Online disinformation sparked a wave of far-right violence in the UK

It didn’t take long for false claims to appear on social media after three young girls were killed in the British town of Southport in July.

Within hours, false information — about the attacker’s name, religion, and migration status — gained significant traction, sparking a wave of disinformation that fueled days of violent riots across the U.K.

“Referencing a post on LinkedIn, a post on X falsely named the perpetrator as ‘Ali al-Shakati,’ rumored to be a migrant of Muslim faith. By 3 p.m. the following day, the false name had over 30,000 mentions on X alone,” Hannah Rose, a hate and extremism analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), told CNBC via email.

Other false information shared on social media claimed the attacker was on an intelligence services watchlist, that he came to the UK on a small boat in 2023, and was known to local mental health services, according to ISD’s analysis.

Police debunked the claims the day after they first emerged, saying the suspect was born in Britain, but the narrative had already gained traction.

This kind of false information is closely aligned with a rhetoric that has fueled the anti-migration movement in the U.K. in recent years, said Joe Ondrak, research and tech lead for the U.K. at tech company Logically, which is developing artificial intelligence tools to fight misinformation.

“It’s catnip to them really, you know. It’s really the exact right thing to say to provoke a much angrier reaction than there likely would have been were the disinformation not circulated,” he told CNBC via video call.

Far-right groups soon began organizing anti-migrant and anti-Islam protests, including a demonstration at the planned vigil for the girls who had been killed. This escalated into days of riots in the U.K. that saw attacks on mosques, immigration centers and hotels that house asylum seekers.

The disinformation circulated online tapped into pre-existing biases and prejudice, Ondrak explained, adding that incorrect reports often thrive at times of heightened emotions.

“It’s not a case of this false claim goes out and then, you know, it’s believed by everyone,” he said. The reports instead act as “a way to rationalize and reinforce pre-existing prejudice and bias and speculation before any sort of established truth could get out there.”

“It didn’t matter whether it was true or not,” he added.  

Many of the right-wing protestors claim the high number of migrants in the U.K. fuels crime and violence. Migrants rights groups deny these claims.

Social media provided a crucial way…