A Very Political Summer; Xodus; Know Thyself - why it is essential for great leadership
I hope everyone is having a lovely summer in the furnace that is the Northern Hemisphere. Or a lovely winter in the Southern one – which I hear isn’t subjected to a massive COVID spike that’s everywhere in North America and Europe.
Yes, yes, I am mentioning covid because I finally caught it (not that I am happy about it) and way too many people I know are down with a flu-like bug but no one is testing so who knows…
In any case, as is sadly becoming normal for the past few years, Europe is experiencing heat waves and forest fires. Anyone working on a startup that is trying to solve climate change in any way please keep going. Roasting through August is not pleasant and we can’t move a whole population to the North for a few months every year. But if we keep going like this, in a few decades everyone will want to avoid the lovely Mediterranean in the summer.
But what a summer it’s been! Normally a quiet time of the year for politics, we started off strong with unexpected elections in France and the UK both of which ended with somewhat unexpected results; then had an incredible Olympics opening ceremony in the most beautiful city in the world featuring headless Marie-Antoinettes in the windows of the Conciergerie and a fabulous metallic hoarse galloping on the Seine amongst other incredible moments; then sadly intensifying wars… and riots in London inflamed by posts on the social platform that used to be Twitter.
The latter is something worth putting in context for those not in the UK. If you’ve been following the news you might have heard that riots started in several cities in the UK after baseless speculations online about the identity of the man who killed innocent children dancing to Taylor Swift. Unimaginable tragedy. Made even worse by the rioters who didn’t particularly seem to care about the children.
The racist riots enraged not just politicians and officials across the political spectrum, but pretty much every and all British person I know. The riots, organised to a large extent on Telegram and amplified and inflamed on X, not least by the platform’s owner, quickly stopped once police and the judiciary swiftly caught, convicted and jailed the rioters. Just as importantly, much larger, peaceful anti-racism protests took over the streets. “Those rioters, that’s not our country.” was the response I heard all around.
Why do I mention this here? Because there are and there will be regulatory consequences for online activities too.
Following Elon Musk’s outrageous comments on the riots and the amplification on his site of posts that possibly included hate speech and incitement to violence, both of which are illegal in places like the UK and EU btw, there has been a massive and visible exodus of big UK accounts from X - and serious talk of stepping up regulation.
This was the reaction of Edward Luce, the FT’s chief US correspondent:
“Can’t say this enough; Elon Musk’s menace to democracy is intolerable. He’s using the largest and most influential platform in the democratic world to stoke racial conflict and civil breakdown – in his own posts & what X promotes. Democracies can no longer ignore this.”
I don’t think I have ever seen such strong words from an FT journalist.
Apparently, Threads is now the 3rd most downloaded app in the UK and X is at the 60th place. The influx of UK accounts has been clear and very noticeable.
Journalists, historians and more, who to be honest I’ve been astonished hadn’t