The last few days have seen the UK engulfed in a series of violent attacks by far-right, anti- immigrant agitators.
Angry mobs rioted in the coastal city of Plymouth injuring police officers.
Crowds of people set fire to hotels which were home to asylum seekers in two cities, with people trapped inside facing horror. The protestors set fire to two Holiday Inn hotels in Rotherham, northern England, and in Tamworth, in the Midlands in central England.
Violence also took place in Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent and across towns in the Midlands and the north.
Rioters didn’t just stop there but also went after the police in other cities, committing acts of vandalism in public areas and smashing vehicles. They also threw things at police officers.
So far 100 people have been charged for the unrest and 370 people have been arrested.
Newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for an emergency meeting of national agencies and branches of government to discuss a plan of action.
“This is not protest. It is organized, violent thuggery and it has no place on our streets or online,” he said.
The protests took place over the weekend and started on Friday. A lot of them were anti-immigration marches which were organized on social media using X, WhatsApp and Telegram.
The Home Office said that it would be offering mosques in the United Kingdom greater protection with new emergency security.
What caused it?
The riots started due to anti-immigrant misinformation causing outrage after three children were stabbed to death in Southport, northern England.
Rumours started that the incident was caused by an immigrant, and this was used to spark anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant protests. According to the police, the suspect was, in fact, born in Cardiff, Wales, and lived in a Lancashire village north of Southport. He is 17 years old and his parents are from Rwanda.
Misogynist influencer Andrew Tate posted a video on X falsely saying that the stabbings were caused by an “undocumented migrant” who arrived in the UK “on a boat”. That video has been watched more than 15 million times.
Andrew Tate speaks on the stabbing in Southport today 💔 pic.twitter.com/DpBLwMfGfu
— Tate News (@TateNews_) July 29, 2024
Social media culprit
A lot of the locations and times of the riot were coordinated over social media, and people are not happy about the fact that it was used to coordinate violence.
Elon Musk’s X platform has come under the most fire as he allowed far-right figures like Tommy Robinson on the service. Robinson published a litany of posts encouraging the protests while criticizing violent attacks.
Joe Mulhall, who is director of research at Hope Not Hate, a UK based anti-racism, anti fascism charity, told CNN that the return of Robinson and other figures to X has “resulted in far-right extremists once again being able to reach millions of people with their dangerous and divisive propaganda”.
Musk himself wrote on X during the weekend saying that “civil war is inevitable”, blaming the riots on mass migration and open borders.
