Disinformation that spread widely following a horrific attack on children sparked far-right riots in the UK. Violence has now subsided and rioters are being brought to justice, but the racism and Islamophobia expressed in the UK and many global north countries hasn’t gone away. Social media companies are complicit in the spread of disinformation and hate speech. Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, is particularly culpable, having posted and boosted content supportive of far-right rioters. It’s time social media companies got serious about tackling abusive and violent content. It’s also vital that the UK government doesn’t respond by increasing policing and surveillance powers, which will inevitably be used against peaceful protesters.

It started with an act of violence beyond comprehension. On 29 July, a knife-wielding man attacked a children’s dance class in the northern English seaside town of Southport. Three children died: six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva. Ten more were injured. The suspect is awaiting trial.

Such incidents are thankfully rare in the UK, and the killings stunned the community and the country. But the tragedy and its mourning were eclipsed by a response that quickly lost touch with the fact that three young lives had been tragically cut short: a reaction not of grief but of hate.

Disinformation quickly circulated suggesting the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker who’d arrived in Britain illegally by boat. The false claims were seen by millions on Facebook, Telegram and Twitter, spread by far-right influencers, racist hate groups and a self-styled news site alleged to have Russian links. The day after the attack, what was supposed to be a vigil for the victims turned into a violent protest outside a mosque in Southport, with people hurling bricks at police officers.

Even after it became clear the suspect was born in the UK to parents who’d migrated from Rwanda and had no known connection to Islam, chaos spread to numerous UK towns and cities. There were many violent protests on 3 August, some met with counter-protests.

The violence was explicitly racist and Islamophobic, with several attacks on mosques, migrant-owned businesses and hotels allegedly housing asylum seekers, and physical violence against non-white people. This was accompanied by straightforward criminality such as looting of shops. Some of it seemed spontaneous, but there was also evidence of planning by far-right groups, mainly coordinated through Telegram.

There were also some violent confrontations between protesters and counter-protesters, and some members of the UK’s minorities formed self-defence groups that also used violence.

By 7 August, momentum had dissipated. By then, many people had been arrested and those who’d pled guilty had already been sentenced to prison. This likely had a deterrent effect. That night, few people turned up for anti-migrant protests. Instead, people gathered in anti-fascist demonstrations, some of which attracted tens of thousands. In Brighton, just eight anti-immigration protesters were overwhelmed by a crowd of some 2,000 people opposing them.

Shifting politics and economic exclusion

The riots came as a shock, but several contributing factors seem clear. A key part of the context is political polarisation, exposed and deepened by the 2016 Brexit referendum on leaving the European Union. White working-class people living in deprived areas played a pivotal role in the vote, following a campaign strongly framed around immigration. The referendum had the effect of legitimising antipathy towards migrants, Muslims and the UK’s ethnic minorities, empowering those who feel the rights of white people are being eroded. There’s a constituency of people who were emboldened by winning the Brexit referendum, the UK’s most consequential vote in at least a generation, but still feel unheard by mainstream politics.

In party politics, their figurehead is Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, a career right-wing populist and seasoned media performer. He’s stayed in the spotlight through a succession of parties formed around his personality, most recently Reform UK. His views, and those of others like him, are constantly promoted by the UK’s slate of established right-wing newspapers and newer media platforms, notably GB News, which is modelled on the USA’s strongly biased Fox News.

In response to the threat from its right, the Conservative Party, historically the dominant political force, took a right-wing populist turn, ramping up anti-migrant rhetoric. Its 2019 election success suggested a political realignment: after a series of tight elections, it took numerous seats with high concentrations of working-class voters who’d historically backed the centre-left Labour Party.

Labour’s landslide victory in July may have suggested a return to the old pattern. It won back many of the seats it had lost in 2019. But its support was exaggerated by the disproportionate workings of an archaic electoral system, and its win was based less on enthusiasm for Labour than on an emphatic rejection of the Conservatives, fuelled by revelations of the government’s pandemic rule-breaking and the economically disastrous premiership of Liz Truss. Farage’s Reform finished third, with 14.3 per cent of the vote, performing best in the constituencies that most strongly backed Brexit. Some of those involved in the riots simply seem unable to accept that the UK now has a centre-left government.

