Who Is Shaking the Jar?

Following the reported murders of Alice Dasilva Aguiar (aged 9), Elsie Dot Stancombe (aged 7), and Bebe King (aged 6) at a holiday club held in a community centre in Southport—in Merseyside in the UK—some limited disorder and social unrest broke out. Contrary to the reports provided by the UK legacy media, there are deep-rooted problems in communities across the UK that led to the disorder. Southport is one such community. 

The anti-Muslim sentiments expressed by a minority of the protesters was repeatedly emphasised by the legacy media and the politicians. Yet, rather than make any attempt to resolve other genuine causes for concern, they completely ignored both the structural problems and the broader concerns of the protesters. Instead, they exploited the opportunity of civil unrest to exaggerate the claimed reach of so-called social media influencers and to falsely assert that those influencers’ posts on social media caused riots.  

The disorder in Southport sparked more widespread discontent. Communities in other regions across the UK took to the streets to protest the impact of immigration in their communities. Adding to their resentment was a perception of biased policing and an unfair justice system—two-tier Britain—as well as an overall sense of inequality of opportunity in the political, economic, and social realms.  

The civil unrest subsequent to the murders became a major story hyped by the entire UK legacy media. Any examination of the actual evidence relating to the murders was largely pushed aside. Instead, the state and its media minions focused their attention, laser-like, on what they were calling an “insurrection” and on its purported causes. 

Almost immediately, they began blaming the widespread unrest on injudicious posts on social media—particularly on Elon Musk’s “X” (formerly Twitter) platform. Indeed, the state’s swift response was to try to censor social media, increase state surveillance, and quickly convict so-called “armchair rioters,” who were reportedly stoking resentment and provoking the “far-right riots” through the use of social media. 

In his 1963 novel The Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut wrote about red ants and black ants in a jar. In his words: 

They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar.

In the social media age, Vonnegut’s description has been turned into a popular parable about “shaking the jar.” It shows up in many a meme, though it is often misattributed to British naturalist David Attenborough. It goes something like this—and I paraphrase:

If you collect 100 black ants and 100 red ants and put them in a glass jar, nothing will happen. But if you take the jar, shake it violently and leave it on the table, the ants will start killing each other. Red ants believe the black ants are the enemy, and black ants believe red ants are the enemy, when the real enemy is the person who shook the jar.

The ant parable has a parallel in the “far-right riots.” The jar-shakers appear to the state-aligned propagandists, not the “far right influencers” blamed.   

There appears to be virtually no objective news coverage of the unrest, which gives us good reason for suspicion. Events have been manipulated, misreported and subsequently exploited to sell us the version of reality we are expected to believe. Yes, the jar is being shaken, but not by those we are told are responsible for shaking it.

The UN Member States’ Obsession

The way we communicate with one another and access information has changed since the advent of the internet and particularly since the rise of social media. Our online communication has created what the United Nations (UN) calls “the infosphere.” This infosphere has become so massive that governments around the world are desperate to control our access to the information it contains.  

Our attention has switched away from traditional TV, radio and print news media to online news. The latter is most commonly accessed through social media. As measured by advertising investment, social media is now the largest channel for adspend by a considerable margin.

Consequently, governments around the world have found it increasingly difficult to control our access to information and, thereby, our opinions. The UN directly addresses this problem in its 2022 Information Mapping Report:

Access to quality information plays a critical role in public trust, democracy, peace and social cohesion. [. . .] As information becomes more accessible, it also becomes more open to influences from non-traditional actors in the infosphere — in most contexts anyone can create and disseminate information. As a consequence, the traditional actors and gatekeepers of information and news — established media and government institutions — are struggling to compete with this new reality.

For many decades, governments have relied on the legacy media as their “gatekeepers of information and news.” But now that “anyone can create and disseminate information,” the state and its gatekeepers are struggling to compete. The fact that we, the people, can now communicate online and share ideas and information between ourselves has been identified as a global threat at the intergovernmental level.

A major caveat is that the internet and many of the major “Big Tech” firms that dominate it wouldn’t exist in their current form were it not for the considerable development efforts and monies that have been invested in them by governments—most notably their intelligence agencies. Perhaps the internet has spiralled out of the state’s control. Nonetheless, by corralling all our communication onto digital platforms, the internet actually provides states with an unprecedented opportunity to surveil and censor us, probably as intended.

Social media and what we might call the traditional “infosphere” is already tightly controlled by a global public-private partnership (G3P). Recent research by the Media Reform Coalition found: 

71% of the UK’s 1,189 local newspapers are owned by just six companies. The two largest local publishers — Newsquest and Reach — each control a fifth of the local press market, more than the combined share of titles owned by the smallest 173 local publishers. 10 of the top 15 online platforms used to access news in the UK are owned by Meta, Google and X Corp (owners of X/Twitter). Meta and Google command around four-fifths of all online advertising spend, giving these two tech giants unparalleled power over how online news is found and funded. [. . .] Two companies — Bauer Radio and Global Radio — own 65% of the UK’s local commercial analogue radio stations. Bauer, Global and Wireless Group (owned by publishers News UK) also control more than three-quarters of the UK’s national commercial DAB radio market.

The UK media and social media landscape is dominated by a small handful of powerful corporations. This means that the control of information in the UK is heavily centralized. The same handful of corporations leverage their so-called “news reporting” to create an incredibly powerful “influence” on public opinion. 

By contrast, ordinary citizens who post blogs and comments and videos online do not possess any notable “influence.” Certainly, their individual influence is nowhere near that exerted by the corporate-owned legacy media. 

The primary concern of the UN and its G3P partners is the small but growing “influence” of the genuinely independent media, sometimes framed as the alternative media—sometimes called the “alt-media.” Though significant efforts have been made to centralise and control independent media, some truly independent journalism remains. Unlike the corporate- and state-controlled legacy media—which falsely claims to be independent—the independent media can be defined as follows:

Independent journalism is journalism that isn’t beholden to governments, corporations, and other outside influences. This allows for impartial reportage that helps people make informed decisions on important issues. This includes all types of media, whether television, radio, print, or digital. It also encompasses journalists who either work for an organization or have their own blog, publication, or website.

Internet marketers increase their clients’ social media “reach” for obvious commercial reasons. “Reach” is defined as the number of people who see a particular piece of content. Reach can be either “organic” or “paid.” Social media platforms like Meta’s Facebook prioritise sharing paid content over organic content. Organic reach of professional brand pages on Facebook has been declining for years and has now dropped below 2% of their follower numbers. 

The reach of individuals on Facebook, who post nothing but organic content on their own timelines, is of course significantly less than the reach achieved by brand pages. Keep in mind that the number of Facebook followers someone has does not equate to the number of impressions, or views, a post receives. It is somewhat proportionate, but online social media marketing companies acknowledge: 

When most people talk about Facebook reach, they’re typically referring to organic. [. . .] This type of reach is the hardest to earn. You have to compete with paid ads, viral posts from major accounts and constant changes to the platform’s algorithm. As a result, many marketers note that organic reach has been falling for years now.

Thus, the possibility of creating a “viral post” on Facebook is now more or less restricted to brand marketing companies, to NGOs (which employ marketing companies), and to governments and their agencies (which also employ teams of professional online marketers). 

For ordinary citizens, social media is not generally a platform where their opinions can be “spread widely.” Most ordinary citizens would probably have more “reach” and “influence” if they discussed their views with friends at an in-person social event. 

But the so-called “infosphere” does provide people access to the independent media, where they often encounter reports that question the “official” narrative and find evidence that contradicts the state’s preferred account. As a result of these encounters, people may hold contrary opinions, and these are the “influences from non-traditional actors” that UN member states are eager to avert. 

Constructing the Far-Right Influencer Narrative

The legacy media and politicians in the UK claimed that “far-right influencers” had caused riots by “whipping up” racial hatred on social media. The followers of these “influencers” were said to have instigated acts of violence by spreading “misinformation” and “disinformation.” The state and its compliant media coined the terms “armchair rioter” and “armchair thug” to sell the public on the concept that social media posts can spawn civil unrest. 

It is extremely difficult to become to an “influencer” on social media without the support of G3P partners, such as Meta or Elon Musk’s X. Musk’s platform, in particular, and Musk himself, have been singled out as the focal point for the alleged spread of so-called “disinformation.” 

Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first social media and disinformation correspondent, accused Musk of using X to “stir the pot” following the disorder. She also noted that “far-right influencers” like Tommy Robinson have been promoted on X. 

Spring wrote: 

Mr Musk [suggested], in response to a video of rioting, that “civil war is inevitable”. The prime minister’s spokesperson said there was “no justification” for this claim. [. . .] False claims that the person responsible for the killings in Southport was a Muslim refugee who arrived in the UK by boat in 2023 spread like wildfire across X. They then spilled out on to other social media platforms and were also posted on some Telegram channels — but much of the most frenzied, amplified conversation was happening on X. [. . .] X is [. . .] a focal point for digital conversations. [. . .] It may [. . .] have something to do with Mr Musk’s views on threats of regulation — and in the UK specifically, the Online Safety Act. When this comes into full effect in 2025 it will require social media firms to remove illegal content, including where it is “racially or religiously aggravated”. Mr Musk has repeatedly been vocal about his concerns that attempts by governments to regulate social media sites — like his own — risk infringing freedom of speech.

There are many significant deficits in the narrative presented by Spring and the BBC. Her insinuation in this piece and others, that “false claims” spread on X have contributed “to riots in the UK,” is on its face false. 

A closer look at the tragic incident that is said to be responsible for all this unrest would be helpful here. 

The Southport murders, attempted murders and aggravated assaults, reportedly committed by one suspect, were said to have occurred at approximately 11.45 on 29th July 2024. Merseyside Police declared the attack a major incident, and Chief Constable Serena Kennedy issued a public statement at 19:18 the same day:

A 17-year-old male from Banks in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff, had been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

Before the chief constable’s statement, a few social media accounts posted unverified rumours about the suspect’s identity and immigration status. These posts, alleged to be “disinformation” and “misinformation,” came under the intense scrutiny of the UK government and its stenographers in the legacy media.

