How extremists ‘hijacked’ a vigil for the Southport victims

Good morning.

The horrific knife attack in which three children were killed in Southport has shocked the country. It has also been seized on by the far right to promote its hateful agenda and led to riots, injuring 54 police officers and the burning of a police van within sight of the venue where the child stabbing victims had danced to Taylor Swift.

A 17-year-old boy has been charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and one count of possession of an offensive weapon.

For today’s newsletter, we explore how extremists overshadowed a peaceful vigil for the victims, and the impact of misinformation spreading like wildfire on social media. That’s after the headlines.

Five big stories

In depth: ‘Their motivation was not concern for the families’

Joe Mulhall, the director of research at Hope Not Hate, the UK’s largest anti-fascism organisation, says elements of the far right were “jumping on it” and starting to organise as soon as news of the stabbings broke on Monday afternoon.

By Tuesday night hundreds of the extremists gathered for a protest that quickly turned into a riot outside a Southport mosque – chosen as the venue after false rumours circulated claiming the suspect in custody was a Muslim. Hannah Al-Othman, a Guardian northern correspondent who was at the scene, says it was clear immediately that the people gathered were “intent on spreading hate” and “prepared for a frankly scary riot”.

Mulhall has spent the past 15 years following and investigating extremists including Tommy Robinson (real name: Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), the far-right activist who once led the English Defence League (EDL), so he was well placed to watch how the group responded to the attack.

“For many of them, as soon as there’s news of anything that’s awful they start to put a prejudiced or discriminatory spin on it, and that was absolutely the case with what happened on Monday,” he says. “Those individuals within the far right who believe that anything bad that happens in society must be the fault of either people of colour or migrants or asylum seekers or Muslims instantly begin speculating.”

The response to the Southport attack – in which Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, were killed and eight other children were injured – was another degree of awful, he says, with “concerted misinformation and disinformation spreading”.

It included claims that the attacker “had arrived on a boat across the Channel, that they were an undocumented migrant, or an illegal immigrant”. None of this was true, and Merseyside police took the unusual step of saying so in an official statement.

Misinformation spreads

Soon the extremists began to start circulate a name. “A kind of a fake name that was supposedly overtly Arabic sounding began to circulate,” Mulhall says. It is not the name of the suspect – who has not been named for legal reasons – and it appears to be no one’s name.

In a statement on Tuesday night, Alex Goss, Merseyside assistant chief constable, said: “There has been much speculation and hypothesis around the status of a 17-year-old male who is in police custody and some individuals are using this to bring violence and disorder to our streets.

“We have already said that the person arrested was born in the UK and speculation helps nobody at this time.”

Such a statement, and the speed at which it was released, is almost unprecedented for the UK police. But in our modern digital age, it was also too late. The posts and speculation had been influenced by high-profile people, including violent misogynist Andrew Tate. A clip in which he turns around and says this was an illegal migrant who crossed the Channel in a boat was viewed millions of times.

Even former Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne tweeted to his own 677,000 followers that “maybe he [Tommy Robinson] was right all along”. He later deleted the reference after being contacted by the Guardian, and a spokesperson said: “Duncan is very upset at the Southport attacks, which he has expressed on X.”

‘They hijacked children being murdered to propagate their hate’

“Perhaps the biggest name that has contributed to some of the spreading of this information was Nigel Farage,” says Mulhall. “[Farage] produced a rather cowardly video, in which he didn’t say he believed these things. He just said, I’m asking questions. And by [doing so] spreading that sort of information to his vast audience. Of course, he’s now in parliament, so there are other routes with which he could have asked those questions.”

Messages on social media swelled the numbers on the ground as the protest turned into a riot in Southport, Hannah says. “I heard what they were saying,” she says. “It was a lot of horrible slurs. They were openly saying that their motivation was to break into the mosque. They had completely hijacked children being murdered to propagate their hate and Islamophobia.”

Hannah says the conspiracy theories online had motivated many of the people to turn out, and many of them were retelling her the false information. “The motivation was, ‘We want our country back’, not concern for the families of young victims.” Those families are the ones left with the devastating impact of the attack, while the wider community was left to deal with the aftermath of the rioters’ misguided destruction.

