Elon Musk, the world’s second-richest man and former senior advisor to US President Donald Trump, appeared on giant video screens in central London on Saturday to address the largest far-right demonstration in British history. Musk issued a call for mass violence against the left, the dissolution of parliament and a “revolutionary government” to return Britain to “greatness.”

Wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “What would George Orwell think?” the tech billionaire portrayed himself as the champion of free speech chafing under the yoke of government oppression. Worth an estimated $463.2 billion, Musk called for “government of, by, and for the people.”

Interviewed on stage by fascist provocateur Tommy Robinson, Musk spoke via video-link for more than 15 minutes. It was an unabashed call for a fascist movement. He declared that “massive uncontrolled migration” was leading to the “destruction of Britain” and denounced the government for failing to “protect the weak, those who cannot protect themselves,” including “children who are getting gang raped”, a favoured anti-Muslim trope of Britain’s far-right.

Expressing fear in the capitalist oligarchy over the growth of left-wing sentiment in the working class, Musk described mass migration as a plot by the left to import voters who are “taking your vote away from you.” He warned, “Frankly, it’s a strategy that will succeed, if it is not stopped.”

He appealed to Robinson’s crowd, “You’re in a fundamental situation here… whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back, or you die. You either fight back or you die. And that’s the truth.”

Musk depicted an imminent threat to democracy from the left: “There’s so many on the left that want to just crush debate and put people in prison,” he declared.

He amplified the deafening campaign by Trump’s entourage portraying the fascist Charlie Kirk as a political martyr to the left, “you see how much violence there’s on the left, with our friend Charlie Kirk getting murdered in cold blood this week, and people on the left celebrating it openly. The left is the party of murder and celebrating murder. I mean, let that sink in for a minute. That’s who we’re dealing with here. That is who we’re dealing with.”

With Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK leading in the polls and Starmer’s popularity having plunged to a record low -50, Musk declared, “There’s got to be a change of government in Britain. We don’t have another four years… Something’s got to be done. There’s got to be a dissolution of parliament and a new vote held.”

Musk warned that unless they acted soon, “other people are going to come and maraud them. There [is] genuine risk of rape and murder and the destruction of the country.” A “revolutionary government” would enact “deregulation” and “a massive reduction in bureaucracy,” i.e., eliminate all restraints on profit and the exploitation of the working class.

Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response came the following day on Twitter/X at 2.05pm with a defence of the police, the St George’s flag, and the Union Jack:

“People have a right to peaceful protest. It is core to our country’s values. But we will not stand for assaults on police officers doing their job or for people feeling intimidated on our streets because of their background or the colour of their skin. Britain is a nation proudly built on tolerance, diversity and respect. Our flag represents our diverse country and we will never surrender it to those that use it as a symbol of violence, fear and division.”

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Starmer heads an authoritarian government that is criminalising the right to protest. At the end of June, then Labour’s Home Secretary ordered the banning of non-violent protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. Police have since arrested over 1,500 of its supporters. Pensioners and retirees—including those in wheelchairs—have been hauled away under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act for the crime of holding placards inscribed with the words, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Only the previous Saturday, 2,500 police were mobilised against 1,500 peaceful anti-genocide protestors in Parliament Square, with almost 900 arrests. By comparison, just 1,000 police met Saturday’s 150,000-strong march by the far-right. As a result, fascist hoodlums came close to breaching police barricades separating them from a small counter-protest organised by Stand Up To Racism advertised weeks in advance.

The size of Saturday’s protest has shocked wide layers of the population and Starmer’s refusal to condemn Musk’s inflammatory calls for a far-right takeover generated widespread disgust.

It was not until Tuesday’s cabinet briefing that Starmer spoke against “calls to violence from [a] foreign billionaire”. But even then, the (unnamed) billionaire’s incitement of a far-right coup against his own government passed without comment.

According to a summary of the cabinet meeting, Starmer told his ministers, “Scenes of police officers being attacked on Saturday, and a march led by a convicted criminal, were not just shocking but sent a chill through the spines of people around the country, and particularly many ethnic minority Britons”.

It continues: “He [Starmer] said we are in the fight of our times between patriotic national renewal and decline and toxic division. He said the government must heed the patriotic call of national renewal, and that this was a fight that has to be won.”

Workers need to reach clear conclusions from these events.