The civil unrest began on 30th July—the day after the crime. Interestingly, on the day of the crime, the BBC was among those media outlets reporting that police did not consider the attack terror-related and that the 17-year-old suspect was from Cardiff. Yet, the very next day, the BBC alleged that people “rioted” because they believed the social media posts, even though those posts had already been contradicted by the police and by the BBC and other legacy media outlets.

The accurate personal details of the suspect—notably, his birthplace—were widely known before any unrest occurred. Thus, everyone was aware that the rumours “spread” on social media were false. Simply put, there is no evidence to support the claim that purported social media “disinformation” caused any civil unrest.

Another notable problem with Marianna Spring’s “journalism” is her preposterous suggestion that Elon Musk is a defender of free speech. Musk claims to be a “free speech absolutist,” yet he simultaneously censors people on X. He declares that X is a social media platform that provides “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” Someone with an X account can say whatever they like on that platform, but if their “reach” is restricted by the X algorithm, other X users will have no opportunity to read or hear it.  

How does this censorship work? To become an “influencer” on X, you either pay for the privilege or are approved and actively promoted by the X algorithm. This means that for ordinary people and smaller independent journalists, unless X decides to promote what they say, the platform is an echo-chamber. In other words, X is a narrative control and propaganda operation. 

Elon Musk is a defence and intelligence contractor for the US military industrial complex. He has leveraged billions of dollars of debt to fund a succession of failed business ventures. Musk holds the world record for losing the largest-ever personal fortune when he dumped Tesla stock to finance the Twitter deal. Supposedly one of the richest people on Earth, his purchase of Twitter and his push to transform it into X has certainly brought public attention to the issue of free speech. Yet Musk evidently bought it with the intention of censoring posts on it.

Musk has had the unwavering financial support of a clique of globalists and accelerationist proponents of the Dark Enlightenment. Working in partnership with governments, they have kept Musk afloat whenever his businesses threatened to collapse—often by pouring enormous taxpayer subsidies into his speculative ideas. 

For example, in 2002 Musk launched Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) with the support of Michael Griffin, then president and chief operating officer of CIA investment firm In-Q-Tel. But by 2008 Musk was flat broke. Despite considerable taxpayer-funded investments, SpaceX was bankrupt.

Luckily for Musk, Griffin was by then the Administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In December 2008, NASA awarded Musk a $3 billion space station resupply contract. SpaceX hadn’t yet successfully launched a single rocket, but Griffin bailed it out anyway. (NASA is funded by US taxpayers.)

SpaceX is also indebted to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a CIA front organisation that pretends to be a charity. USAID is paying SpaceX handsomely to provide the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian citizens with access to SpaceX-launched Starlink, a satellite communication system. Safe to say, then, that Musk has had a very long working relationship with the US intelligence community—the CIA, in particular.

Further points of interest: 

• Musk is the grandson of a leader of the original Technocracy movement. 
• Musk is a transhumanist who wants to insert computer chips in our brains so we can physically merge with machines and thereby eradicate the human race. 
• Musk promotes Universal Basic Income (UBI), carbon taxes, mRNA vaccine technology and pretty much every other G3P ambition and objective. 
• Musk is a big fan of super apps—which he calls “everything apps”—like China’s WeChat and Ukraine’s Diia. Not surprisingly, he’s making moves to turn his X platform into an “everything app,” thus enabling fellow Dark Enlightenment partners like Peter Thiel to use X in their efforts to consolidate control of online digital finance.  

Despite all of this, the G3P oligarch Musk is being promoted by many as a man of the people who is dedicated to free speech. X continues to censor journalists and appears to engage in prolific shadow banning. Whatever the reasons liberty-minded citizens and the BBC’s Marianna Spring plug Musk, their assertion that he champions freedom of expression is ridiculous. 

Provocative comments made by Musk’s PR team, such as the claim that UK civil war is inevitable, are obviously designed to draw attention to the risks inherent in free speech. There undoubtedly are consequences to continued freedom of expression. But, as political philosopher John Stuart Mill pointed out more than 165 years ago, events throughout history prove we must pay a price for freedom and for defending everyone’s right to speak freely. The alternative is tyranny. 

Marianna Spring is among those forwarding tyranny today by endorsing a propaganda narrative that seeks to advance UK state censorship legislation—most notably the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA). The obvious idea behind Spring’s propaganda is to convince the public that comments made on “unregulated” social media platforms, especially Musk’s X, cause social upheaval and disorder. 

The UK government has already enacted the OSA. Its rationale is that the legislation is intended to protect children from online harm. So far, of the four reported prosecutions that have come under the OSA, only one was related to child protection. The other three have been made in the wake of the recent unrest, and they are for so-called communication offences. 

Dimitrie Stoica pleaded guilty to sending a false communication with intent to cause harm. He was immediately imprisoned for three months under Section 179 of the OSA. Stoica posted a video on TikTok in which he pretended to run away from rioters, claiming he feared for his life. When he was interviewed by Derbyshire Constabulary, Stoica said his post was meant to be a “joke.” 

The police and court obviously concluded otherwise. An official statement made by Derbyshire Police on Stoica’s conviction raises a number of issues: 

Dimitrie Stoica had been livestreaming to 700 followers, although how many watched it is unknown, as he walked around Derby on Wednesday 7 August — the same evening that potential protests and disorder had been feared might take place in the city. While there was no disorder at all that evening, Stoica’s livestream suggested otherwise.

As we shall see, the fear of potential disorder that “might take place in the city” was a response to a list of alleged “far-right” targets published by the international civil rights campaign “charity” HOPE not hate (HNH). The online harm Stoica caused was seemingly determined by the wider sociopolitical environment in which his post was made. Yet, as noted by the police, that “context” was the fear felt by others, which ultimately proved unwarranted. This was entirely beyond Stoica’s control and had nothing to do with him. HNH raised those fears by releasing a list of alleged targets, and the legacy media set the context by reporting the list. 

Derbyshire Police continued: 

[Stoica’s social media] stream had come to the attention of officers monitoring social media from the area. [. . .] Officers in the area were directed to speak to Stoica. [. . .] With the situations seen around the country in recent days and the manner in which social media had been used to promote significant disorder, Stoica was immediately arrested. In interview Stoica [. . .] admitted that his comments had been a “joke”. He was charged the following day with one count of sending a false communication with intent to cause harm contrary to Section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023.

Let’s consider the sequence of events surrounding Stoica’s arrest. 

Derbyshire Police, actively monitoring the public’s use of social media, sent officers to Stoica’s address to arrest him after flagging the content he posted. His arrest, they said, was based on their belief that social media was used to “promote significant disorder,” yet simultaneously the same police conceded there was “no disorder at all.” 

The imprisonment of Stoica led Derbyshire Assistant Chief Constable Michelle Shooter to say: 

[T]he right to freedom can be limited — in particular where it is required to prevent crime and disorder. As has been made clear by forces across the country[,] any criminal actions relating to the disorder, whether they be in person or online, will be dealt with quickly and robustly. Whether it is spreading misinformation or being involved in disorder[,] the message is clear.

The “message” does not make any sense. There was no crime or disorder related to Stoica’s social media post. His “right to freedom” was limited, by virtue of Section 179 of the OSA, for what Chief Constable Shooter seemingly believes to be his crime of spreading “misinformation.”  

The UN definition of misinformation is “information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm.” Yet Stoica was convicted of the “intent to cause harm.” That charge meets the UN’s definition not of “misinformation” but of “disinformation”—that is, false information “deliberately created to harm.” 

Thus, Stoica was imprisoned under Section 179 of the OSA for posting alleged “disinformation” that clearly did not cause any “harm.”  

The government argued that the OSA’s ostensible aim was to protect children online. In reality, policing social media and convicting people in the UK of a new crime—which essentially amounts to spreading so-called “disinformation”—is what the OSA has delivered. This is precisely as envisaged by the UN.

The reported “context” of Stoica’s OSA offending is called “crisis-driven disinformation” by the UN: 

Disinformation online expands significantly during times of political, economic and social grievances. In that way, it contributes to further polarising the public debate, to eroding public trust, to inciting violence and hatred against minorities. [. . .] Emergencies and natural disasters show us the weaknesses of social resilience against information pollution.

The manner in which the OSA is being applied in the UK exposes its now undeniable purpose. The real “context” of these new OSA offences is UN member states’ desire to protect the legacy media “gatekeepers of information and news” and deter the “non-traditional actors” from publishing anything member states label “disinformation.” 

Despite already largely controlling the “infosphere” planet-wide, the G3P will not brook any dissent. Its members, both in the public and private realms, see citizens’ ability to communicate and access information freely via the internet as a threat to their power and authority. Governments and their corporate partners around the world are highly motivated to regain full control of information. 

As we explore those who have been shaking the jar, it is important to keep their massive censorship agenda in mind. Whether at the G3P’s global governance level or at the individual countries’ national government level, it is in the interests of the state and its stakeholder partners to convince us that “threats” against us are real and to encourage us to accept state restrictions of our freedoms under the guise of “keeping us safe.” 

What “Far-Right” Riots?

You could be forgiven for thinking the recent unrest in the UK is unparalleled. The disorder garnered international media attention. 

On 3rd August, The New York Times brashly announced that “neo-Nazis, violent soccer fans and anti-Muslim campaigners” were behind the civil unrest that had “erupted in several towns and cities in Britain.” 

On 8th August, The Telegraph reported what it called a “wave of disorder” by “far-right rioters” in the UK. It started in Southport on 30th July then supposedly spread to dozens of places across the UK, including Leeds, London, Manchester and Belfast between then and 8th August. Over those nine days, the newspaper informs us, a series of short bouts of unrest flared up at different times in different places. Approximately 420 arrests were made in the immediate aftermath. The total number of arrests has now eclipsed 1,000.  

The protests evidently petered out by the 5th, yet the legacy media was still reporting “riots” on the 7th and the 8th August. The propagandists went to significant lengths to create the impression of a nationwide crisis that was nowhere near as severe as alleged. This included simply making up non-existent “riots.”