Both major parties have adopted anti-migrant language and policies, and anti-migrant sentiment has become normalised, although at least the new government quickly dropped its predecessor’s shameful plan to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda. The previous government’s slogan, ‘stop the boats’, was repeated by rioters, showing a direct link between political rhetoric and violent disorder.

Economics go hand in hand with politics. The Conservative-led government that came to power in 2010 made deep public spending cuts. Municipal-level budgets were particularly hit: some local councils – which deliver everyday public services such as education, social care and public transport – have seen their real-terms spending halved, including those in highly deprived areas. Public spaces where people from different communities might connect haven’t been maintained.

There’s a widespread sense that nothing works anymore. Many people live hand to mouth, with wages barely covering the essentials. In the past year, over three million people had to use a food bank. In these conditions it’s easy for the idea to take hold among some white working-class people that the government is ignoring their needs and privileging migrants. This is what they’re constantly hearing on social media.

The power of disinformation

The disinformation that sparked the violence seems to have originated on Twitter, from someone who made a name for themselves as an anti-lockdown campaigner and climate denier; the pandemic acted as an accelerator and recruiter for conspiracy theories, and people who believe one are likely to believe more. Subsequent posts speculating that the Southport attacker was a foreigner, migrant, Muslim or refugee were viewed a staggering 27 million times, boosted by key far-right figures with huge followings, including right-wing commentator Darren Grimes, misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and far-right figurehead Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson.

Robinson owes his Twitter presence to Elon Musk. He was permanently banned in 2018 for violating rules against ‘hateful conduct’, but was reinstated shortly after Musk bought the company in 2023. He currently has close to a million followers. Robinson was one of many banned for far-right hate speech and disinformation who Musk has allowed back. And they can make a good living out of spreading hate: under Musk’s new rules, users who’ve paid for a blue tick get a share of the money from ads that appear under their posts. Robinson has an estimated net worth of at least US$1.29 million.

Robinson has a string of criminal convictions and has served four prison sentences. He co-founded the English Defence League, a far-right Islamophobic movement that no longer exists but remains a potent brand. Robinson is a legend for many on the far right; anti-migrant protesters chanted his name.

Just days before the attack in Southport, on 27 July, Robinson led the UK’s largest far-right protest in years, attracting up to 30,000 people in London. During the protest, Robinson thanked Musk for reinstating his Twitter account. He then fled the UK for Cyprus to avoid another court hearing, and is currently subject to an arrest warrant.

While Robinson helped inflame the riots, Farage tried to distance himself from them, falling uncharacteristically silent on social media. But he’d played his part by posting a video questioning whether the authorities were telling the truth about the Southport attack. He continues to claim that while violence is wrong, those who rioted were expressing their legitimate fears about migration.

Mainstream Islamophobia

The 27 July rally made clear that while racism and Islamophobia were triggered by the Southport attack, they pre-existed it. One of the novel features of that protest was an emphasis on Christianity; this hadn’t previously played a major role in the British far right and suggests some convergence with US far-right thought, as well as opportunism to enable attacks on Islam.

Islamophobia has become more mainstream in the UK. Disinformation routinely blames Muslims for crimes. A 2019 report found that over a third of people believe Islam threatens the British way of life and almost the same proportion support the conspiracy theory that there are ‘no go areas’ in the UK where sharia law applies and it’s not safe for non-Muslims to enter.

It appears at least some of this sentiment is being stoked deliberately. In the months leading up to the riots there was a sustained anti-Muslim ad campaign across multiple social media channels in several countries, including the UK. Social media companies benefited financially from paid ads that promoted the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory – which claims Muslims will replace the majority population. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent – and so far no one knows who was behind the ads.

The result of all the online hate and disinformation is that Muslims are disproportionately targeted in hate crimes: six per cent of people identified as Muslim in the UK’s most recent census, but they’re the victims of over 40 per cent of recorded religious hate crimes.

Musk versus the UK

While far-right supporters find it hard to justify the violence – opinion polls show people are overwhelmingly against it – they’re trying to focus anger on the application of laws on online offences. Most of those who’ve appeared in court have been charged with violent disorder, but some have been prosecuted for their online activity. Incitement to hatred on the grounds of race and religion has been a crime in the UK since 1986, under the Public Order Act passed by a Conservative government. Among those recently jailed is a social media user who called for an attack on a hotel housing asylum seekers.

Social media companies should make it harder for the views of a vocal extremist minority to dominate debates, distort discourse and drown out more reasonable voices.