What else we’ve been reading

• From the classic (juice cleanses) to the more left field (er, switching out your old plasma for new), Adrienne Matei has written about why ideas around detoxifying your body are largely built on lies. For more smart wellness coverage, sign up to the Guardian’s Well Actually newsletter. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters

• Could you be scammed? Arwa Mahwadi, in recounting her own story of being duped, makes the case that you already have – and AI is bringing with it “a new age of scammers”. Craille Maguire Gillies, newsletters team

• ICYMI: the Guardian arts team asked stars including Steve McQueen, Tracey Emin and Russell T Davies what should be done to save Britain’s cultural scene. Perhaps unsurprisingly, financial support ranks highly. Hannah

• As the new tenant of an allotment and the owner of a struggling patio plot, I have good reason to study Jenny Stevens’ piece about 16 ways to grow a portable garden. For starters, don’t shy away from perennials – and avoid bedding plants. Craille

• I enjoyed this piece by the New York Times (£) about the translators writing literary works of their own. Hannah

Sport

Paris 2024 | The British rower Lola Anderson choked back tears as she told of her pride in fulfilling her late father’s faith in her talent on a wonderful Wednesday in Paris when Team GB chalked up five more Olympic medals – including two gold. Great Britain was propelled into fifth position in the medal table by the gold medal-winning feats of Anderson, Hannah Scott, Lauren Henry and Georgie Brayshaw in the women’s quadruple sculls crew and Alex Yee, pictured, in the men’s triathlon. There was also a silver in the men’s BMX freestyle and bronze medals in the women’s synchronised diving and women’s triathlon.

Rugby | World Cup winners Steve Thompson and Mark Regan have accused the Rugby Football Union of “suppressing their medical records” in a significant escalation of their legal battle over brain injuries. In a letter sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office, they and 42 other former players have called for an “urgent investigation” into the failure of the RFU and other rugby bodies to hand over personal data that is pertinent to their case and could be crucial to their clinical treatment.

Football | Manchester United are poised to sign Anna Sandberg from BK Hacken for what will be a record transfer fee for a Swedish player. The 21-year-old full-back is close to becoming the English club’s fourth signing of the summer, after the arrivals of Dominique Janssen, Elisabeth Terland and Melvine Malard.

The front pages

Top story in the Guardian print edition is “Fears of escalation after Israel kills leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah”, while Huw Edwards is pictured on the front page leaving court. “BBC in turmoil over presenter’s indecent images” – that’s the line in the i, while“Edwards pleads guilty to viewing indecent images” is the splash headline in the Times. The Daily Mirror calls it “Huw’s child abuse pics shame” and the Daily Express has “I’m guilty”. “BBC paid Edwards £200k after arrest” the Daily Telegraph points out, and the Daily Mail also looks at the bigger picture, asking “Who knew about Huw?” above its lead story: “Russia linked to fake news that sparked mosque riot”. “Outrage” – the Metro tells of “stab girl mum’s anger at riot”. Page one in the Financial Times is topped by “Iran vows revenge on Israel for killing of Hamas political leader in Tehran”.

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

In Cornwall, a rewilding project is bringing together conservation efforts of land and sea – too often fragmented. Tor to Shore is aimed at benefiting everything from “marsh fritillary butterflies living high on the moor to long-snouted seahorses in seagrass”, as Steven Morris writes. Cornwall Wildlife Trust is leading the project, which has a £265,000 development grant – and if things work out, another £3m could come later. Tamworth pigs – great “ecosystem engineers” – have already been introduced, and the trust is working with farmers to address agricultural pollution and create wildlife corridors.

The trust’s chief executive, Matt Walpole, explains how they are aiming to go beyond conservation: “The idea is we move beyond preserving the last of what’s left in isolated, fragmented nature reserves and into a much more ambitious vision of a joined up, bigger, better, more connected landscape and seascape, with nature recovery rather than just nature conservation.” (For more great nature and environment coverage, sign up to our free weekly newsletter Down to Earth.)

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