In Southport, in the north-west of England, eight minors and two adults who were at a club for a music and dance activity were attacked by a 17-year-old teenager with a knife, resulting in three girls aged 6, 7 and 9 being killed and the others seriously injured. From the moment the terrible crime became known, social networks – maliciously – dedicated themselves to spreading false information, claiming that the suspect was a Muslim refugee who arrived in the country illegally on a boat.
Violent riots by anti-immigrant groups in the United Kingdom immediately broke out, and since British law does not allow the identity of minors under 18 to be revealed, the disinformation echoed among the hordes of protesters who did not calm down even when the judge made the name public to neutralize the effects of the disinformation. It was Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, a British man born in Cardiff, Wales, to Rwandan parents.
The violence spread to major cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bolton and London, where anti-immigrant protesters not only continued to chant “Enough is enough – Stop the boats” banners, but also attacked mosques and several hotels in northern towns housing hundreds of asylum seekers, who, in the midst of terror, reinforced the doors of their rooms with refrigerators and furniture before being transferred.
Patriotic Alternative, the Defence League and other extremist organisations, as well as anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant movements, shared photos of the rampaging horde (many with Nazi tattoos). Counter-marches in support of refugees took place in several cities in defence of diversity, around 2,000 people in Bristol prevented a group of extremists from attacking the offices of refugee lawyers, and in Newcastle around 1,000 protesters, most of them Muslim, stood outside a migration services centre that had been targeted by the far right.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer was quick to point out that this was not a protest that had gotten out of hand: “This is a group of individuals who are absolutely determined to commit violence” and that is why he has formed an “active force” of special agents to counter it. This is how the immediate identification of those involved in the incident and those who foment violence online is taking place.
More than 500 people are being prosecuted and sentenced by the courts with “substantial sentences”. This decisive and rapid response by the British criminal justice system was praised by Starmer, who considered it “a powerful message to anyone involved, whether directly or online”.
British Conservatives David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, in their determined bid for Brexit, with the intention of recovering the votes of the far right, claimed that migrants would decrease significantly, although the Office of Statistics (ONS) indicated in 2023 that net migration – people arriving minus those leaving – in 2022 reached 606,000 individuals; that is, 164,000 more than in 2021 and practically triple the net migration of 2019.
So it seems that the answers that the British are looking for are not available to malicious politicians and influencers.
