Elon Musk v The Economist

Feminist populism and right wing populism have something in common.

An interview between Zanny Minton-Beddoes, editer of The Economist and Elon Musk has gone viral on Twitter. It is to the credit of both parties that the interview has been released in full so that we can all draw our own conclusions.

An important ‘plank’ of right-wing propaganda is that London is a violent hellscape overrun with terrifying Muslim gangs and that civilisational collapse, or even civil war, is imminent. Empirical data seldom back these claims. While I am no fan of the Economist under Minton-Beddoes, I think she does a good job of dismantling Elon’s hyperbole. London, in terms of homicide rates, is safer than equivalent US cities and safer even than most European cities. That said, the data may be more nuanced than that and some categories of crime, other than homicide, may be higher in London.

So far so good. However, some double standards operating in progressive circles. Musk’s claims are not so far removed from the rhetoric coming from feminists in the UK. Shabana Mahmood, as Home Secretary, said the violence against women and girls was a ‘national emergency‘ a claim that was frequently repeated in the media. Jess Phillips and Harriet Harman have said that there was an ‘epidemic’ of violence against women and girls‘. Every case of violence is one case too many, but most forms of violence have been in decline since the 1990s.

The word ‘epidemic’ has been devalued and is now routinely applied to any crime affecting women and girls irrespective of whether it is frequent, increasing or decreasing. There is little to choose between this linguistic inflation and the hyperbole of Elon Musk.

Like Elon Musk’s hyperbolic claims, empirical data seldom backs those of feminists, or that data is shorn of context. That is, comparator data for men and boys, or from different eras, is missing.

Inflation of feminist statistics is widespread in progressive circles; for example, extrapolating from self selected cohorts recruited online is seen as normal and good evidence at the BBC. The claim that two thirds of women experience abuse while running was produced by activist academics and went unquestioned by the hacks at the BBC (here), even though it originated from a self selected cohort recruited online. Indeed, one wonders why the figure wasn’t 100%.

While Musk paints a picture of London as a violent hellscape terrorised by Muslim gangs, feminists paint a picture of a misogynist hellscape where women and girls are constantly under attack. Both parties should be called out for weaponizing one category of crime for their own purposes and for spreading narratives that are not supported by empirical data.