Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is embroiled in controversy after posting an alleged Islamophobic meme.

On Saturday, Musk published meme on X, formerly known as Twitter until Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform.

It features four bearded, Muslim-looking men standing over a white British police officer, a riff on the popular meme showing four black men standing over adult film star Piper Perri as she sits on a couch.

“This meme could get you 3 years in prison in the UK (actually),” Musk added in a response to his post, which had 888,000 likes and 94.4 million views at the time of publication.

Since his acquisition of Twitter, Musk has styled himself as a vanguard of free speech, often testing censorship laws in a number of countries by sharing content that some perceive as inflammatory.

At the same time, he is accused of stifling criticism of Israel and the Zionist movement after a scandal in which he seemed to agree with the anti-Semitic charge that Jews weaken the West by encouraging mass immigration.

As advertisers threatened to boycott his platform over the post, Musk went on what many at X criticized as an “apology tour”; first to Israel to meet survivors of the October 7 Hamas attack and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than a million Jews were killed by the Nazis.

In recent weeks, Musk has attacked his online rivals, including Scottish former First Minister Humza Yousaf, whom he accused of being racist and a “scumbag”. The South African-born tycoon has also shared fake news about the riots in Britain and has joked about invading Britain.

Yousaf branded Musk “one of the most dangerous men on the planet” for his “amplification” of disinformation after the riots.

On Thursday, Musk hit back, calling Yousaf, the son of Pakistani migrants to Scotland, “super, super racist” and claiming he “hates white people”.

“I dare that bastard to sue me,” Musk said on Sunday in response to reports that Yousuf was considering legal action against him.

On Friday, London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowleythreatened to extradite and imprison people overseas, including US citizens, through online posts – warning that “the likes of Elon Musk” are potential targets of investigation.

Musk is “accountable to no one”

Musk, whose daughter recently allegedly that he told her when she was six that Arabic was “the language of the enemy”, has made a number of interventions on the theme of the far-right anti-Muslim riots that swept across Britain in early August.

To have declared that civil war in Britain was “inevitable” during the riots, which were partly sparked by disinformation spread on X, Musk has since issued several seemingly humorous posts suggesting that the US should invade Britain.

It seems that the people are oppressed

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2024

He has criticized the prosecution of British citizens for social media posts deemed “hateful” or inciting violence, and accused the country of introducing a two-tier justice system.

This is a reference to the common far-right trope that ethnic minorities in Britain are treated more leniently by the authorities than white people.

During the riots Musk, who has almost 200 million followers on X, too replied to a post depicting an offensive caricature of a Pakistani man with a knife.

The cartoon suggested British police should protect Muslims who say “kill the infidels” but jail white men who say “I don’t want my children stabbed”.

“It seems one-sided,” Musk replied.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2024

On Friday, Musk also responded approvingly to a parody of India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, who posted a video of the UAE’s foreign minister warning European countries about their Muslim population.

“There will come a day when we will see a lot more radicals and terrorists coming out of Europe because of a lack of decision-making, trying to be politically correct and assuming they know the Middle East, and they know Islam and they know others much better than we do do, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed can be heard saying in the video.

“Seven years ago, UAE Foreign Minister HH Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed warned the West about something,” Amit Shah’s parody account said.

“He did” replied Musk in apparent agreement.

The UK government’s technology secretary, Peter Kyle, met with representatives from X and other social media platforms, including TikTok and Meta, on Monday to “clarify their responsibility to continue working with us to stop the spread of hateful misinformation and incitement”.

Later that week, Kyle complained that Musk is “accountable to no one”.

Musk, meanwhile, branded goods Prime Minister Keir Starmer “two-level Keir” and suggested Britain would become like the Soviet Union.

Last Thursday he did shared a bogus Telegraph article announcing that Starmer was considering building “emergency camps” in the Falkland Islands to house imprisoned mutineers.

The fake headline was posted by the co-leader of far-right group Britain First. Musk deleted his post half an hour later.

On Monday, Bruce Daisleyformer Twitter vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said Elon Musk should face “personal sanctions” and the threat of an “arrest warrant” if it is found to be causing public disorder.