On 3rd August, the legacy media reported:

Leeds has descended into chaos after two groups of protesters began hurling insults at each other this afternoon. Around 150 people carrying St George’s flags shouted “you’re not English any more” and “pedo Muslims off our streets” outside the city’s central library and art gallery. But they were greatly outnumbered by hundreds of counter-protesters shouting “Nazi scum off our streets.”

But Leeds had not “descended into chaos,” as falsely reported. On the contrary, we learn from West Yorkshire Police, who issued a situation update after the protests:

It is believed there was a total of around 400 people on the Headrow [Leeds city centre] and the event passed off largely without incident with one arrest being made. As people were leaving the area, a fight broke out on Millennium Square between around 10 to 12 males. [. . .] Officers would like to thank all those who protested peacefully and allowed the wider public to go about their business unaffected.

In other words, what were subsequently called “riots” in Leeds actually took the form of a street brawl between “10 to 12 males.” Four men were subsequently convicted in relation to the “far-right riots” in Leeds, despite the fact there were no riots. Two of them were of Asian heritage and were subsequently convicted for affray (public fighting) in contravention of section 3(1) of the Public Order Act 1986.

No arrests were made in Birmingham on the 5th; “no public order offences were reported” in Southend on the 6th; the police in Newcastle and Sunderland said protests “largely passed without incident” on the 7th; one man was arrested for drug and weapons offences in Middlesbrough on the 7th; police in Bristol thanked demonstrators for their “exemplary behaviour” on the 7th; no arrests were made in Brighton nor in Portsmouth, and none were made Aldershot on the 7th. 

Yet all these protests were reported by legacy media as examples of “far-right riots.” During all nine days of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations, even though some protesters and police officers required medical treatment, there were no deaths and no serious injuries.

To summarize: the reported riots were wholly unremarkable. This observation is not to downplay the impact of the violence in the communities where it did occur. In those few places, small businesses were attacked, and angry mobs ran through the streets. For example, on 2nd August several buildings in Sunderland, including an office used by the Northumbria Police, were burned. Nonetheless, the recent unrest in Northumbria was not on the scale of, for instance, the 1843 anti-Mormon Sunderland riots. 

An obvious question arises: if the unrest was “caused” or “fuelled” by social media and alleged online influencers, what caused civil unrest to flare up across the UK before the internet was invented? 

Given that the riots and periods of civil unrest in the UK prior to the internet age were much worse, is there any evidence that social media has any appreciable role in causing civil unrest?

It wouldn’t seem so. Consider that the recent “riots,” so-called, were not only relatively minor in UK historical terms, they were also sporadic and short-lived in the towns and cities where they briefly occurred. To put things in perspective, the 1780 Gordon Riots were pitched battles fought on London’s streets for nearly a week. The lower estimate of deaths from those riots was approximately 300; the upper estimate some 700.

Then there were the 1981 “England Riots.” There were serious riots in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester and less-serious riots in other towns and cities over the perceived racism of the police and the economic and sociopolitical inequality experienced by minority ethnic communities. Unemployment was rampant and the hated police policy of targeting Black youths for “stop and search” was seen as institutionally racist. In one night in Brixton, London, 299 police officers and 65 civilians were injured. More than 60 private vehicles and 56 police vehicles were damaged or destroyed. There was widespread looting, and 28 premises were set ablaze.

Or take the miners’ strike (1984–85), when UK miners and their unions fought a series of battles against the police in their effort to save their jobs, families and communities. An estimated 11,000 miners were arrested, 8,000 of whom were charged with “public-order offences.”

In the aftermath of further riots in Brixton in 1985, serious disorder erupted on the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, London. Police constable Keith Blakelock was murdered by the rioters. 

In 1990, 340 people were arrested in just one night of London rioting when anger over the unfair imposition of the hated poll tax  propelled thousands of demonstrators to the streets.

All these instances of unrest occurred long before the arrival of the internet and social media. This is not to say social media isn’t a contributory factor today, but it certainly doesn’t appear to have created any sort of new or increased threat. As a people, the British have frequently opposed the state and resorted to acts of civil disobedience, which have sometimes turned into violent disorder. The arrival of the internet and social media has not changed anything in that regard.

In the internet age, we have also seen riots that were far more violent than anything experienced in recent days. But they don’t appear to have been caused by our forays into the “infosphere” either.  

In 2011, for example, a series of riots sparked by the police killing of Mark Duggen broke out in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and other UK towns and cities. The disorder led to more than 3,000 arrests, nearly 2,000 prosecutions and five deaths. 

Those riots were instigated by resentment of perceived institutional racism, especially at the hands of the police. People involved in the incidents were communicating with each other online, and some of them used social media to organise civil unrest. This resulted in then-Prime Minister David Cameron saying:

Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. [. . .] When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

A passing familiarity with relatively recent British history should have informed anyone that banning the use of communication technology would not reduce either the likelihood or severity of civil disorder. The UK public has proven more than capable of organising large-scale demonstrations and violent disorder without the internet or social media.

Nonetheless, despite this evident fact, there were parliamentary calls after the 2011 riots to shut down social media in the event of future disorder. These calls were ultimately rejected. But we might well ask, why was the use of communication technology the focus of political concern?

Internet communication technology certainly played a part in the organisation of the violent disorder in 2011. Yet subsequent investigations revealed that the most significant factor was the widespread use of Blackberry Messenger—not the major social media platforms.

So-called “disinformation” was an influence on the 2011 disorder—but that “disinformation” came from legacy media, not social media. The legacy media reported that Mark Duggen had fired on the police before being shot dead. This was false—and, indeed, was widely known to be false by the Broadwater Farm estate community where Duggen lived and grew up. The unverified stories and allegations in the press stoked further resentment and anger.

The BBC and other legacy media outlets ended up apologising for reporting false information. The BBC blamed the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for issuing misleading press statements. Of course, the role of a genuinely free and independent media is to question power and investigate the information it is handed by officials, not simply act as stenographers for the institutions of the state.

In an academic essay examining the information environment surrounding the 2011 unrest, Josh Morton (PhD) observed:

Research funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and aided by collaboration between academics from Universities of Manchester and St Andrews, analysed over 2 Million ‘Tweets’ sent over the period that the unrest took place. The results found that there was “no evidence” to suggest Twitter incited riots, with Professor Rob Proctor stating, whilst politicians were quick to point the blame at social media and call for platforms to be shut down, “our study found no evidence of significance in the available data that would justify such a course of action”. [. . .] It could be argued that more traditional media forms such as the print press and television are equally, if not more to blame. [. . .] The [legacy] media also caused difficulties for police, often making the situation appear worse than it actually was, particularly on television and in the tabloids.

The UK government convenes Civil Contingencies Committee meetings (COBRA) in response to “major or catastrophic emergencies.” Following the recent disorder, the UK’s new Labour government felt it necessary to publicly announce two COBRA meetings. The BBC reported that this was necessary to address the “worst rioting the UK has seen in recent years.” 

Relatively speaking, the recent disorder was neither major nor catastrophic. It seems the legacy media and the politicians, once again, went out of their way to exacerbate the situation, thereby unnecessarily increasing social tension and public fears.

When the UK announced its first knee-jerk COBRA meeting, the new Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said it was “obvious” that social media acted as “a rocket booster behind both the spread of misinformation and also the organisation of this violence.” 

It is not “obvious” that our use of social media led to any disorder. But just as the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron alleged before her, Cooper blamed individuals posting comments online and claimed the riots “were organised via social media.” Though the evidence for these claims is weak to non-existent, the entire UK and much of the world’s legacy media wholeheartedly and unquestioningly endorsed this narrative. 

Certainly, it is true that a small number of genuinely neo-Nazi and fascist activists organised themselves using platforms like Telegram. These fringe groups arranged to meet up at protests and cause disorder. Their online “reach,” however, attracts only a “relatively small subscriber numbers.” And, as we’ll discuss, there are many questions to ask with regard to who is manipulating these groups. 

Central and South American drug cartels kill thousands of people every year and they use telephones to communicate. But no government suggests banning telephones. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf on paper and published it in a physical book. His ideology, once published, led to the deaths of millions. Why do we continue to allow the use of paper and the sale of books?  

The New Extremism

On 1st August 2024, two days after the initial outbreak of disorder, the Times reported the names of people it alleged were influential in stoking the anger that led to the Southport protest. The narrative the Times offered to explain the outpouring of rage was, frankly, nonsensical:

The blame for the riots rests with what experts call the “network” or “post-organisational” hard-right. Instead of old-style movements like the National Front, British National Party and English Defence League (EDL), these are individuals who respond provocatively on social media to events in the news. Their messages, which may stop short of breaking speech laws, act as dog whistles to disgruntled followers who take the law into their own hands. 

A BBC “Verify” article published the day after the Southport unrest on 2nd August, acknowledged “not everyone attending these protests or posting about the Southport attacks holds fringe views, supports rioting or has links to far-right groups.” It then offered, for no immediately evident reason, essentially the same argument that the Times had outlined:

A BBC analysis of activity on mainstream social media and in smaller public groups shows a clear pattern of influencers driving a message for people to gather for protests, but there is no single organising force at work.

The Times tells us that there is no organisation orchestrating the violence. Rather, it says, there are individuals who turn to violence as a reaction to provocative posts they read on social media. These provocative words and memes, the Times admits, are not illegal and do not break “speech laws.” 

The BBC agrees that some sort of “pattern of influencers” is behind it all.

Social media posts that fall “short of breaking speech laws” fit neatly with the UK government’s redefinition of extremism, which was issued in March 2024: 

The threat from extremism has been steadily growing for many years. [. . .] This new definition of extremism adds to the tools to tackle this ever-evolving threat.

The new model of extremism must manifest in some objective way if this so-called “ever-evolving threat” is to make any sense. Certainly, whatever the UK government is talking about, it cannot be terrorism. 

