SINCE the turn of the year, Elon Musk, the far-right billionaire and richest man in the world, has been using his social media platform X, to successfully drive the political and news agenda of Britain.

His interventions have now turned to child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, denouncing Prime Minister Keir Starmer as being responsible for “the rape of Britain,” as well as branding Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist.”

As a result, his highly organised far-right network has dived into a frenzy, with the media and Reform MPs into parroting his attacks. The Labour Party leadership has been blindsided by Musk’s entrance into our politics, having spent the past five years paranoid about the threat of the left, and leaving the door open to the far right.

Their scattered response has varied from invitations from Health Secretary Wes Streeting to Musk to “roll up his sleeves and work with us,” to the Prime Minister attempting to defend his record and accuse Musk of “lies and misinformation.”

Departing from the government’s line, former Socialist Campaign Group member turned Rishi Sunak trade envoy, Labour MP Dan Carden this weekend called for a new national inquiry in an article with the Liverpool Echo.

But Carden went much further, arguing: “We must question and challenge the orthodoxy of progressive liberal multiculturalism that led to authorities failing to act. We need a new doctrine to take our multi-ethnic society into the future.”

Carden’s decision to blame multiculturalism for decades of government failure on violence against women and girls has been welcomed by Musk himself, who endorsed the comments on X.

Carden’s language has been greeted with approval from Reform supporters, too. Similarly, Blue Labour, a socially conservative political faction within the Labour Party, voiced their support for Carden’s statement, which they said “cuts to the heart of the issue.”

Carden’s comments speak to a deeply serious issue: the scourge of violence against women and girls has been left to spiral out of control. Decades of misogynistic policies have gone unchecked and successive governments have been able to meaningfully address this issue.

The reality of the scale of sexual violence women and girls face in Britain is no less than an epidemic. According to Rape Crisis England and Wales, one in four women have been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16.

The National Policing Statement 2024 for violence against women and girls documented over two million victims of sexual assault just last year, with even the Metropolitan Police conceding that in reality, this is more likely to be around four million when taking into account the scale of mistrust in the justice system which often leads to the victim not reporting the incident.

The reports of girls who have been victims of grooming and sexual abuse being failed, not believed or blamed by the services around them, is a story that is echoed throughout women’s lives. Still, we are waiting for justice.

Fewer than three in 100 rapes recorded by police between July 1 2023 and June 30 2024 resulted in someone being charged that same year, let alone convicted. Less than 1 per cent of rapes result in a successful conviction against the offender, essentially giving a get-out-of-jail-free card to rapists in this country.

People are right to be angry about this state of affairs, where violence against women and girls appears to go unpunished. They are right to be angry about the systems that failed them, the professionals who doubted them and the police who blamed them.

In a world where victims are increasingly hounded out of speaking up, often by far-right young men, it is about time we saw more anger on the side of survivors and demands for justice.

Carden’s comments, however, seek an easy scapegoat in “multiculturalism.” While this may garner applause from far-right networks, with deeply questionable records on their own relationship to sexism, it fails to properly grapple with the issue at hand. We know that child sexual abuse is not a problem unique to any single ethnicity or nationality, as evidence has repeatedly shown.

Concern about grooming, stalking and the wider epidemic of violence against women should not be characterised as solely the preserve of the far right.

Structural misogyny is a societal scourge that the left and progressive-minded people most constantly recommit to fighting. But we must also be wary of those on the right of our politics attempting to use this issue to fan the flames of racism.

Globally, the far right is in the ascendancy and uses misogynistic propaganda to lure young men into their movement. There is nothing feminist about its agenda and often the success of the far right is coupled with a rollback of women’s rights. These are the same forces currently attempting to manipulate this deeply important issue to serve their own ends.

We must be clear in rejecting their political agenda. We know that survivors of sexual violence and exploitation will not be served by the issue being used to whip up opposition to multiculturalism and politicians such as Carden should know better.

The left must challenge sexism and misogyny in all its forms while at the same time building a political movement capable of standing up to the far right. In the coming weeks, socialists must mobilise to stand against those such as Tommy Robinson twisting this issue for their own goals.

On February 1, we will be marching under the banner of Stop the Far Right in central London and show that there is a socialist, anti-racist and feminist movement that will not let fascists take to the streets and pollute our societies without challenge.

Jess Barnard is an elected member of Labour’s national executive committee. Ben Liao is a national organiser at Stand Up To Racism and a Labour member.