For some, violence is indefensible, but urging it is free speech. That seems to be the view of Musk, who claims to be a free speech absolutist. As well as inviting back numerous banned users, Musk has sacked moderators and disbanded Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, which advised on preventing hate speech and other abusive content.

From afar, Musk has repeatedly posted or boosted content that takes the far right’s side over the UK riots. With no particular knowledge of the UK’s criminal justice system, he’s launched a barrage of online attacks on the government. He has 194.6 million followers, so anything he posts or reposts gets a huge boost in views.

He posted that ‘civil war is inevitable’ in the UK and shared disinformation posted by the leader of Britain First, a far-right hate group, that rioters were being sent to an internment camp in the far-off Falkland Islands. This received almost two million views in the 30 minutes before he deleted it, without apology.

Since people started being sent to jail, Musk has backed the far-right claim that the UK’s criminal justice system is treating people associated with the riots far more harshly than it treats others, particularly Muslims, and is protecting Muslims and other UK minorities far more than white people. People on the right call this ‘two-tier policing’ and Musk has repeatedly branded Prime Minister Keir Starmer as ‘two-tier Keir’.

The sentences currently being handed out don’t seem dissimilar to those applied when people rioted in 2011 following the police killing of a Black man, Mark Duggan. Muslim counter-protesters are among those currently being charged and convicted.

Two-tier policing in the UK is in the opposite direction. Several of the UK’s police forces have been judged to be institutionally racist. Black men are seven times more likely to die in police restraint than white men. Policing of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and recent protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza has been criticised as heavy handed. Climate campaigners have also been handed heavy sentences for peaceful protests. Recently, Just Stop Oil activists received sentences of four to five years just for planning a roadblock protest.

Looking ahead

What happens next matters beyond the UK. Just weeks after a free and fair election delivered a change of government, Musk has sided with those using violence and disinformation to contest its legitimacy. An even more consequential election will take place in the USA this November, with Donald Trump – having baselessly undermined the election he lost and inspired violent sedition – seeking a return, with Musk’s support. Recent research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US elections have been viewed almost 1.2 billion times on Twitter.

And Twitter is by no means the only problem. It offers the most visible example, but much behind-the-scenes mobilisation of the UK riots happened on private Facebook groups and Telegram channels. The UK’s far right has long been disparate and disunified, but social media is offering it a new way to coalesce, often facilitated by AI-generated iconography and memes. It no longer needs a formal organisation, but it does need figureheads, influencers and boosters – which is why social media companies have a particular responsibility, in the UK and wherever far-right forces are mobilising.

Social media companies shouldn’t be expected to stifle free speech. But they should make it harder for the views of a vocal extremist minority to dominate debates, distort discourse and drown out more reasonable voices. They can make choices about how their algorithms boost sensationalist content that can skew people’s perceptions, and how they may be minimising complexity and nuance. They must also accept that people have a right to call for advertisers to stop spending money on social media platforms that promote hate.

Social media companies can’t be left to decide what is acceptable speech, but neither can governments. It’s vital for civil society to be involved in striking the right balances. This is precisely what Musk dispensed with when he axed Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council. There’s also need for much more work to develop information literacy among social media users so they’re equipped with the tools to spot and report disinformation rather than believe and boost it.

For the UK, it’s vital that justice is not only done, but seen to be done, and that exemplary standards are followed in the arrest, trial and sentencing of those involved in the riots. There must be nothing to lend legitimacy to claims that rioters are being treated unfairly. There must also be a proper debate about any changes to policing being considered in response to the riots, such as plans to expand the use of facial recognition technologies, which could curtail civil liberties and disproportionately affect minorities. Any new measures introduced are sure to be used against protests for climate action and racial justice.

These particular riots may be over, but the racism and Islamophobia that’s been voiced and acted upon are very much alive, in the UK and across the global north. There’s an urgent need for civil society to combat disinformation, bring communities together and separate legitimate economic and political grievances from hate. It’s a huge agenda, but if these challenges aren’t addressed, more violence is sure to follow.

OUR CALLS FOR ACTION

  • The UK government must consult with civil society before introducing any new policing measures in response to the riots.
  • Social media companies must work with civil society to improve their policies to combat disinformation and hate speech.
  • Civil society in global north countries must work collectively to tackle disinformation and hate speech and promote understanding between different communities.

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Cover illustration by CIVICUS