Billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, announced on the X platform that he would take legal action against the German public television station ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) for accusing him of “calling for hunting down immigrants” in a report about the “anti-immigrant riots in Northern Ireland.”
The incident started with a serious stabbing incident in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, last week.
On June 8th, a knife attacker went on a rampage on the streets, indiscriminately attacking civilians, with witnesses describing the scene as “terrifying like a movie plot.” The brutality of the attacker left Stephen Ogilvie severely injured, with significant head trauma and losing his left eye. The Northern Ireland police later confirmed that the attacker was a refugee who had arrived in Belfast legally after traveling from Sudan via Paris and Dublin and seeking asylum.
After the incident, the footage of the bloody attack spread rapidly on the internet, sparking strong dissatisfaction among the local populace towards such attacks. Starting from June 9th, large groups of masked individuals took to the streets of Belfast to protest. The demonstrations quickly turned into violent clashes, where arsonists set fire to multiple city buses and private cars, blocking roads with debris. The violence even escalated to targeting minority ethnic communities, with some immigrant and refugee homes being surrounded and set ablaze.
Following the knife attack, British activists like Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe, the founder of the “Restore UK” movement, called on people across the UK to protest on the evening of June 9th.
In a post, Robinson mentioned, “Tonight at 7 p.m., the entire United Kingdom will take to the streets because our people are once again under attack by invaders. It’s time.”
Musk reposted the related post on the X platform and commented on June 9th, “Only through repeated and loud protests can things change!”
On June 12th, the ZDF news program “ZDF heute live” produced a 30-minute special report titled, “How Musk Incites Protests.”
The host, Christina von Ungern-Sternberg, said in the opening statement, “A brutal attempted murder incident took place on the streets of Belfast. A video was captured and quickly went viral. Subsequently, a racist thug began hunting down immigrants. This call was made by a British far-right figure and billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk.”
This statement connecting Musk directly to “inciting violence against immigrants” was deemed controversial and faced criticism from the German media and legal professionals.
In response to the criticisms, ZDF later added a correction explanation in the report, acknowledging that the original opening statement was “not precise enough, leading to misunderstandings.”
The correction explanation stated, “Tommy Robinson called for protests after the knife attack, and Musk reposted that call. The host’s wording was not accurate.”
ZDF emphasized that the entire 30-minute program provided detailed coverage of the whole incident, but the initial summary at the beginning was indeed problematic.
On June 15th, Musk retaliated on X, stating, “Due to ZDF’s outrageous lies, we will take legal action against them.”
Musk later posted again, “During the legal process, we will find out who the idiot was that wrote this terrible lie.”
This marks Musk’s first public announcement of taking legal action against a German public broadcasting institution. The specific charges Musk will pursue or the jurisdiction in which the lawsuit will be filed are currently unclear.
ZDF is one of Germany’s two major nationwide public law television stations, funded mainly by the television license fees paid by the public. Previously, the station faced widespread criticism due to inaccurate reporting by its US special correspondent about Charlie Kirk. The special correspondent later publicly apologized, and ZDF responded to the criticism by stating that they “should have presented the information more clearly.”