The UN’s June 2023 publication of the report “Prevention of Violent Extremism,” found that “deaths from terrorist activity have fallen considerably worldwide in recent years.”

During the same period, global internet use had increased by 45%, from 3.7 billion people in 2018 to 5.4 billion in 2023. Quite clearly, if there is a correlation between internet use and an “ever-evolving threat” from extremism, it is both an inverse one and unrelated to terrorism. 

So then, what is the alleged “threat”? 

According to the UK government:

Most extremist materials and activities are not illegal and do not meet a terrorism or national security threshold. Islamist and Neo-Nazi groups in Britain [. . .] are actively radicalising others and are openly advocating for the erosion of our fundamental democratic rights. Their aim is to subvert our democracy.

The UK government has defined the publication of “materials” that are “not illegal” as an act of “extremism.” The government claims these publications, especially the online ones, radicalise people.

Online radicalisation is a myth. The UN currently declares that its 2023 report, Journey To Extremism in Africa, is “the most extensive study yet on what drives people to violent extremism.” This UN-commissioned study reveals that radicalisation is the product of numerous combined “influences.” 

The UN report reveals:

We know the drivers and enablers of violent extremism are multiple, complex and context specific, while having religious, ideological, political, economic and historical dimensions. They defy easy analysis, and understanding of the phenomenon remains incomplete.

In other words, the UN is saying, there is no clear evidence establishing why some people turn toward violence or disorder. All research suggests that “religious, ideological, political, economic and historical dimensions” combine in some unpredictable way to lead individuals to become violent or groups of people to engage in violence, including riots. 

Assessing how these factors interrelate defies “easy analysis,” as the report makes clear. Thus, while the consumption of online content may play a part, there is no evidence that “online radicalisation” is even an identifiable phenomenon. 

Evidently, the UK state does not consider a person “radical” because they have done anything “illegal.” Nor does the UK state say that the threat they supposedly pose is a terrorist threat. 

So, what is it, if not a terrorist threat?

The UK government defines “extremist” published material or content as follows:

Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to: negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the [aforementioned] results.

In essence, then, political dissent that is deemed by the UK state to be “intolerant” of the political establishment or that questions the UK state’s “parliamentary democracy” is characterised as extremism. In a nutshell, the UK government has decreed that questioning its power or authority is an extremist act. 

Returning to the BBC Verify article referenced above, it clearly pushes the UK government’s new definition of extremism. It continues:

BBC Verify has analysed hundreds of posts on social media and in smaller public Telegram groups to get a sense of the motives of the main actors involved in organising, encouraging and attending these protests. [. . .] It is not possible to pinpoint who started the calls for protests but there was a clear pattern — multiple influencers within different circles amplified false claims about the identity of the attacker.

As we’ve just mentioned, the BBC’s allegation that “false claims about the identity of the attacker” led to the unrest is untrue. For example, the BBC’s Marianna Spring claimed that a woman called Bernadette Spofforth was the “far-right influencer” who first “spread” the “disinformation” that allegedly caused the riots. 

Spofforth’s was reportedly accused of a “false communication”—disinformation—offence under Section 179 of the OSA. Contrary to Spring’s accusations, there was no provable legal case to be made against Spofforth. Unlike Stoica, Spofforth denied the allegations, and all charges were dropped. The claim that social media caused the recent disorder had no basis, legal or otherwise.

It would be very interesting to see the research the BBC conducted that it says reveals a “clear pattern of influencers” behind the riots. Its asserted findings appear to be self-contradictory.

The BBC tells us it has analysed the “main actors involved” in organising the protests but then goes on to say it can’t “pinpoint who started the calls for protests.” BBC Verify brought in an expert to reiterate all the information that the BBC doesn’t know and can’t actually verify?

“There’s not been a single driving force,” acknowledged Joe Mulhall, head of research at HOPE not hate (HNH). He continued: 

That reflects the nature of the contemporary far-right. There are large numbers of people engaging in activity online but there’s no membership structure or badge — there are not even formalised leaders, but they are directed by social media influencers. It’s like a school of fish rather than traditional organisation.

So, per Joe Mulhall and HNH, the “contemporary far-right” has no leaders, no structure and no single driving force and acts more like a “school of fish.” Yet supposedly, this nebulous thing—we certainly can’t call it an organised movement—is directed by “influencers” who are presumably distinct from actual leaders or real organisers.

Accordingly, this leaderless, unstructured entity—which is labelled the UK “far-right”—has been corralled by the so-called influencers. Simultaneously, most of the people who are supposedly influenced by these individuals don’t hold “fringe views,” don’t support “rioting,” and don’t have any notable links to the “far-right” entity they are all allegedly influenced by.

Other legacy media outlets have blamed organisations like the “far-right” English Defence League (EDL) for the riots. Yet anti-racism groups—such as HNH—accurately report that the EDL is defunct. Some UK legacy media outlets are reporting a national “threat” of “far-right extremism” from an organisation that literally does not exist. Note: We will cover the EDL below.

To wrap up, then, by their own admission, the BBC and groups like HNH cannot identify any kind of large-scale movement that can be legitimately called “the UK far-right.” No evidence has been offered to substantiate any sort of meaningful “far-right” or “hard-right” extremist threat—at least nothing the wider population needs to be concerned about.

The legacy “news” outlets unquestioningly support the objectives of the state. They allege, without evidence, that far-right influencers present a threat to everyone’s safety through their mythological ability to “radicalise” people and cause civil unrest online. Both the BBC and the Times are among the legacy media institutions that are “selling” the government’s redefinition of extremism to the public. 

This kind of “journalism” is unequivocally state propaganda. 

The Alleged Far-Right Influencers

The extent to which so-called “far-right influencers” are able to manipulate the public using social media is, as we have just discussed, highly questionable. Broadly speaking, there isn’t much evidence to indicate that said “influencers” have any notable impact on public opinion. 

According to the largest independent social research institute in the UK, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), if the far-right is on the rise, as is constantly being reported, it isn’t changing UK citizens’ social attitudes to any perceivable extent. 

A recent study NatCen did on British attitudes to immigration found: 

[A]ttitudes to immigration and its impacts were generally stable and, on balance, negative in the first decade of the 21st century. This was followed by a large and rapid change which began around 2014 and continued through to 2021, with attitudes becoming markedly more positive. We then see evidence of some retrenchment since 2021 though, on balance, the public remains more likely to be positive than negative about the impacts of immigration, and substantially more so than they were in the early 2000s.

Racism and religious bigotry remain reasons for concern in the UK. The evidence suggests that social problems related to both types of prejudice persist. But there is nothing to substantiate the unrelenting legacy media refrain that the “far-right” is successfully shifting public perceptions or attitudes in a negative direction.  

The same cannot be said, however, for the media-inspired “perception” of the touted far-right threat. 

Recently, BBC investigations correspondent Daniel de Simon wrote an article explaining his understanding of the “far-right threat.” He said he views the threats as being on a spectrum. At one end are Nazis and at the other end are democratic politicians who present electoral policy platforms. “I tend to use “extreme right” for the first type and “far right” for the latter,” de Simon wrote. 

It seems, as far as de Simon and presumably the rest of the BBC are concerned, everyone who doesn’t share their political views is far-right or “extreme-right” to some extent. If you call every opinion you don’t agree with “far-right,” then, obviously, you imagine the far-right is everywhere. 

The BBC is certainly keen to insert the supposed threat from the “far-right” and from “extremism” into as many of its “news” reports as possible. 

That policy has its drawbacks. In August 2023, for example, the BBC was forced to issue another public apology after it falsely stated that protests against London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) were “joined by conspiracy theorists and far-right groups.” 

There was nothing to support the broadcaster’s false claim, an  article in The Telegraph observed. The BBC conceded it had fallen short of establishing evidence to back up its reporting. In other words, it had produced yet more state propaganda.

One of the “far-right influencers” most heavily promoted by the UK legacy media is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. Two days prior to the Southport murders, on the 27th July, Robinson was said to have organised a rally in Trafalgar Square. 

The legacy media was keen to emphasise the size of the rally. The BBC reported that “thousands of supporters of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson have filled Trafalgar Square in central London” and described “a sea of England and Union Jack flags.” HNH, for its part, declared it a “huge far-right” demonstration. Yet the same media outlets also admit, when pressed, that most of the people at these events are not “far-right” at all. 

Obviously, to purportedly organise large public demonstrations and allegedly influence millions, including, as we shall see, making documentaries and running media organisations, requires significant resources. So, we should ask who finances Robinson and his production team. 

In 2019, The Times of Israel (ToI) reported that Tommy Robinson’s was supported by a “nexus of international organizations” that profess to support “the Israeli cause.” The ToI pointed out that Jewish organisations, such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), were fierce critics of Robinson. 

Following the recent disorder, the UK-based Jewish News argued that allegations that Robinson is a “Zionist asset” make no sense. Jewish News pointed out: 

Every mainstream UK Jewish organisation here has unequivocally condemned both Robinson personally and last week’s Far-Right violence with its naked anti-Muslim bigotry.

The globally accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism informs us that it is antisemitic to hold “Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” The Jewish people and the Israeli government are not synonymous. To claim that they are is antisemitic. Nor are all Jews Zionists nor all Zionists Jewish. 

During his October 2023 visit to the Israel, US President Joe Biden said, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” 

Zionism is an international political ideology, not a cultural or religious characteristic of the Jewish people. To argue that a Jewish organisation in the UK has condemned Robinson and that this somehow proves he has no links to the Israeli state—or to Zionist elements within the Israeli state—and therefore cannot be a Zionist asset is essentially antisemitic. 

It is widely acknowledged that the current Israeli government was formed as “the most religious, right-wing coalition in Israel’s history.” 

The Israeli minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, is the head of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism (Mafdal-RZ). In February 2023, Smotrich was also appointed to the Israeli Defense Ministry and given authority to control the West Bank. He has openly called for the mass killing of Palestinians. 

