Immigration unrest: Alliance MLA condemns Elon Musk for his traitor comment about Belfast's new Sinn Fein lord mayor

Kate Nicholl was responding to the fact that on Thursday, June 11, Mr Musk had tweeted on X that the Sinn Fein lord mayor of Belfast Rois-Maire Donnelly was a “betrayer of her people”.

Mr Musk has 240m followers. His tweet has been viewed 535,000 times, and “liked” over 50,000 times.

His remark came against a backdrop of criticism of the recently-installed mayor over the fact she had used her inaugural speech to say "diversity enriches our city” – then, one week after she made the speech, a Sudanese man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder over a knife attack in a north Belfast street.

Ms Nicholl told the Assembly this morning: “A few days ago the world's first trillionaire Elon Musk – man with no mandate, and an immigrant with wealth twice that of the GDP of the country which he came from – commented on a photo of the first citizen of Belfast, and described her as a betrayer to her people.

"As a former lord mayor [of Belfast] I was shocked, not only that someone who bought this platform to spread his own ideological views would comment on the first citizen of Belfast, I was surprised that there wasn't more commentary on it.

"I feel very strongly that Elon Musk has no real idea of what people across the world are going through, let alone in Belfast, but it spoke to something more sinister, which is going on in our society.”

She went on to speak of online abuse targeting politicians and journalists, adding: “We all have thick skin, we've all been around for long enough to deal with cut-and-thrust of politics, as it's often described in here, but there has been a shift.

"There's a change. I've never had to report the comments that I've received to the police. I had to do that last week.

“Awful things said that bring in families and are violent and on a different level that I haven't seen before.”

She also went on to say “I think that it's very easy to believe lies when you're angry, and I'm not actually sure what we do about it”, and that “I'm very concerned about the bad actors that are at play, the misinformation, the inflaming of situations”.

She urged people to “engage with kindness and empathy, because we are living in a very dark time right now”.

Ms Nicholl is originally from Zimbabwe, whilst Mr Musk is originally from neighbouring South Africa.