Far-right demonstrations turned violent for a second night across England Wednesday, in the wake of this week\u2019s mass stabbing in Southport \u2013 the worst attack on children in the country in recent history. <\/p>\n
While a community continues to grieve the murder of three young girls, far-right agitators have mobilized around online misinformation and hateful, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim narratives \u2013 fueling disorder in London, Manchester and the northeastern town of Hartlepool. <\/p>\n
Chaotic scenes unfolded in the capital on Wednesday night, with protesters from the \u201cEnough is Enough\u201d demonstration throwing bottles and cans at police, and hurling flares toward the gates of Downing Street while chanting far-right, anti-Islam slogans, including, \u201cWe want our country back.\u201d <\/p>\n
In Manchester, demonstrators wearing balaclavas gathered outside a hotel that houses asylum seekers, and in Hartlepool, police cars were set ablaze by a mob who carried sticks and pelted officers with objects. <\/p>\n
More than 100 people in London were arrested for \u201cviolent disorder\u201d and an \u201cassault on an emergency worker,\u201d according to the city\u2019s Metropolitan Police. There were two arrests in Manchester, and eight in Hartlepool, according to police there. <\/p>\n
The violence follows Tuesday\u2019s night of unrest in the northwest English town of Southport, where a group of far-right protesters hurled bricks at a mosque, set cars and police vehicles on fire and clashed with police barely an hour after a peaceful vigil for Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7) and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (9) was held across town. <\/p>\n
Eight other children suffered stab wounds in the attack and five of them are in critical condition. Two adults also remain in critical condition after being injured in the attack, police said. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the scenes, saying the protesters \u201chijacked\u201d the community\u2019s grief. <\/p>\n
Met police superintendent Neil Holyoak said that while \u201cit is understandable the public have strong feelings\u201d about the Southport stabbings, \u201cthe subsequent violent, unlawful disorder that unfolded was completely unacceptable and driven by misinformation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Shortly after Monday\u2019s attack, far-right groups began to circulate a false name <\/strong>for the alleged attacker across social media, and falsely claimed that he was an asylum seeker. <\/p>\n The suspect is a 17-year-old from Banks, Lancashire. He was born in Cardiff, Wales, according to police. <\/p>\n Axel Rudakubana, who was charged with three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder, was named on Thursday after a judge lifted reporting restrictions. <\/p>\n Less than 24 hours after the attack, however, before the suspect\u2019s name had been released, the false name had already received over 30,000 mentions from more than 18,000 unique accounts on X alone \u2013 and was amplified by prominent far-right leaders, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). <\/p>\n That false name had been also recommended to users through X\u2019s algorithm, and was trending as a top recommended search result for users under the \u201cWhat\u2019s happening\u201d sidebar. <\/p>\n \u201cWhite nationalists will seize on any opportunity to spread misinformation about Muslims, about anyone who\u2019s not White. So they were immediately on it \u2013 and were happy to spread basically whatever would confirm their presuppositions about who had done it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Whether it was a malicious actor, or whether it was someone who was looking for \u201cclicks,\u201d is unclear, Squirrell added. \u201cBut we do know that the name that they gave out was made up\u2026 and that all the details are completely made up.\u201d <\/p>\n Squirrell pointed to the fact that the viral posts about the alleged attacker said that he was on a watch list for MI6, Britain\u2019s Secret Intelligence Service. However, MI5 \u2013 MI6\u2019s internal counterpart \u2013 is the organization responsible for fighting domestic terrorism. \u201cThey gave out details that were basically designed to pick up the attention of the far-right, and also for anyone who is concerned about migration,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Algorithms tend to favor emotive, sensationalist, outrageous, engaging content \u2013 because they are based on engagement. <\/p>\n \u201cThings that people on the far-right \u2013 or people who are interested in peddling misinformation as a way of getting engagement \u2013 tend to post <\/strong>things that will appeal to the algorithm,\u201d Squirrell said. He added that, while the algorithm played a part, there was also a \u201chuge amount of organizing happening\u201d in a variety of different places that are not algorithmically oriented \u2013 for example in far-right groups on the instant-messaging platform Telegram. <\/p>\n Such Telegram groups have been instrumental in organizing these demonstrations. <\/p>\n Hope Not Hate, a UK advocacy group that campaigns against racism and fascism, identified one of the first Telegram groups that appeared on the encrypted social media network just hours after the Southport stabbings. <\/p>\n Like what was being shared on X and other platforms, the Telegram group \u201cSouthport Wake Up,\u201d also posted false information about the alleged suspect. Hours after the attack, the group\u2019s creator sent out the details for the first protest: Meet near a Southport mosque on Tuesday. <\/p>\n It was there that the violence began. <\/p>\n The \u201cSouthport Wake Up\u201d group is still active, and on Thursday, posted calls for similar disruptions at Muslim centers in other cities across England. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer was set to meet with senior police leaders in London on Thursday. <\/p>\n In a statement, Downing Street said: \u201cWhile the right to peaceful protest must be protected at all costs, he will be clear that criminals who exploit that right in order to sow hatred and carry out violent acts will face the full force of the law.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Far-right demonstrations turned violent for a second night across England Wednesday, in the wake of this week\u2019s mass stabbing in Southport \u2013 the worst attack on children in the country in recent history. While a community continues to grieve the murder of three young girls, far-right agitators have mobilized around online misinformation and hateful, anti-migrant <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}