Itamar Ben-Gvir is the Israeli Minister of National Security. He is the leader of the Otmah Yehudit party, which was formed in 2012 and which openly describes itself as the “disciples of Kahane.” Kahanism is the “ultra-Zionist” political ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane. It seeks a Jewish theocracy in Israel and the displacement or extermination of all Palestinians. 

Robinson formed the English Defence League (EDL) along with his cousin Kevin Carroll and co-founder Paul Ray in 2009. Ray left EDL soon after setting it up.

In 2011, EDL Ltd was incorporated. For three years (2011 to 2014), it was temporarily renamed the Jewish Defence League (JDL). It wound up operations as EDL Ltd in 2019. 

The original Jewish Defense League was established in the US in 1968 by American-born Israeli Zionist Meir Kahane as opposition to antisemitism and to the civil rights movement. The JDL quickly turned to violence and committed terrorist attacks in the US. 

Upon moving to Israel in 1971, Kahane formed a political party called JDL-Israel. The same year, he renamed it Kach. After Meir Kahane’s assassination in 1990, the splinter group Kahane Chai was formed under the leadership of his son, Binyamin Kahane, who was assassinated ten years later. Both Kach and Kahane Chai murdered and brutalised Palestinians, and both were outlawed as terrorist organisations in Israel, Europe and the US in 1994. 

There is considerable evidence suggesting that the EDL was established with the support of UK and US-based Zionist organisations. We can describe some of those behind the EDL as Kahanists or “ultra-Zionists.”  

Paul Ray (aka Paul Andrews or Paul Cinato), who co-founded the EDL, is a blogger and activist who writes at his Lionheart blog. In 2007, Ray published a post describing how he visited Israel in 2006 and infiltrated the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM). He refers to himself as a Christian Zionist.  

Frontpage Magazine wrote an article in 2006 which clearly referenced Paul Ray: 

One of our volunteers in the United Kingdom for Stop the ISM managed to infiltrate the ISM late last June in the Holy Land. [. . .] Our volunteer (who prefers to remain anonymous to avoid retaliatory attacks) has had prior experience going undercover for the police in the UK.

Frontpage was the creation of David Horowitz, who is the founder of the Freedom Center think tank, which has close ties to the Republican Party in the US. Ray was one of Horowitz’s activist “volunteers” and reportedly an undercover UK police informant.

A warrant was issued for Ray’s arrest by UK police in 2008. Despite the warrant, he flew from the UK to the US without issue. Ray’s wife Dymphna confirmed that Ray was in the US, where, she said, he was “in good hands” with people who were “looking after him.” Ray then returned to the UK and was reportedly detained by UK police and apparently bailed for eighteen months before being released without charge. 

In 2011, The Telegraph ran a series of articles in which it reported that Ray was the English mentor of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. At that point, even though he was again supposedly wanted by the British authorities, Ray was attending political rallies, travelling as he wished, and speaking freely. Apparently fine with The Telegraph’s description of him, he was quoted as saying that he “could have been his [Breivik’s] inspiration.”

After ostensibly establishing Ray’s apparent credentials as Breivik’s mentor, The Telegraph went on to report Ray’s opinion that Breivik—who was said to have acted alone—was “part of a larger movement.” Clearly, Ray was quite keen to emphasise the purported far-right threat implicit in Breivik’s actions. 

However, there are reasons to be extremely wary of claims made by The Telegraph, especially those that relate to matters of national security. 

Con Coughlin, The Telegraph’s current defence editor, is the man who initially broke the false Iraq WMD propaganda in the UK. That bit of propaganda contributed significantly to the 2003 illegal Iraq War and the consequent deaths of more than a million civilians. 

After another of Coughlin’s stories was exposed as fake, it emerged that he had a regular MI6 (UK foreign intelligence service) contact. It turns out that MI6 had been feeding stories to Coughlin and The Telegraph for years. There is no reason to imagine that their liaison has ended. 

Robinson’s EDL-linked JDL UK Ltd was registered by someone named Peter Anthony Valaitis and by senior EDL member Roberta Moore. Valaitis has been appointed a director of nearly 19,000 UK registered companies, some of which remain active. Given his extremely sparse and highly unusual social media profile—especially for an alleged company director—the evidence suggests Valaitis is a “sham director.” 

So-called “nominee directorships” are legal in the UK. They allow the names of real company directors to remain hidden. They also enable tax evasion by allowing the true investors to remain anonymous. “Peter Anthony Valaitis” was the name used to register the JDL UK, but, once registration was complete, that name immediately “resigned,” and Roberta Moore was left as only named executive director. 

Roberta Moore has also expressed her admiration for Breivik. Only months after Ray—still wanted by police—gave his interview to the Telegraph, JDL UK posted an article titled “Breivik is Not Alone.” The Jewish Chronicle quoted Moore as opining: 

There are thousands of people in this planet that think exactly like Breivik. Many people are fed up with the way our governments are ignoring the people’s complaints.

Other than terrorists, state assets, and psychopaths, there are not “thousands of people” who think committing mass murder is a reasonable way to make a political statement. But Moore’s, Ray’s and The Telegraph’s coordinated propaganda purpose was to make people think there are “thousands” of Breiviks roaming the streets. 

When Roberta Moore was convicted in the UK in 2015 of assaulting two people at a Palestinian literary festival, she received a minor non-custodial sentence. Her co-defendant was Robert De Jonge. Both he and Moore were members of the ultra-Zionist Jewish Task Force (JTF). The JTF was established in the US by convicted terrorist Victor Vancier (aka Chaim Ben Pesach).

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) apparently made a complete hash of its prosecution of Moore. One appeal judge, who described the case as a “shambles,” subsequently overturned the relatively inconsequential conviction. 

Moore reportedly expressed her admiration for the Kahanist movement at a 2010 English Defence League rally, where she was photographed protesting alongside Jonathan Hoffman, then Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation. Moore and De Jonge turned up again, in 2016, at a pro-Israeli state rally organised by the Zionist Federation. While there is nothing to suggest they played any part in organising the rally, Moore and De Jonge were prominent figures, standing close to the speakers wearing their JDL T-shirts. 

The Zionist Federation in the UK is an affiliate of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). The WZO is the controlling partner of four Israeli National Institutions. All four “institutions” are officially deemed “independent” but are afforded significant Israeli state powers. For example, in 2022 the WZO allocated Israeli state funds for infrastructure projects to facilitate the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. 

Among the other Israeli National Institutions, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) supports the aggressive acquisition of Palestinian territory. The JNF is closely linked to the WZO’s so-called “Settlement Division,” which the Israeli legacy media has described as “acting like a publicly funded crime organization.”

In the US, groups like the WZO, the JRF, the ADL, the American Zionist Movement, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and the Friends of the IDF (FIDF) are centrally coordinated by the Conference of Presidents. In the UK, the same role is performed by the Board of Deputies. 

Robert Shillman is a US tech mogul and a major contributor to the ZOA and the FIDF—where he sat on the national board. Shillman is also leading funder of David Horowitz’s Freedom Center policy think tank. As you will recall, Paul Ray was an intelligence asset—and likely police informant—for the Freedom Center. As you will also recall, Ray infiltrated the Palestinian ISM and later co-founded the EDL with Robinson. 

According to a 2018 investigation conducted by The Guardian: 

Robert Shillman financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed in 2017 by a right-wing Canadian media website, the Rebel Media, on a salary of about £5,000 a month.

Lending further weight to Shillman’s reported financing of Robinson, the BBC stated that by 2019 Shillman’s financing of Robinson—through their association with Rebel Media—had eclipsed £10,000 per month. 

We noted earlier that a couple of days before the recent unrest in the UK, the so-called “Tommy Robinson” far-right rally was vigorously promoted by the legacy media. At that rally, Robinson’s production team showed his documentary “Silenced.” 

The film was banned in the UK by a High Court injunction after Robinson lost a libel case brought against him by the family of the subject of the documentary. But it can be watched for free on Google’s YouTube platform. 

Robinson posted on Elon Musk’s X platform that he had been arrested under counterterrorism laws. However, the Metropolitan Police (Met) said there was “no Met involvement” in his alleged arrest, and officers at the rally indicated they were unaware of the injunction banning the film. 

That did not stop almost the entire UK tabloid legacy media from using Robinson’s X post claims to suggest to the UK populace that Robinson had been arrested under counterterrorism laws. This implication led some of his supporters to protest outside Downing Street and demand his release from his inexplicable, unconfirmed detention.

On 27th July—the day of the “Tommy Robinson” rally—Nick Lowles, the founder of HOPE not hate (HNH), informed the Met, via Musk’s X platform, that a banned film had been screened at the rally, though he did not report that it was being openly distributed by Google. The following day, the UK Secretary General’s office lodged an application to the High Court for a warrant to arrest Robinson—but not Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google’s holding company—for the actual suspected offence of contempt of court. 

There is nothing to indicate that Robinson was arrested at the rally on the 27th. If he was, it wasn’t by the Met, who were policing the rally, and it certainly wasn’t under “counterterrorism” legislation. The self-aggrandising propaganda emanating from Robinson’s X account was then published and “spread widely” by the UK legacy media, which reported that Robinson had “been bailed” and fled the country at 10pm on 28th July 2024 after being detained at the border under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act. 

The Guardian reported: 

The far-right activist [. . .] was arrested on Sunday [. . .] by police who used counter-terrorism powers, but he was released on unconditional bail. Mr Justice Johnson issued a warrant at the high court for the arrest of Robinson but ordered that it not be carried out until early October to allow the activist time to indicate that he would attend the next hearing voluntarily, or to apply to “set aside” the warrant.  

Robinson was supposedly arrested and then unconditionally bailed after frustrating a “schedule seven examination.” Although he was due in court on Monday 29th July for another matter, with no active warrant for his arrest, why Kent Police stopped him at the border in the first place is a mystery. 

What is clear, though, is that legacy media continued their dogged publicising of the far-right Tommy Robinson mythos. His coterie of “activist” supporters was angered by false claims of his arrest under counterterrorism legislation. The general public, meanwhile, was left wondering why the state was using antiterrorism laws to arrest people who aren’t terrorists. All those fears and concerns were based upon evident falsehoods. 