Musk’s call for a far-right movement to bring down the Starmer government is not play-acting. In January 2021, Trump organised a fascist rabble to storm the US Congress and prevent certification of Joe Biden as President of the United States. They came within minutes of succeeding. Trump is now erecting a dictatorship in plain view, overturning the constitution, deploying the military into major cities, and effectively ruling by decree. The Nazi-saluting Musk is a public symbol of this coup by the oligarchy.

There is no constituency in the British ruling class for the defence of democratic rights. Starmer’s craven response to Musk—who has used his X platform to incite anti-immigrant riots in Britain, including those in Southport last summer—makes clear Labour will do nothing to oppose far-right agitation, up to and including plans for a coup. This week, Starmer has rolled out the red carpet for Dictator-in-Chief Donald Trump’s state visit.

Starmer’s actions reflect more than individual cowardice. They confirm Labour’s total subservience to the capitalist oligarchy. On Sunday, he announced a new inward investment deal from US financial giants (including PayPal, Bank of America, Citibank and S&P) worth £1.2 billion, boasting it “confirms Britain’s place as a leader in global finance.” On Friday, he announced a separate deal with Google Cloud “to strengthen secure communication links between the UK and the US. Protecting us against threats, supporting jobs and bringing investment to Britain.”

But beyond such powerful financial interests, Labour’s prostration before Musk and Trump, and Starmer’s pathological authoritarianism and patriotism, reflect definite political calculations.

Starmer is under intense pressure to slash public spending and make the working class pay for Britain’s mounting debt and for increased military spending. Reform UK is being promoted in ruling circles as a possible replacement. Should a far-right coup be mounted in Britain, the Labour government, like the Democrats in the US, will not resist.

In the US, Kirk’s assassination is being seized on by the Trump administration to launch a pre-emptive war on the left, targeting workers, students and all those who express any opposition to its fascist policies as the “enemy within”. Starmer is acting from a similar playbook. Aware that Labour’s plans for deepening austerity will generate mass working class resistance, he too is working to criminalize left-wing and anti-war protest, promote the far-right, and bolster the repressive powers of the state.

Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally was preceded by a torrent of anti-immigrant rhetoric by Labour’s cabinet about “stopping the boats” and boosting deportations that was indistinguishable from Farage or Robinson. Starmer and his then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper praised the far-right’s “Raise the Colours” movement that has seen public roads, lamp posts and buildings covered with the St George flag.

Starmer’s extending a hand of friendship to the far-right culminated in his September 10 post on X: “My thoughts this evening are with the loved ones of Charlie Kirk. It is heartbreaking that a young family has been robbed of a father and a husband. We must all be free to debate openly and freely without fear—there can be no justification for political violence.”

Rising to the Labour leadership through a manufactured witch-hunt against “left-wing antisemitism”, Starmer now whitewashes a fascist agitator and a virulent antisemite. Kirk has publicly espoused the Great Replacement Theory, claiming that “elites” are overseeing mass immigration to replace “white peoples”. In November 2023, he declared that “anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.” He has consistently employed antisemitic tropes, alleging Jewish control of Hollywood, academia, and the mass media. Kirk’s support for the Zionist state of Israel merely confirms a kinship grounded in ethno-nationalism.

As the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site warned almost a decade ago, the state campaign against “leftwing antisemitism” launched against Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in 2015-2019—aimed at criminalising pro-Palestinian, left-wing and socialist politics—has served to bolster the real source of antisemitism in the cesspools of the far-right.

Corbyn enjoyed the overwhelming backing of party members to take on and defeat the Blairite witch-hunters, but he opposed any challenge to the right-wing, insisting on the unity of all factions in Labour’s “broad church”. Corbyn’s legacy was a peaceful transition to Starmer who has backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and is overseeing the most severe repression in modern British history against the right to protest and free speech, while boosting the far-right.

Now, Corbyn is setting up a new left-wing party, but he advances no strategy to mobilise the working class against the Starmer government, the far-right and the capitalist system which they defend.

While criticizing Starmer for “playing into the hands of Reform”, Corbyn told Channel 4 News, “Surely what he should be saying is that we’re going to lead to a process of renewal which eliminates the poverty and inequality in our society.” Asked whether he had sympathy for Starmer as leader, Corbyn replied, “Being leader of the Labour Party is very, very difficult indeed”, before paying tribute to his “old friends” in the party who he described as “very active and very good people.”