At the risk of triggering another X pile-on, here’s why we must fight the Musk and Trump army

It’s generally considered a bad idea to attack a wasps’ nest with a stick, and the same holds true for saying disobliging things about Elon Musk. His swarm of free-speech-loving insects do their utmost to sting you into pained silence.

Within minutes of writing last week’s column about why it might be time for decent people to think about leaving Twitter/X, the swarm attacked. I was a commie mouthpiece from a country which was “in the piss**”. An anonymous user (they mostly are) told me I was “screaming like a feminist at a free-tampons rally” with a “micro-penis anxiety”. At least that was the translation: it may have been worse in the original Lithuanian.

“How gay,” scribbled someone whose profile showed him puffing on a large cigar (no micro-penis anxiety there!). “So freaking faggoty.” Another sneered: “This is a scary place for pussies like you.” I was a “sh**lib” throwing “bit**tantrums”. Among the other explanations for why I must disapprove of Musk was that I was loser, a Jew, a purveyor of drivel, a Hampstead elitist, a typical leftie and/or subhuman filth.

My favourite was from someone – a big fan of Tommy Robinson, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, to judge by his timeline – who went to the trouble of sending me a private message which advised me: “Get your testosterone checked, it seems low. Not kidding.”

So there we have it: question Musk and his anything-goes approach to speech and it follows that you must be a communist at best, and an effeminate sexual inadequate at worst.

On top of all that, a man who makes his living writing for the Telegraph accused me of wanting to create an alternative “smug lefty utopia”, and I wondered how a Telegraph journalist could so spectacularly have missed the point, along with