The day after Robinson left the UK, the Southport murders understandably seized all the headlines, and, for a variety of reasons, public anger boiled over. It is a notable coincidence that Robinson’s 10pm departure was less than fourteen hours before the murders reportedly occurred. The legacy media immediately made Robinson the focus of national attention as the “influencer” stoking the far-right “rampage” in the UK from his hotel in Cyprus. 

By 6th August—a week after the outbreak of unrest—Cyprus Police still had heard nothing from the UK authorities about detaining Robinson. He then left for Greece, where unnamed officials said he wasn’t facing any charges that would hinder him from legally entering the country. 

At the time of writing, Robinson, who holds an Irish passport, is on something of a European tour and is currently holed up in Norway. The UK National Crime Agency says its extradition arrangements with EU member states is “streamlined.”

Despite the allegations and the headlines, it seems the UK authorities are happy to leave Robinson safely tucked away for the time being. More stories can and probably will be written and broadcast about the “far-right influencer” in the future. 

Legacy media are not alone in promoting the alleged far-right threat or the purported influence of Tommy Robinson. HNH has published books about Robinson and launched anti-Robinson campaigns. HNH has also helped make Robinson the poster boy for the UK’s far-right. 

To recap: 

• There is nothing to substantiate the assertions that people posting their comments on social media caused any unrest.
• The alleged scale of the unrest was wildly exaggerated and, in numerous instances, made up out of whole cloth.
• There is no evidence that the UK public as a whole is swayed by far-right ideology.
• There is nothing to demonstrate that far-right social media “influencers” are having any notable impact on public discourse or attitudes in Britain. 

In other words, legacy media and activist groups like HNH and the political establishment have been promoting an apparently fabricated far-right threat. 

We can add to the mix the fact that Tommy Robinson, the most prominent of the alleged “far-right influencers,” ran an organisation with clear links to powerful Zionist interests—aligned to “influential” elements within the Israeli, US and UK state. His now-defunct organisation, the aforementioned EDL, appears to have received direct funding from those same Zionist interests. 

It is reasonable, therefore, to state that, without the support he has received from Zionist groups and the publicity he has been provided by the “gatekeepers of information and news,” Tommy Robinson would not be the prominent far-right figure he is portrayed to be. 

The Very Useful Far-Right Threat

Much has been written about the power of the Israeli state lobby in the both the US and the UK. In Britain, both the Labour and the Conservative parties have powerful internal lobby groups that are evidently linked to the Israeli state—respectively, the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). The LFI, for example, describes itself as “a Westminster-based lobby group working within the British Labour Party to promote the State of Israel.” 

It is hopelessly naïve to imagine the Israeli lobby doesn’t “influence” UK government policy. When the LFI sent a delegation to Israel, then-shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornbury stated upon her return that the briefing she received in Israel “confirmed” for her what Labour’s Middle Eastern foreign policy should be. Unsurprisingly, the Labour government’s current Foreign Secretary David Lammy was listed as a prominent LFI member prior to the recent election. 

Other politically “influential” LFI parliamentary supporters  include Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, the education secretary, the chief secretary of the treasury, the energy and net zero secretary, the Northern Ireland secretary, the secretary of state for business and trade, the work and pensions secretary, the Paymaster General and Minister for European Relations, the secretary of state for science-innovation and technology, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. They all occupy powerful UK government positions, and they all are committed to promoting the State of Israel.

To say that the “Friends of Israel” UK parliamentary lobby is opaque is an understatement. Prior to the recent general election, the LFI decided to delete its parliamentary member list from its website. After making attempts to hide his LFI associations shortly after coming into office, Prime Minister Keir Starmer hypocritically said: 

Delivering change won’t be easy. [. . .] It will require a different way of working. One of openness, of collaboration and transparency in everything we do.

Just as the far-right JDL’s use of a “sham director” enabled it to hide the identity of its financial backers, the LFI refuses to disclose its funding sources. Though the LFI insists it is independent of the Israeli state, an unnamed UK government minister told the legacy media in 2017: 

For years the CFI and LFI have worked with — even for — the Israeli embassy to promote Israeli policy and thwart UK government policy and the actions of ministers who try to defend Palestinian rights.

Among the many leading UK politicians in these two Israeli state lobby groups is CFI member Michael Gove, a devout Christian who describes himself as a proud Zionist. Before stepping down from office at the last election, Gove announced—in his role as secretary of state for housing, communities and local government—the UK government’s new definition of extremism to the nation. 

The new definition is non-statutory, meaning it is not law. Nonetheless, as UK government legal advisor Jonathan Hall KC has observed, it effectively means that people will be labelled extremist by “ministerial decree.” 

When Gove made the announcement, he immediately listed a number of Muslim organisations and one far-right group as extremist by diktat. 

For the Israeli state lobby, the Islamophobic bigotry of the tiny minority we might consider to be genuinely “far-right,” is something of a double-edged sword. Obviously, attacking Islam and Muslims suits the current Israeli Zionist government’s interests to a limited extent. That said, the “far-right” influencers’ suggested ability to shape general public opinion appears to be negligible. 

Furthermore, being perceived as Islamophobic, whether that suspicion is well-grounded or not, doesn’t particularly serve the interests of the Israeli state from an international relations perspective. So why would Israeli state-aligned Zionists groups support the UK’s alleged “far-right influencers”? 

The purported threat of the UK “far-right” is used to claim justification for a range of counter-extremism policy initiatives, including the recent redefinition of extremism. Under the UK’s new definition of extremism, antisemitism is listed as an example of extremist hate. Of course, real antisemitism is an example of real extremist hate, but it is through the unreasonable expansion of the definition that it is possible to silence opposition to the actions of the Israeli government and “promote the State of Israel.” 

While some far-right figures like Robinson have shown support for Israel’s plausible genocide of the Palestinians, other moderate critics of Israel’s obvious war crimes can subsequently be accused of “hate” through the associated application of laws based upon the new definition of “extremism.” By essentially promoting the concept of the “far-right” threat in the UK, the Israeli lobby creates the conditions for criticism of Israeli policy to be cast as extremism and subsequently censored by UK law. 

Case in point: Recently pro-Palestinian British activist Sarah Wilkinson was arrested for a social media post in which she quoted her sources describing Hamas’ use of gliders and microlights during its 7th October 2023 attack on Israeli settlers as “incredible infiltration by air.” The word “incredible” means “impossible, or very difficult, to believe.” Certainly, there are many reasons for anyone to question how Hamas could possibly have mounted that attack. 

Bolstering the allegations made against Wilkinson are claims that she posted Holocaust denials on X. Wilkinson disputed that charge, saying she did not write anything questioning the Holocaust. This allegation should perhaps be considered in light of the UK government’s Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021—or the CHIS Act, for short. 

As pointed out by the law charity Modern Law Review, the CHIS Act provides a wide range of state institutions the authority to “commit criminal offences.” The freedom from prosecution for criminal conduct is extended under the Act to numerous state agencies, including the British Army. 

The British Army’s hybrid warfare units include 77th Brigade, which, UK government documents reveal, was deployed on social media to surveil and wage psychological warfare against the UK public during the Covid lockdowns. Since 77th Brigade is known to use “non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours,” it is not farfetched to conclude that, under the CHIS Act, units like 77th Brigade could potentially plant evidence—including the possible creation of fake social media posts. There is no “law” in the UK stopping them from doing so. 

When Announcements Aren’t Really Announcements

From the UK state perspective, there is seemingly no end to the usefulness of its latest fabricated story about far-right extremists. 

Following the first COBRA meeting in the wake of the supposed “far-right rights,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: 

[T]his was a meeting to pull together our response, a response both to the immediate challenge, which is clearly driven by far-right hatred. But also [to] all violent disorder that flares up. [. . .] I can announce today, that following this [COBRA] meeting, we will establish a national capability, across police forces, to tackle violent disorder. These thugs are mobile. They move from community to community. And we must have a policing response that can do the same. Shared intelligence. Wider deployment of facial recognition technology. And preventive action — criminal behaviour orders to restrict their movements.

This was not an announcement. Starmer was using the unrest to justify a raft of policies the UK state has been planning and pursuing for years. 

In 2019, parliamentary debates were held about the extensive use of facial recognition technology by UK police. Last year, the previous Conservative government stepped up police use of AI facial recognition, saying: 

The technology uses live video footage of crowds passing a camera and compares their images to a specific list of people wanted by the police. The technology can precisely pick a face out of a dense crowd, something which would be impossible for an officer to do. 

Contrary to Starmer’s self-evidently misleading statement, the government’s COBRA meeting was not intended to lead to the establishment of national biometric surveillance capability. That capability has been in development for years. Starmer was merely signalling the continuation of a global policy agenda. 

In April 2024, the UN issued guidance to the UK government on the use of facial recognition technology for policing protests, suggesting: 

Any use of facial recognition or other biometric characteristic recognition systems needs to be clearly justified and proportionate in meeting the stated purpose, and be suitably validated.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that mere months later “the use of facial recognition” was being “clearly justified” by Keir Starmer, whose “stated purpose” was to “tackle violent disorder” and the alleged threat from “far-right extremists.”

Nor is Starmer’s mention of “shared intelligence” across police forces a real response to the unrest. Instead, the limited civil disorder in August has been exploited to garner more public support for the “shared intelligence” programs that already exist. 

The UK Police National Database (PND) went live in 2011. Legal scholars describe it as: 

[. . .] a system which allowed the 43 forces of England and Wales, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, British Transport Police, Police Scotland, and other national law enforcement agencies (e.g. National Crime Agency, the Child Exploitation, and Online Protection Centre) to share information ‘to support public protection.’

While the UK government says it wants to protect children, its interest in doing so does not appear to extend to the protection of the children it accuses of being on the “far-right.” On the contrary, Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said there would be lifelong exclusionary and marginalising implications for children who engaged in the far-right riots:

One of the most striking features of the current outbreak of disorder is that many young people are involved. Children as young as 11. This is deeply disturbing. They may face life-long consequences: conviction, and a permanent record of their involvement on the Police National Database [PND]. This can limit their employment options in the future and ability to travel to certain countries.

