'Creep of politics to the right and social media has facilitated violence across Britain'

Algorithms are driving and amplifying hate online while lack of regulation is allowing misinformation to be spread

A newly married couple cross the road as PSNI officers line the streets ahead of two scheduled protests in Belfast city centre. Picture: Mark Marlow/PA Media Assignments/PA Wire

The stealthy but steady creep of politics to the right and social media platforms’ continued unaccountability facilitated the violence that flared across Britain this week, according to a professor of criminology.

Nicola Carr of Nottingham University said that the movement of politics to the right in Britain and the shift in public discourse smoothed the way for the mass riots and unrest.

“People have been emboldened by the move of a lot of political discourse to the right in the UK in recent years,” Prof Carr said.

“Things have been said that wouldn't have been tolerated a few years ago, and I think that has emboldened people to feel that this is almost acceptable.

“It’s almost acceptable to target people in this way.” 

The dehumanising language around asylum seekers in particular, with politicians repeatedly using phrases like ‘stop the boats’ and initiating the highly controversial and failed scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, has fed into this, she said.

As has the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.

Social media, and its continued lack of accountability for the hate and misinformation spread on its platforms, has been another fundamental element of this week’s violence and mayhem.

Algorithms are driving and amplifying hate online while the lack of regulation in that space is allowing misinformation to be spread and violence to be organised quickly on online platforms.

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Tánaiste Micheál Martin has specifically called out Elon Musk’s platform X in the wave of recent violence.

That violence grew from “mindless, ill-informed stuff” facilitated by social media companies and spread on their platforms, Mr Martin told Radio Kerry this week.

Governments must tackle social media giants, some of whom are not cooperating with democratically elected country leaders, he said.

And Taoiseach Simon Harris said that he would willingly meet with Mr Musk to discuss the problem.

Mr Musk faced criticism after he said that ‘civil war was inevitable’ when riots broke out in Britain after three young girls were fatally stabbed in Southport on July 29.

Misinformation quickly spread online that the teenager who allegedly murdered the three little girls, Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, was a Muslim asylum seeker. And this information is believed to have sparked the riots.

The violence that followed included a mob barricading asylum seekers — including children — into a hotel and trying to set fire to it, multiple racially motivated assaults, attacks on police, and damaging businesses owned by migrants.

People protest in Sunderland city centre following the stabbing attacks in Southport, in which three young children were killed. Picture: Scott Heppell/PA Wire

People are now able to organise riots, protests, and violence quickly online and the violence in Britain did seem organised, Prof Carr said.

And young people are being co-opted into this violence, she said.

 “I know from work I’ve done before around young people's involvement in some of the rioting that was in Belfast in years past, that was more linked to paramilitarism, but there's a similar element of young people being used now as well.

“It’s being used as a way of drumming up excitement and making them feel like it's something to be part of.

“There's definitely parallels between those days and young people being co-opted into these movements now.

“We really need to be clamping down on online platforms and social media companies ASAP.

“The fact that there can be incitement to riots, that riots can be organised very quickly, that places can be targeted and addresses can be given, you know ‘let's go to this hotel and let's do whatever’. 

"It's clearly through these platforms that this is being organised and it really needs to be gotten a grip of.

“Elon Musk has commented about civil war being inevitable in England.

“These individuals themselves having these huge platforms as political actors essentially is really dangerous.

“We see that with the American elections as well."

Musk and Farage’s comments about ‘two-tier policing' are also feeding into the wider and deepening undercurrent of racism in public discourse, she said.

Suggesting that the the recent violent riots were policed more robustly than Black Lives Matter protests "is, again, just feeding into this racism and this feeling of aggrievement amongst people and legitimising this kind of action".

And Lee Anderson, Farage’s fellow Reform MP, claiming that people have a legitimate reason to protest is also unhelpful, she said.

Leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage.

“We can talk about social issues, the impact of austerity and so forth, there is a broader canvas to all this. 

"But in this present moment I find those comments really, really unhelpful because it legitimises all of this. 

"And you can't legitimise in any way going out to barricade-in a hotel with asylum seekers, terrifying them inside and setting fire to it.” 

But the current political and social climate may also be facilitating a subtle loosening of the civil liberties and humanitarian protections liberal democracies fought so hard to secure.

In a bid to counter misinformation about the Southport stabber, a judge overturned the suspect’s right to anonymity as a minor. 

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana was 17 at the time of the attack but turned 18 days later on August 7.

“As a 17-year-old he was entitled to anonymity.

"But that's been lifted on the basis of addressing misinformation. So you can start to see slippages," Prof Carr said.

Farage, now an elected member of parliament, was accused of stoking the violence and unrest when he asked whether the "truth is being withheld from us" in a video posted on X and speculated that the suspect was known to security services and questioned why the crime was not being treated as terrorism-related.

Although the police released information that the suspect had been born in Cardiff, Wales, inaccurate posts on social media claimed he was an asylum seeker who had arrived recently from the Middle East on a "small boat".

This misinformation prompted rioters to converge on the streets of Southport, injuring more than 50 police officers as bricks were thrown at a mosque, cars were set on fire and a convenience store was damaged.

And that first night of violence sparked a wave of further violence and unrest across Britain and the North.

On Friday, Queens University Belfast remained closed as more protests were expected with a far-right rally scheduled for 5pm.

Many businesses also remained closed.

Racially motivated attacks and hate motivated assaults including on a boy, by mobs have been reported in Belfast in recent days.

Migrant-owned businesses have been targeted by rioters and children have reportedly been racially abused by adults in the North.

Police have been attacked and more than 20 people have been arrested.

The PSNI has released images of people they want to speak to in connection with the violence.

Assistant chief constable Davy Beck said the PSNI would relentlessly pursue the thugs behind the violence in Belfast.