The resurgence of far-right violence in the UK is in part due to Elon Musk’s decision to allow figures such as Tommy Robinson back on to the social media platform X, researchers say.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and those of his ilk are not leaders in the traditional sense and the far right has no central organisation capable of directing the disorder and violence that has been seen, experts say.
Jacob Davey, director of policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said: “People have been naming the EDL [English Defence League] as key figures when the EDL actually has ceased to function as a movement.”
The UK, like other parts of the world, now has “a much more decentralised extreme-right movement,” he said.
“There have been known figureheads at protests – including some avowed neo-Nazis – but there’s also this loose network that includes concerned local citizens and football hooligans.
“All of these people are tied together by these loose online networks, activated by deeply cynical influences – many outside the country – and galvanised by viral online disinformation from unknown and untrustworthy sources.”
Instead, Robinson, who is believed to have left the country earlier last week before a legal case, and other figures act as “weathermakers”, according to Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, the anti-fascism organisation.
They inspire people to take ad hoc local action, or spread their own misleading or false videos online about issues including migrant boats and child grooming gangs.
The killings of three young girls in Southport last week was the spark for continuing violence, fuelled by false claims that the perpetrator was a 17-year-old asylum seeker called “Ali al-Shakati” who had arrived on a boat last year.
Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, appeared at Liverpool crown court last week, charged with murdering the three girls.
“The initial disinformation and anger was being perpetrated by individuals on X, for example, that have been previously de-platformed,” Mulhall said. “And now they’ve been re-platformed.”
In March 2018, Robinson was permanently banned from X, then known as Twitter, before being reinstated in November last year after Musk bought the platform.
On 27 July, he held a demonstration attended by more than 20,000 people in London, where he allegedly screened a documentary repeating false claims made about a Syrian refugee, against high court orders.
“We hadn’t seen any significant numbers at any demonstrations since 2018,” Mulhall added.
Prof Stephan Lewandowsky of Bristol University, who is an expert in disinformation, said that social media platforms amplified far-right voices. “Facebook is an outrage machine,” he said. “It’s a serious problem and is easily solved by modifying the algorithms so that they highlight information based on quality rather than outrage.
“There’s pretty good evidence that de-platforming works. If you kick someone off a platform, their influence declines and people who were hangers-on also go elsewhere. There is some displacement – people go to other platforms. And you have to be careful not to act as a censor.”
The decentralised nature of far-right activity, which Mulhall described as “post-organisational”, makes it much harder to police and track, he said.
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“We’ve been spending 24 hours a day for the last week attempting to dig down and find out who is organising these events,” he said. “And what you find is that someone sets up a Telegram channel saying something like: ‘Nottingham rising, we’ll be here at 3pm on Saturday’, and no one has any idea who that is.”
Language used by higher-profile figures such as Robinson, the actor Laurence Fox and ex-MP Andrew Bridgen, who spoke at the 27 July rally, as well as the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, is often repeated in other social networks such as Telegram and WhatsApp, Mulhall said.
Others are acting as online content creators, posting videos of vigilante activity by self-styled “migrant hunters” or “paedophile hunters”.
Alan Leggett, who calls himself Active Patriot, and Amanda Smith, known as Yorkshire Rose, have made videos outside police stations and migrant accommodation.
“One of the reasons so many people are angry about things like hotels housing asylum seekers is because they’re seeing this really provocative content being pumped into their timelines on a daily basis,” Mulhall said.
However, both Mulhall and Davey said that far-right activity online also needed the right conditions in the real world to flourish. “There are underlying grievances which are capitalised on by cynical actors,” Davey said. “Unemployment, the economy – there’s a lot of concern about where the next meal is coming from. [The far right] gives the easy answer – ‘the reason you haven’t had a pay rise is because of this group here’.”
The government should create a community cohesion strategy as a matter of urgency, according to Mulhall.
“Multiculturalism takes work,” he said. A decline in third spaces away from home or work where people from different communities could mingle were “massively” important, he said.
“When individuals and different communities interact with each other, misinformation is harder to spread. When you play sport together, or go to the same youth clubs, boxing clubs, football clubs, or even just parks or libraries, when you hear lies about other communities, it’s more likely that they won’t believe them.”
The ISD believes there should be much greater cooperation between government departments to deal with the issue, Davey said, as well as links between local authorities and the police, and a more robust Charity Commission to prevent extremists exploiting charity rules.
“We’ve seen an emboldened far right,” Davey said,“particularly at asylum centres like Kirby and an attempted terrorist attack in Dover. This hasn’t just come out of nowhere.”