The PND is run by a public-private partnership. It was developed by a private consortium led by multinational IT company Logica plc. Logica was subsequently acquired by the Canadian multinational defence and intelligence contractor CGI Group. The UK government continued its public-private partnership with CGI. It enabled CGI to provide data network management and support services to the PND.

The PND used to be separate from the UK Police National Computer (PNC). Since 2014, the UK state has been developing its National Law Enforcement Data Programme (NLEDP), which will combine the PND with the PNC. The intention is to create what some have described as a unified “data lake.”

The data lake concept has been in the works for a few years. In 2020, TechMonitor reported: 

The project will bring together data from the Police National Computer and Police National Database into a data lake. A 2018 Home Office report says “the intention is to enable searching of the entire data pool via a single free form enquiry. [. . .] The PNC hosts arrest, vehicle and property data. The PND hosts policing intelligence data that is updated daily, including CCTV footage, and information on individuals, organisations, weapons. [. . .] A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is vital that the police have access to fast and accurate data and intelligence that can be shared between forces. The Police National Computer and Police National Database will be replaced by the new Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS).

Prior to the outbreak of any limited “far-right” disorder, the Home Office announced the continuing digital transformation of law enforcement: 

We have completely revolutionised how the police work with data. Our Law Enforcement Data Service [LEDS] is a scalable cloud platform that empowers operational officers.

The UK state is partnered with global corporations like Microsoft to provide cloud-based computing to the police. But the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has raised concerns about this practice, especially in regard to the sharing of data with other governments and their corporate partners. This seems a reasonable concern given that Microsoft, for example, is also a US defence contractor and is providing technological support to the Israeli government for its continued “plausible genocide” in Gaza.

This contentious issue perhaps explains why the Home Office’s recent contract with Amazon’s cloud platform is shrouded in secrecy. Regardless of those concerns, though, the Law Enforcement Cloud Platform (LECP)—merging the PND and the PNC—is imminent. 

Two years ago, using the “far-right” argument of controlling immigration, the UK Conservative government committed to the rollout of contactless digital ID requirements for border crossings. Recently, the new progressive Labour government, claiming to oppose the far-right’s anti-immigration stance, said it has been “working closely with the European Commission” to introduce digital ID for travel from the UK to the European union. The British will need to provide machine-readable facial recognition and fingerprints to travel to the EU’s Schengen area.

Clearly, even though the UK population has “elected” a new government—and despite having chosen to leave the EU in 2016—the UK’s public-private policy trajectory remains unchanged. Irrespective of which political party or leader is in power and notwithstanding any referendum votes, the objective has always been to submerge the population in the unified digital ID data lake. 

Starmer’s so-called “response” to the exaggerated disorder capitalises on an unfounded public sense of unease about the “far-right threat”—an exaggeration largely created by the legacy media, the politicians, and international “charities” like HNH. The politicians and the legacy media have been in lockstep in this endeavour, and the result is the acceleration of policies that have been planned for a long time. There is no political choice. 

This propaganda effort is aimed at convincing the population to acquiesce to increased state surveillance and centralised control. Aiding and abetting it are a number of “influential” NGO “charities” and private contractors. 

The “far-right” has not been shaking the jar. It is largely incapable of doing so. But a nexus of state aligned “partners” certainly have. 

HOPE — Not Tate

HOPE Not Hate (HNH) describes itself as an “anti-fascist research operation” that “counters the politics of hate through research, intelligence, campaigning and community engagement.” HNH operations have evolved and expanded, according to its website: 

Research is at the core of our work, but has had to change to reflect the changing nature of the far-right. [The far-right] has changed again through the use of the internet and social media platforms. We are now facing a post-organisational far-right, with individual personalities and looser alliances replacing traditional organisations and loyalties. We have also witnessed a rise in younger people getting involved in far-right terrorist groups and becoming radicalised online. 

The far-right threat is the fastest growing terror threat in the UK. [. . .] 

We continue to be the first port of call for journalists, publishing reports and our annual State of HATE report is the single, most authoritative analysis of the British far-right publicly available. 

[. . .]

We’ve taken on [. . .] Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate and more. 

HNH alleges that the “post-organisational” far-right leads people to engage in terrorism because they are “radicalised online.” The purpose of HNH is to provide the “research” to purportedly substantiate the concept of a dangerous far-right threat. It runs campaigns and uses “community engagement” and the legacy media to spread awareness of the threat it says is real.

HNH is extremely well-funded by a global network. It often uses community fundraisers to finance its research projects and intelligence operations, thereby giving the false impression that it is some sort of grassroots organisation that relies on public support. 

Via the HNH Charitable Trust, HNH is supported by private philanthropic foundations and by global corporations such as Meta (Facebook). It also received direct UK government funding from the UK Home Office (Counter-Extremism Unit) until the end of 2021. Despite the apparent cessation of direct funding, the close relationship between HNH and the UK government continues to this day. 

HNH partners with Global Dialogue, a UK-based international philanthropic organisation that funnels funds and “expertise” from an array of global philanthropists and their tax-exempt trusts and foundations. For example, through Global Dialogue, HNH is supported by the Ariadne network. 

Ariadne links financiers, who are seeking to “work more strategically,” with organisations pushing for “social change.” It creates both virtual and “in person” networks enabling recipient organisations to access training and administrative tools, pool resources and work collaboratively to “maximise impact.” Through Ariadne, “philanthropic” oligarchs from the Omidyars (Luminate) to the Rockefellers (the Rockefeller Brothers Fund) to the Soros family (Open Society Foundations) assist HNH research projects and intelligence operations. 

In 2022, HNH unilaterally decided that the misogyny of Andrew Tate posed a “serious danger.” It could “serve as a gateway to wider far-right politics,” HNH argued. Therefore, HNH made the decision to “de-platform” (i.e., cancel) Tate from all major social media platforms. As HNH explains: 

We don’t call for the de-platforming of figures lightly. We understand that social media is an important space for debate and disagreement. 

Despite tipping its hat to the importance of “debate and disagreement,” HNH has proved by its actions that it doesn’t believe its own words. In fact, it appears HNH is vehemently opposed to debate and disagreement. If we consider freedom of speech a basic and fundamental ideal of a democratic society, then HNH—and the network of interests it represents—could be said to hold representative democracy in contempt.   

HNH assumes and, via the public-private network behind it, is provided the authority to limit “debate and disagreement” on social media as it wishes. HNH said:

[W]e launched a major campaign to reduce his [Tate’s] harm online. [. . .] In a matter of days YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter [removed] accounts run by Andrew Tate!

Tate’s views are, for the most part, repulsive. But if groups like HNH are allowed to dictate what can and cannot be discussed online (or off), the repercussions will be horrific. 

English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) argued it is essential to defend the right to freedom of expression for everyone. If we take Mill’s point seriously today, we must include the appalling rhetoric of misogynists like Andrew Tate. We cannot afford to let any individual or organisation claim the authority to censor him. 

HNH alleged that Tate caused online harm because his “content” was “plastered across social media,” had been covered in a “raft of newspaper articles,” and “appeared to be everywhere.”

HNH is correct, however, Tate would not have appeared everywhere had he not been widely promoted by the major social media platforms and the legacy media. Unlike the general public, whose social media “reach” is practically nonexistent, if Tate did present an online “far-right threat,” the sole reason for it was the extensive publicity he received from the establishment. 

In 2016, Tate appeared in the popular TV show Big Brother on Channel 5. During the episode, Tate was suddenly “exposed” for a series of racist social media comments he made four years prior to participating in show. In addition, a carefully edited sex-tape video was “leaked” while the Big Brother programme was being aired; it showed Tate hitting a woman with a belt. Tate was kicked off the set, making headlines across the UK. The woman involved later said it was all a “huge misunderstanding.” 

To suggest, as some have, that the Big Brother production company—the Murdoch family-controlled Endemol Shine Group—had done no due diligence on Tate and knew nothing about his controversial views is utterly ridiculous. So-called “reality” TV shows like Big Brother thrive on controversy. Tate had been invited to participate precisely because of his divisive views.

Tate says his father, Emory Tate, was a CIA operative. Emory was five times a US Armed Forces Chess champion. He was a gifted linguist and could speak both fluent Russian and Spanish. With international travel to chess tournaments a plausible cover, Emory may well have been on the CIA’s payroll. 

Andrew Tate claims he is a “a very large problem for very powerful people.” This, he says, has made him a target of the CIA. What kind of “problem” he presents is hard to identify—unless unhinged, sexist rants and salacious gossip are considered some sort of threat by the intelligence agencies. 

Though he was well-known to kickboxing fans, outside of the sports world Tate was relatively anonymous at the time. His public notoriety was subsequently manufactured by the legacy media and the social media giants who gave him maximum “reach”—just as they have with Tommy Robinson. 

The parallels between Tommy Robinson and Tate are marked. Channel 5 is a state-controlled public service broadcaster in the UK. Andrew Tate’s subsequent career as a so-called “far-right” online influencer was, quite literally, launched by the British arm of the global public-private establishment.  

Despite his reported online influence, which HNH asserts causes “harm,” Tate’s impact pales into insignificance compared to the clout HNH wields. That’s because HOPE not hate is a representative organisation of the global public-private partnership. As such, it has significant “influence” via the state and the legacy media. 

When it cancelled Tate, HNH proudly announced: 

Our campaign has received hundreds of items of media coverage from all over the world, with everyone from the BBC to The Washington Post covering it. Our dossier was even translated into German.

As we have already discussed, the UK legacy media is controlled by a small handful of oligarch-owned and state-controlled media corporations. The same is true for the media beyond the UK—globally. 

To illustrate: The Washington Post is owned and controlled by Jeff Bezos (Nash Holdings). The company Bezos founded, Amazon, is a sprawling global commercial “ecosystem.” Amazon Web Services (AWS), part of the ecosystem, is a contractor for both US and UK intelligence agencies and a major UK government partner. In particular, Amazon partners with the UK Home Office, which is currently led by LFI luminary Yvette Cooper. 

