How lies and disinformation about Southport knife attack suspect led to riots

[Pelican Press 0]

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How ***** and disinformation about Southport ****** ******* suspect led to riots

As families mourned

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******* in a ****** ******* at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in

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,

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broke out stoked by

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about the suspect’s identity.

Hours after police were called to the scene of a mass stabbing,

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, a riot outside a mosque in Southport led to 39 officers being

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, including 27 who needed hospital treatment.

Footage showed crowds of men – at least one identified by antifascists Red Flare as an alleged member of the

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Patriotic Alternative group – chanting and throwing bricks at riot police, who held shields to protect against incoming projectiles as a police van was set alight and other fires burned nearby.

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Protesters set ***** to rubbish on the streets in Southport (Getty Images)

The outpouring of rage in the Merseyside town came after disinformation about the attacker’s identity was amplified and seen by millions on

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.

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said on Monday night that a 17-year-old male from Banks in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff, had been arrested on suspicion of *******.

Despite this – and laws in the *** making it a ********* offence to identify a suspect who is a minor, at least until legal proceedings have completed – false claims began to circulate online purporting to name the suspect as “Ali Al-Shakati” and claiming he had arrived in the *** on a small boat in 2023.

One such source of this disinformation, which also falsely claimed the suspect was known to MI6, was an outlet calling itself Channel3 Now – whose post at 5:51pm on Monday featuring an article on the ******* racked up close to two million views on X, formerly

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, before being deleted.

According to journalist Katharine Denkinson, who concluded that the post was “racially motivated click-bait”, the website purports to be based in the ******* States, but has no named journalists and appears to have started out 12 years ago sharing Russian-language videos of men in cars before pivoting to US news five years ago.

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An ****** mob threw items at police vans and officers outside a mosque (Richard McCarthy/PA Wire)

But false claims about the attacker’s identity were rapidly spread on social media by right-wing accounts with large followings.

According to Marc Owen Jones, a disinformation researcher associate professor at Doha’s Hamid bin Khalifa University, there were at least 27 million impressions on social media posts stating or speculating that the attacker was *******, a migrant, ******** or foreigner.

Among the accounts to peddle such claims was influencer Andrew Tate, who claimed the attacker was an “******** migrant” and urged people to “wake up”, while Darren Grimes of GB News criticised MPs for calling “for more ‘refugees’ to be allowed in” on the same day as the *******.

Meanwhile, English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, shared a post he said suggested authorities were trying to “manipulate” the public over the attacker’s identity.

With many smaller accounts sharing false claims, Prof Jones said: “While people always spread incorrect information in the wake of a tragic event (we saw this with Sydney), there is clear and (sic) attempt to exploit the tragic incident by right wing influencers and grifters – pushing an anti-immigrant and xenophobic agenda despite there being no evidence.”

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A police van set alight as trouble flares during a protest in Southport (Richard McCarthy/PA Wire)

The proliferation of false claims saw Merseyside Police a statement issue shortly after midday on Tuesday, saying: “A name has been shared on social media in connection with the suspect in the incident in Southport. This name is incorrect and we would urge people not to speculate on details of the incident while the investigation is ongoing.”

But just hours after a vigil for those ******* in Monday’s *******, unrest broke out at around 7:45pm on Tuesday evening as crowds targeted a mosque and attacked it with bricks, with some heard chanting anti-Islam phrases – despite there being no current information on the alleged attacker’s religious beliefs.

Linking the killings to

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over the fact that police said both cases

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, Nigel Farage also posted a video at 5:34pm – seen by 2.5 million people as of Wednesday morning – in which he said: “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us”

“What I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country”, the Reform *** leader said, before posting footage at 10:47pm of “machete fights in Southend tonight” and claiming: “Our country is being destroyed, our values trashed and the public on the point of revolt.”

Local MP Patrick Hurley Mr Hurley told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme on Wednesday that the riot was “led by people from outside the town” and condemned “thugs who had got the train in” who were using the “deaths of three little kiddies for their own political purposes”.

Accusing rioters of having “hijacked the grief” of the town and families, the MP said: “These people are utterly disrespecting the families of the ***** and injured and totally disrespecting the town.”

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#***** #disinformation #Southport #****** #******* #suspect #led #riots

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