A post on X claiming the boy the Adolescence protagonist is based on was black, not white, went viral and was commented on by Musk.
Kemi Badenoch has made unfounded comments claiming that the protagonist of Netflix show Adolescence was “race swapped”.
Jack Thorne, the writer and co-creator of the series, has already dismissed claims that the show, which follows a teenage boy who is accused of killing a girl from his school and examines incel (involuntary celibate) culture, changed the race of the lead character.
Despite this, the Tory leader, who said she hasn’t seen the series, said “It’s based on a real story, but my understanding is that the boy who committed that crime was not white.”
She also told LBC the story had been “fundamentally changed”.
Badenoch’s unfounded claims echo comments made online by right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong and Elon Musk.
In a post on X, Miles Cheong said: “Netflix has a show called Adolescence that’s about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer.”
“So guess what. They race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement.”
He added: “Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.”
Musk reacted to Miles-Cheong’s post by commenting, “Wow”.
In an interview on the News Agents podcast, Thorne said that “There is no part of this [Adolescence] that’s based on a true story, not one single part.”
Responding to the idea that the show’s protagonist should have been black, he said: “It’s absurd to say that [knife crime] is only committed by Black boys. […] It’s not true. “
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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