Elon Musk had posted on X that “civil war is inevitable” under a video of violent riots in Liverpool.
Misinformation on Mr Musk’s social media platform X has been blamed for helping to fuel racist far-right riots and attacks.
Following lies about the identity of the suspect in the Southport knife attack, disorder continued across the weekend as racist mobs clashed with police in Hull, Halifax, Liverpool, London, Southport and Rotherham, and started fires at hotels housing asylum-seekers in Manvers and Tamworth.
There are posts featuring misinformation on X garnering millions of interactions. Also Musk responded to a post on Sunday sharing footage of the violence, which claimed disorder is the “effects of mass migration and open borders”.
“Civil war is inevitable,” the Tesla and SpaceX founder replied. It marks the sixth time since October that Musk has claimed civil war is brewing in Europe.
On Monday, Downing Street reiterated that social media companies have “can and should be doing more” to counter misleading or dangerous material hosted on their platforms, adding that they have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their users.
Mr Musk drew criticism from across the political spectrum for his remarks, with Tim Montgomerie, editor of the Conservative Home website, saying: “Extraordinarily irresponsible from Elon Musk. We need leaders to deescalate, not raise fears.”
Michael Stephens, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said: “Proof if ever it was needed that making electric cars and space rockets does not equal political understanding. Civil War is absolutely not inevitable. The UK is a small space filled with a lot of people. We all have to make it work.”
The Thick of It writer Armando Iannucci, said: “Tomorrow morning you’ll see the people who live here tidy these streets up. Small gangs of thugs do not a mass movement make. You’ve been taken in by your own platform, which amplifies noise at the expense of facts.”
But such inflammatory claims have been echoed by other public figures, with actor-turned right-wing activist Laurence Fox seeking to cast prime minister Keir Starmer as a “traitor” on the side of “immigrant barbarians”, adding in an X post “liked” nearly 60,000 times: “Fine. Then it’s war.”
As calls emerged for greater regulation of social media, Professor Marc Owen Jones, a disinformation researcher at Doha’s Hamid bin Khalifa University, said: “X has been weaponised to spread rumours and hate speech, particularly targeting minorities, people of a Muslim background, to inflame tensions.”
“Unfortunately social media companies make it all too easy for potential bad actors to set up anonymous accounts and spread rumours,” Prof Jones told BBC News.
