HHow did we get from the brutal murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift dance class to a drunken far-right mob rioting in the streets of Southport? The senseless murder of children naturally evokes a very special kind of disgust and sadness, but that was not what was seen last night near a Southport mosque amid flying bricks, burning cars and anti-Muslim slogans.
Be careful with Twitter (now renamed X). Twitter has always had its problems, but under Elon Musk’s watch it has become a haven for disinformation and far-right talking points. The social media platform has spread unverified and in fact false claims, such as that the suspect is a Muslim asylum seeker who arrived by boat. In fact, the suspect is a Cardiff-born Briton, who has said:No known connection to IslamAccording to the BBC, police are increasingly focusing their investigations on the mental health of suspects.
But the toxicity of social media is only one factor here. Harmful rumors are only effective if there is a receptive audience. First of all, we must remember that a homegrown far-right has existed in these islands for decades. In the 1930s, its main standard-bearers were Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, from the 1970s onwards John Tyndall and the National Front, and in the 2000s the British National Party (BNP). Today, it is most visible to Tommy Robinson, a thug convicted of fraud, but he left the English Defence League more than a decade ago and it has since collapsed. The current far-right is fragmented and lacks a coherent organisation, but it can attract a wide following and makes adept use of social media and messaging apps for coordination.
Importantly, there is also a much broader right-wing populist ecosystem now in place that was previously absent, ranging from some Conservative politicians to Nigel Farage’s Reform Britain Party. Yesterday Mr Farage used X to say:The truth is hidden In this case, he responded with “a question from us” and made a sneaky attempt at plausible deniability by stating he did not know the answer. Now he has “Congressman” added to his name, paying homage to this dangerous rhetoric.
The very fact that there was an audience willing to believe the suspect was Muslim is telling. In the era of the “war on terror”, Islamophobia became widespread and a respectable prejudice: by the late 2010s, more than a third of Britons – around 20 million adults – believed that Islam was “a threat to the British way of life”.
Today’s far-right is seized by this widespread mainstream prejudice. It has merged with a broader anti-immigrant and anti-refugee fervor stoked by right-wing media and politicians. Having destroyed Britain’s social fabric with disastrous economic policies, the Conservative government has sought to deflect and redirect people’s frustrations onto others. Interestingly, opinion polls have shown a marked shift across the board. Softening public attitudes towards immigrantsBut not for the hardcore, which is why the “Stop the Boats” campaign was so dangerous: it drove them into a frenzy. Suella Braverman described it as “an invasion of the South Coast.” The boats came anyway. It fueled a mindset of revenge and conspiracy theories, and a sense that unpatriotic elites were putting the country at risk.
There seem to be strong parallels between what happened in Southport and the Dublin riots last November, which followed another knife attack on a child. But the British far right is bigger, longer-standing and has more mainstream support. A Labour government, while not good enough for those of us with a progressive bent, will likely further infuriate right-wing conspiracy theorists. Indeed, what happened in Southport may just be a harbinger of darker things to come.
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Owen Jones is a columnist for the Guardian.
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