Elon Musk has long described himself as a “centrist”. He likes to pretend that he hasn’t changed his views; it’s the Democrats who have lurched to the left. He’s merely a free speech advocate; a self-styled “moderate” resisting the excesses of the “woke mind virus”.

But when you pay attention to his actual digital footprint – the tweets, the retweets, the algorithmic amplification – a very different, much darker picture emerges. The world’s richest person clearly isn’t interested in cultivating a neutral marketplace of ideas; rather, he has turned Twitter/X into a platform where far-right and racist content is repeatedly rewarded and amplified.

Consider the latest evidence. The would-be trillionaire spent the past few days, including Sunday, his birthday, breathlessly promoting Citizen Vigilante.

Citizen what? You’re forgiven if you haven’t heard of the new movie from German film-maker Uwe Boll, frequently described as “the world’s worst director”. A Variety review dismissed it as an “astonishingly bad”, “incoherent”, “morally bankrupt” film with “no plot”.

But it isn’t simply another low-budget revenge thriller. It’s 90 minutes of unabashed far-right political propaganda.

Its protagonist Michal Sanders – played by controversial actor Armie Hammer – is a well-tailored US landlord living in Europe who embarks on a campaign of extra-judicial executions after a series of crimes committed by migrants. The film depicts brown-skinned migrant communities as inherently violent and predatory while portraying vigilantism by white people as a necessary, righteous, even heroic response.

The wooden dialogue is filled with far-right messaging. Migrants supposedly bring an “archaic value system”. European civilization is........

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