Asad Mirza
RECENT riots in the United Kingdom have made one thing clear: the far-right is on the ascendancy in Europe and elsewhere, including India. Further, the increasingly powerful social media is found to be celebrating the far-right’s vilification campaign, making it a fit case to rein in its negative use.
The riots across several British towns and cities following the killing of three children, Alice Aguiar (9), Bebe King (6) and Elsie Stancombe (7) and injuries to several others in the knife attack in Southport on July 29, make one wonder how such incidents were allowed to happen in a country known for transforming its image as a multicultural and assimilating entity.
Four factors can broadly be identified for this un-English behaviour. Firstly, the spread of the rising right and far-right elements in the political discourse; secondly, an increase in Islamophobia; thirdly, the increasing rate of unemployment due to Brexit and lastly the increasing menace of social media’s influence in today’s modern world.
The first three factors are changeable and interlinked in a political system, and so far, they have been described as the main reason for incidents like this and the Leicester riots in 2022 or 2011. But it is the last factor which has ostensibly added fuel to the fire for such unruly behaviours, not just in Britain, the United States, and France and even in India.
Rising Islamophobia
In a statement, Yasmine Ahmed, Director of Human Rights Watch in Britain, said that it is understandable many people in the country are angry and frustrated that their living standards continue to decline and that they feel neglected or forgotten as local facilities close, benefits are cut, and funding to services is slashed. This disillusionment is being exploited by often racist extremists, who pretend there are simple “answers” to complex problems.
She further said that politicians like Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage, and their dangerous anti-migrant and Islamophobic rhetoric, undoubtedly share some responsibility for laying the groundwork for the violence which recently unfolded on Britain’s streets, and indeed Farage is accused of stoking the conspiracy theories that fuelled this outbreak of violence. The new Labour government inherits a country divided, in which the far-right is a real and present danger. But to focus solely on the violent disorder is to treat the symptom of a much broader problem. To tackle the threat posed by the far-right, the government needs to also begin to address the many and varied structural issues, including rising inequality and poverty, that are ripe for cynical exploitation to push a xenophobic agenda.
An article published in The Politico magazine, titled The Mainstreaming of Islamophobia in the UK, quoting a Guardian’s 2019 report by the anti-racist group Hope not Hate, says that “more than a third of people in the UK believe that Islam is a threat to the British way of life.” Nearly a third of the public (32 percent) subscribes to anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, including claims of “No-Go zones,” which nearly half of Conservative voters (47 percent) believe are true. And the report also argued that anti-Muslim prejudice was a key driver in the growth of the far-right.
The Politico report further said that the riots in Southport weren’t just caused by online misinformation campaigns, they were also fuelled by the widespread prevalence of Islamophobia in mainstream society. And, Islamophobia has primarily skyrocketed as a result of decades of negative media stories and harmful government policies (i.e. PREVENT) that framed British Muslims as prone to “extremism.”
Role of Misinformation
Moreover, disinformation and, possibly, misinformation that an undocumented Muslim migrant was behind the attacks spread quickly on social media, and this is an area where social media played a mischievous role. The main suspect in the case was neither a Muslim nor an asylum-seeker but 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, born in the UK to Rwandan parents who arrived in the country in 2002.
Following the Southport murders, rioters attacked a mosque in the town while people were inside. The riots also spread to other areas in England, including Liverpool, London, Middlesbrough, as well as in Northern Ireland.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response thus far has emphasised that his government is strong on law-and-order matters. The prime minister, a former public prosecutor, has honed a centrist image, and his Labour Party campaign had promised that it would “return law and order to our streets.”
The Musk Factor
The role of disinformation and misinformation, and specifically social media site X, were central to the unfolding of events in the UK. X owner Elon Musk also directly waded into the conflict – even as he was being challenged on the other side of the Atlantic on X’s Grok AI chatbot providing false information on the US presidential election process.
“Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?” Musk said on X, in response to a tweet by Starmer that said the UK government would not tolerate attacks on mosques or Muslim communities.
On August 4, Musk responded to a video of fireworks being set off by rioters, saying “Civil war is inevitable.” He tweeted ‘#TwoTierKier’ on August 6 in the context of the Birmingham pub attack.
An article in the Northeastern Global News quoted Hossein Dabbagh, assistant professor in applied ethics at Northeastern University, as saying that far-right groups have used what happened in Southport “to push their agendas” and “tap into broader societal anxieties about crime, immigration and national identity.” Dabbagh explained that the destructive group behaviour seen during the recent protests and the subsequent rioting can best be described as a form of “mob mentality” or “deindividuation.”
Laura Edelson, assistant professor and misinformation expert at Northeastern, says British media laws appear lacking in their ability to counter misinformation in a social media age in which “everyone is now a journalist.”
In the coming days, the UK government will seek to step up its response to online disinformation – which is not only a growing problem but also one that evolves constantly. In addition to PM Starmer’s assurance that those responsible online would be held to account, the UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle met with X, Meta, Google and TikTok officials “to make clear their responsibility to continue to work with us to stop the spread of hateful misinformation and incitement.” Minister Kyle said in a statement.
There are some signs of pushback. In the European Union, officials are looking to hold social media companies accountable for spreading misinformation under the new Digital Services Act. In the UK, the Online Safety Act could take effect as soon as this year, requiring, among other things, social media platforms to remove illegal content.
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Asad Mirza is a New Delhi-based senior commentator on international and strategic affairs and a media consultant. Views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily concur with them.
