Unpacking media and political narratives in the UK riots

By Angelo Boccato

Photo courtesy Unsplash

The series of anti-Muslim and racist attacks in the United Kingdom which have followed the murder of three children in Southport on July 29 have highlighted how much anti-Muslim sentiment, racism and overall hate speech represent a serious issue in the country. 

Fake news and disinformation regarding the identity of the suspect played into the far-right narratives’ handbook, as it was implied that the suspect had recently arrived in the country and was Muslim; while both elements were false, the very fact that these were presented as the basis for the violence, it is telling of the degree in which anti-Muslim hate and anti-migrant rhetoric have been widespread and normalised.  

The social media platform X became a hub for disinformation, as headlines from the website Channel3Now spread there and were subsequently shared through Telegram channels. Its CEO, Elon Musk, further fueled tensions by posting, "Civil war is inevitable."  

The acceleration of fake news, disinformation and hate speech through X is not at all surprising, but part of a long process which has seen Musk committed in amplifying far-right voices and narratives as well as re-admitting on the platform far-right accounts that had been banned before he took the helm of Twitter, like Britain First. 

Photo courtesy Unsplash

In addition to this, Musk also shared conspiracy theories of two-tier policing, implying that the police responded with more severity against the far-right rather than ethnic minorities. He also made parallels between Britain and the Soviet Union, in response to the arrest of social media users (for posts which incited violence). 

As a result, and in accumulation of such actions by Musk, this has also been playing into convincing Labour MPs to start abandoning Twitter and for the UK government to consider tougher online laws.  

However, beyond Musk’s personal and not-new attitude of fanning the flames of far-right narratives, what are the other figures or narratives that have found space in this violence? 

The British political and media arena and the far-right violence 

In the British political arena, it is important to highlight just how much far-right rhetorics have been normalised, especially and not only since Brexit, and specifically how anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric are used as if they were almost a “fair game”. 

The current Prime Minister Keir Starmer, during the electoral campaign, for instance, singled out Bangladeshi migrants and the fact that they are supposedly not repatriated during an electoral event by The Sun in June. 

This view not only does not find substance in facts, as the Bangladeshi do not even account among the first nationals for asylum applications according to the Home Office data, but even though the then Leader of the Opposition apologised for such comments, the very fact that he made them underlines the aforementioned normalisation of similar views. 

By looking at the former ruling party, the Tories, the picture becomes far bleaker. The Rwanda deportation plan has been cancelled, but it still brought into the discussion the idea of deporting asylum seekers to a third country, violating the basic principles of international law. 

In addition to this, the slogan “Stop the Boats” launched by Rishi Sunak (originally created by former Australian PM Tony Abbott , with the Australian model of pushbacks as the blueprint for plans such as the Rwanda one) made its way on t-shirts and placards, as a clear indication of how much the language used by the far-right and the Right is more and more similar than ever before. 

The fact that Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick suggested that those who say “Allah Akbar” at protests for Palestine should be arrested,  only highlights further the depth of this issue. 

Then there is Nigel Farage, who suggested that the truth was being “witheld” from the public regarding the murders in Southport, suggesting that the killer was known to the security services, a position that he has been defending. 

As Mobashra Tazamal, Associate Director of The Bridge Initiative pointed out in POLITICO “The riots in Southport weren’t just caused by online misinformation campaigns, they were also fueled by the widespread prevalence of Islamophobia in mainstream society. And while today’s anti-Muslim sentiment can be traced back to the 7/7 terror attacks in London, as a result of which four million British Muslims were held collectively responsible for the actions of four individuals, Islamophobia has primarily skyrocketed as a result of decades of negative media stories and harmful government policies (i.e. PREVENT) that framed British Muslims as prone to “extremism.” 

A mantra seen on the other end, on various media, has been the one around “legitimate concerns” on immigration rather than underlining the specific targeting of specific communities, especially given the fact that anti-Muslim attacks have spiked since October the 7th 2023. 

A perfect example of the discourse in mainstream media can be seen in the way in which Labour MP Zarah Sultana was patronised during an interview, on August the 5th, with former Minister Ed Balls on Good Morning Britain and in how her concerns regarding the Islamophic and racist nature of these protests were dimininshed by the hosts. 

Journalist Daniel Trilling wrote in the London Review of Books “Over the coming months, there will be no end of voices telling us that the rioters had ‘legitimate concerns’ and ethnic conflict is the inevitable result of immigration. They will inaccurately link immigration to crime and recycle the right-wing myth of ‘two-tier policing’, according to which ethnic minorities and the left are supposedly given an easier ride. They will focus on the 52 per cent of people who, according to a recent Ipsos poll, say immigration is ‘too high’, but ignore the plurality, revealed by the same poll, who believe immigration has been good for the country – or that diversity is a simple, everyday fact of life in Britain. It’s vital these arguments are confronted directly.” 

While these attacks have stopped for the moment, the media and political discourse in Britain clearly point out at how much, without interrogating the normalisation of these hateful rhetorics and the hateful state of the conversation, the context that has led to the recent violence will remain the same.