People gathering against an an anti-immigration protest in London. —Reuters
IT was the worst targeted attack on children in Britain for nearly three decades. A 17-year-old ran amok with a knife at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in northwest England on July 29, leaving three little girls dead and five more seriously wounded.
After the suspect was swiftly arrested, Southport’s residents expected to mourn in peace. Instead they had to reckon with the power of inflammatory social media. Far-right thugs communicating on the “Wild West Web” soon turned their small-town tragedy into a national trauma.
There is always a hooligan element in any free society, and Britain has more than its fair share. What is new is the part played by the internet in firing up and connecting these thugs. The Silicon Valley oligarchs whose social media platforms amplify conspiracy theories and encourage extremism, under the cover of freedom of speech, rarely have to answer for what they facilitate.
On social media, the Southport suspect was falsely claimed to be “Ali Al-Shakati,” a Muslim who had allegedly been smuggled into Britain in a small boat. The wholly fictitious Al-Shakati was also said to be on an “MI6” watch list – and the police were alleged to be suppressing the story due to ethnic minority sensitivities. “Muslim! Illegal immigrant! Terrorist!” As intended, this was a witch’s brew of disinformation.
When Prime Minister Keir Starmer came to lay flowers at the scene of the attack, he was greeted by an angry shout from the crowd: “Get the truth out.” By nightfall, racist hooligans came to attack worshippers at a local mosque and lob bricks at the police who protected them. More than 50 officers were injured. Copycat violence followed in the town of Hartlepool and in the capital. The police blamed the far-right English Defence League (EDL), founded by persistent troublemaker Tommy Robinson.
Soon it was revealed that the accused was, in fact, UK-born, the son of Rwandan refugees who had fled genocide in their home country in 1994. He was a former church choir boy too. Once a conspiracy theory has taken flight, however, it’s hard to shoot it down. Judge Andrew Menary relaxed the stiff rules observed by traditional media from naming arrested juveniles and revealed the suspect’s identity as Axel Rudakubana. Too late.
The upsurge in far-right rioting, fortunately, can be met by the PM’s strengths. Starmer is a former Crown Prosecutor once responsible for bringing to book Northern Ireland’s terrorists. In 2011, when a wave of looting spread from the capital to the provinces, Starmer set up 24-hour courts to try thousands of malefactors arrested by the police.
The PM announced a new violent disorder unit to track down thugs who “move from community to community” across England. Those on the far-right with criminal convictions would have their movements restricted under new behaviour orders, like any soccer hooligan.
Last Saturday, the EDL occupied Trafalgar Square in London, following a stabbing attack by a real Muslim terrorist on a uniformed army officer last month. There were more than 100 arrests. The far right has found a cause in the left-wing pro-Palestine protests that have brought the capital to a standstill week after week.
This could be a long, hot summer of confrontation in the UK unless the authorities are decisive. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, is now mulling an outright ban on the EDL. Yet her predecessors have always hesitated to take this step because the legal definition of terrorism is rightly drawn tightly.
Then, on Wednesday, after days of violence spurred by disinformation around a deadly stabbing attack, police had braced for another night of unrest.
Far-right groups on social media had called for protests to target visa processing centres and immigration lawyers’ offices at more than 100 sites around UK. Instead, tens of thousands of anti-racism protesters filled the streets in cities across the country to prevent them being targeted by the far right, chanting, “There are many, many more of us than you."
Of course, the police must also be seen to be even-handed when left-wing demonstrators breach the peace.
Crucially, the authorities need to be more forthcoming with information – malcontents are only too happy to fill news vacuums.
Granted, the “Wild West Web” of the internet is hard to police. Andrew Tate, a misogynist social media influencer with a following in the millions, quickly spread the allegation that an illegal immigrant had stabbed “6 little girls,” adding “Wake up.” Others followed his lead from outside the UK’s jurisdiction.
Investigations by the organisation Tech Against Terrorism and the Daily Mail newspaper suggest that a fake news website, Channel 3 Now, which began life as a Russian YouTube channel, had also been instrumental in spreading misinformation about the Southport attack. Russia Today, Vladimir Putin’s state broadcaster, repeated the claims.
Time to deploy the state’s new National Security and Online Safety Acts against hostile foreign disinformation?
Jonathan Hall, the government’s legal advisor on terrorism, says that “legislation requiring much greater transparency from platforms” is needed to force the net giants to be more vigilant. That said, the Online Safety Act has already made it a criminal offense to spread misinformation causing “non trivial psychological or physical harm.”
And action has been taken against some of the culprits: Jordan Parlour, 28, has been charged for posting Facebook messages advocating an attack on a Leeds hotel housing asylum seekers and using threatening words or behaviour to stir up racial hatred, but it's not believed he attended the scene himself.
In a separate case, officers from Cheshire arrested a 32-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman on suspicion of racially aggravated harassment with intent to cause fear and violence on Snapchat.
However, the Act doesn’t legislate for the specific removal of content.
In recent months, social media platforms have taken a more permissive stand on hate speech.
Twitter/X under Elon Musk readmitted Robinson after his ban under the previous owners. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has cut back its monitoring teams. But although Starmer and Cooper have spoken about the platforms taking more responsibility for the inflammatory content they host, so far it has just been talk. Politicians seem to go weak at the knees when they face the tech titans – they mustn’t believe the hype.
Southport poses a test for the Tory opposition, too. Hours before the hooligans took to the streets, Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing populist Reform party and a newly elected MP, posted a video on X asking why the murders were not being treated as “terror-related.”
Was the “truth” about the suspect’s identity being withheld, he teased? On the BBC the following morning, Brendan Cox (husband of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox) riposted that Farage’s provocative remarks proved he was little more than “Tommy Robinson in a suit.”
Tory MPs flirting with the idea of “uniting the right” by merging their defeated party with Reform might care to think again. Farage looks like the affable fellow in the pub who stands his round, but sometimes the mask slips. — Bloomberg
