A Liberal Democrat lawmaker in the British Parliament has come under criticism for proclaiming that it is a “massive problem” that people are allowed to broadcast their anti-mass migration sentiments on social media sites like X.
In comments to a Demos think tank panel discussion on the topic of “making citizens’ voices heard,” Max Wilkinson, MP for Cheltenham in western England and Home Affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, attempted to argue that the diffusion of the media landscape and the emergence of free speech-oriented platforms such as Elon Musk’s X have diminished the voice and political engagement of average voters — despite social media being used by millions of citizens to share their opinions.
Expressing very little faith in the cognitive ability of his fellow countrymen, the Liberal Democrat MP further attempted to claim in the recently unearthed December footage that the public is unable to discern between news and opinions shared online, and therefore is unable to determine truth from fiction.
However, the Cheltenham parliamentarian was apparently most concerned with those who express the opinion that “immigration is too high or immigration is the big thing that’s tearing the country apart.”
Wilkinson said that social media is a “massive problem” as people can “set up an X account and start writing some sort of nativist content, and it will go around the world really, really quickly.”
“Your voice will be heard as quickly as you want it to be. Not in a way that I would be comfortable with, and I would suggest probably not in a way that most people on the panel this evening would be comfortable with either. But that is a really easy way to get your voice heard… because social media run by the world’s richest man X is now making sure that you can have your voice heard in a really easy way that you couldn’t in the past.”
The Liberal Democrat, who previously vowed to quit posting on X only to post again on various issues, conversely argued that power should be devolved locally as much as possible, in spite of the contradiction of his favouring establishment media-run information ecosystems over citizen-driven social media.
Unsurprisingly, the unearthed comments have drawn heavy criticism on X, including from the prominent British Migration Watch think tank, which said that Wilkinson’s comments represented “sinister” evidence of what many open borders opponents have warned for years: “The mass migration experiment has no popular support and the only way politicians can pursue it is with censorship.”
Meanwhile, the Free Speech Union added: “This is deeply disturbing to hear from a Member of Parliament and the Liberal Democrats’ Home Affairs Spokesperson. X is a platform that promotes free speech and allows users to share their views.
“Mass immigration is a major issue in public and political debate — and one that citizens should be freely able to engage with. It is not illegal to criticise mass immigration — but it appears MP Wilkinson wishes it were.”
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