anyway, he's made to order for the part, look at him. Let's give him to 'em." But Starmer's just the beginning. MAGA's bigger game in Macron's view is the fate of the progressive West. Emmanuel Macron traced out the events leading to the rise of the reactionary movement. Macron had reached out to Elon; tried reasoning with him but he would not grasp the hand of the liberal world order. Now, Macron ruefully realizes, he must be stopped.

“Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections, including in Germany,” Macron said. In a speech to French ambassadors, the French president, who has previously cultivated a constructive relationship with Musk, most recently inviting him to the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral ... “I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and huge economic resources involves himself so directly in the internal affairs of other countries,” Støre told public broadcaster NRK. “This is not the way things should be between democracies and allies.

It is interesting how events in South Africa might have affected Musk. He left the old SA at 17 to avoid military service that would compel him to enforce apartheid. But the new SA was even more disillusioning. Elon is arguably the first African on the modern world stage to make this realization really matter. He understood the bankruptcy of the post-colonial West without the blinkers of any illusions about the Global South, so endemic in the academic left. He knew the answer to the failures of one was not embracing the failures of the other. America has by an accident of history become the France of 1789. The explosive ideas threatening Europe are not new. Doubtless others before Trump and Musk had thought of them before, but not until 2024 would orthodoxy be so effectively challenged by a combination of social mobility and technology so characteristic of the USA.

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