The Home Office is working toward forming a “data lake” of biometric digital ID—facial recognition and fingerprints—which the UN hopes can be used to police protests with AI-controlled biometric surveillance. It isn’t exactly clear what purpose the new AWS Home Office cloud computing contract will serve. Yet, seeing as how the Law Enforcement Cloud Platform (LECP) is a primary focus for the Home Office’s “digital transformation,” it is reasonable to assume that the LECP is what the AWS is set to provide. 

Much of the aforementioned strategic manoeuvring and partnership arrangements are designed to move us closer to a dystopian surveillance society. They are predicated, in no small measure, on the hyped-up, alleged need to counter far-right extremism. So, of course, outlets like The Washington Post happily promoted the HNH anti-Tate “de-platforming” campaign. The global network that empowers HNH’s extensive “reach” and “influence” is plainly discernible. 

Simultaneously, by so publicly “de-platforming” Tate, HNH and the likes of the Post effectively bolstered his “credibility” as an alleged anti-establishment figure. In so doing, they afforded Tate the apparent “influence” that made him an attractive guest for outlets like the Joe Rogan Experience, where he could sell his unpleasant brand to a huge global audience.

Intelligence Not Hate 

In 2019, describing HNH’s “network of spies,” the Times reported: 

They use codewords, encrypted messaging, secret drops in Indian restaurants and “bagmen” to deliver cash or pick up operatives in the field.The nine-strong team are not counterterrorism police or MI5, but volunteers for the charity HOPE not hate who have led the battle against Britain’s rising far-right terrorist threat.

The UK parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has collective oversight of “the Agencies and Departments which form the UK Intelligence Community.” This includes MI5 (domestic intelligence), MI6 (foreign intelligence) and GCHQ (electronic surveillance and cyber security). 

In 2022, the ISC produced a report supposedly examining “Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism”—referred to as the “ERWT threat.” In that report, the ISC said: 

The [ISC] oversees the intelligence and security activities of the Agencies, including the policies, expenditure, administration and operations. [. . .] The Committee sets its own agenda and work programme, taking evidence from Government Ministers, the Heads of the intelligence and security Agencies, senior officials, experts and academics as required. Its Inquiries tend to concentrate on current events and issues of concern, and therefore focus on operational and policy matters.

The ISC is a multistakeholder partnership that steers the “operational and policy matters” of the intelligence agencies. For the intelligence agencies, the views of the ISC are crucial in determining the allocation of the government funding they receive. 

The only significant example of an ERWT terrorist attack in the UK that the ISC can cite is the 1999 bombing campaign conducted by David Copeland against targets in London. Copeland killed three people and injured many more with three bomb attacks. The ISC also named a less-obvious instance of an ERWT attack: the 2016 murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by Thomas Mair. The murder, Mair’s arrest and subsequent conviction were extremely unusual. 

David Copeland’s 1999 bombing campaign, referenced by the ISC as a clear example of ERWT, has a number of questions hanging over it. Copeland was a real “far-right” neo-Nazi extremist who murdered John Light, Nick Moore and the pregnant Andrea Dykes when he bombed the Admiral Duncan pub—on Old Compton Street in Soho—in the last of his three terrorist bomb attacks.

Beginning his campaign on 17th April, Copeland targeted London’s Black community. His next bombing was in the Asian community. The third, on 30th April, struck the LGBT community. The official investigation stated that the counterterrorism police had indistinct footage of a suspect on the 19th but that this needed to be analysed by US investigators. They were subsequently unable to identify Copeland until 1st May, the day after he killed his last three victims. 

Simon Forbes, who was an independent advisor to the Metropolitan Police on the LGBT Advisory Group, reported that a Met Chief Superintendent said, “[W]e were tracking him [Copeland]; unfortunately he gave us the slip.” There is evidence to suggest that Copeland was being “tracked” both on CCTV and on foot. In other words, the notion that he wasn’t positively identified until after the Admiral Duncan pub bombing is dubious. 

And there are other clear indications that counterterrorism police had some degree of foreknowledge, at least in regard to the Admiral Duncan pub bombing. At the time, there were 174 potential LGBT targets—clubs and bars—in Soho and surrounding areas of London. Prior to the bombing on the 30th, the police visited just four of these potential targets to warn them of a possible terrorist threat. Three of those were on Old Compton Street, where the Admiral Duncan bombing would soon occur. Evidently the police had intelligence indicating a quite specific terrorist threat on Old Compton Street. This fact further suggests awareness of the threat posed by Copeland, contrary to the official account. 

But the questions don’t stop there. Copeland supposedly acted alone. He was unemployed, and his total income in the couple of months leading up to the bombing was £1800. Yet he reportedly spent £1500 on bomb-making equipment while continuing to pay all his other living costs, including rent and utility bills, during the same period. After initially telling police he was solely responsible, Copeland changed his story and said he was part of a group. Following his arrest, other arrests were made in connection with the bomb plot. Clearly, police suspected a “wider network,” though no further charges were brought. 

The ISC noted that in 2012 the intelligence agencies considered the ERWT threat to be low. By 2019, though, it was assessed as a “realistic possibility.” At the time, BBC propaganda was once again used to promote the threat to the public. 

The BBC reported that “22 plots” linked to the ERWT threat had been foiled between 2017 and 2019. As ever, without being shown any evidence, we have to take the intelligence agencies’ word for all the terrorist attacks they claim to have intercepted. In 2019, the BBC cited the conviction of career criminal (and apparently deranged racist) Vincent Fuller as an example of the kind of ERWT attack the intelligence agencies say they foiled.  

Fuller used a carving knife to slash a 19-year-old Bulgarian man while the victim was sitting in his own car. The Combatting Terrorism Center (CTC) at the United States Military Academy (aka West Point) noted that Fuller was convicted of attempted murder, carrying a weapon, affray, and racially aggravated harassment. The judge said Fuller’s crimes amounted to a “terrorist attack,” yet he was not convicted of any terrorist-related offences. 

In its description of Fuller, the CTC said he had an “individual pathway toward violence”—most notably his twenty-four previous criminal convictions and the lengthy prison sentences he had already served. People like Fuller are “passive recipients of narratives and propaganda” and have “limited or no connection to the organized extreme far-right,” the CTC report said. 

The “online” narratives and propaganda possibly “influencing” Fuller, the CTD added, were encountered on “mainstream social networks.” Finally, the CTC identified the “broader political environment” as the dominant “catalyzing factor” for the violence of people like Fuller. 

That statement is in keeping with everything we know about “radicalisation,” which is seen as the product of the complex interplay between a myriad of “influences.” Researchers have referred to these influences as Push, Pull and Personal factors. 

In reality, the only reason the ISC said in its 2022 report that ERWT was “the fastest-growing UK terror threat” was that the intelligence agency and counterterrorism police had redefined what constituted ERWT. Instead of terrorist groups committing terrorist acts, so-called ERWT “lone actors,” like Fuller, were now deemed to present the “greatest risk.” 

This new interpretation appears to stretch the Crown Prosecution Service’s definition of “terrorism” to the point of absurdity. 

Knife crime, violent assaults and murders are an ever-present risk in the UK, just as they are in every other country. These acts range from professional organised crime to opportunist street crime and domestic violence to the random acts of disturbed individuals like Fuller. Virtually none of these actions or their motivations appear to be linked to any sort of plausible far-right terrorist threat—unless we are going to call every act of racially aggravated violence “Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism.” 

It is evident that the reason some violent acts are being labelled “extremist” or “far-right” is to create the impression that the UK faces an ERWT threat. Not only do these perpetrators have no connection to anything we could call an “organised extreme-right,” but their motivations for committing their crimes appear to be more delusional than driven by any political ideology.  

Yet that truth didn’t deter the 2022 ISC report from pretending to delve into the supposedly fastest-growing terrorist threat in the UK. The ISC wrote: 

The new ERWT threat is increasingly driven by the internet and characterised by a technologically aware demographic of predominantly young men, many of them still in their teens who are typically ‘Self-Initiated Terrorists’. It is notable, and a matter of particular concern, that evidence points to a number of them having mental health issues. There are also indications that some have issues with drugs. Crucially, few of these individuals belong to organised groups, or indeed need to—they are radicalised, and can radicalise others, online from the seclusion of their bedrooms.

The “new” ERWT threat, then, is posed by people the intelligence agencies label “Self-Initiated Terrorists.” It appears that an undisclosed “number of them” have either drug problems or mental health issues—or both. They do not belong to any terrorist groups but allegedly turn to terrorism after being radicalised online in their bedrooms. 

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anyone is radicalised by the internet, let alone compelled to commit terrorists acts by watching YouTube videos. Where is the ISC getting these ludicrous ideas from? 

In setting the “activities” and the “operations” of the UK intelligence agencies, the ISC relied quite heavily upon HOPE not hate’s “research.”

Oral evidence, was provided to the ISC by Nick Lowles, the chief executive of HNH. Based on some in-depth analysis HNH must have done, Lowles informed the ISC that Nazi Satanic groups were having an “influence on teenagers.” He also provided the ISC with the definitive news that the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) was “deliberately being targeted by the Far Right” as a recruitment ground. 

Furthermore, Lowles briefed the ISC on how HNH had worked with Ruth Smeeth to identify allegedly “radicalised” members of the British Royal Navy who were operating on nuclear submarines. Smeeth is a former Labour MP, a campaign director for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), and  reportedly a protected intelligence asset of the US government. Also, until very recently, Smeeth was one of HOPE not hate Ltd’s directors.

The ISC used two HNH research papers to inform its decision-making. It noted that “Nick Lowles [. . .] told the Committee that HOPE not hate has informants inside a number of these Far-Right organisations.” 

The alleged evidence gathered by HNH informants was used by the intelligence agencies to justify its budgets and its operations. Even though there is absolutely nothing to support the narrative of the Self-Initiated Right-Wing Terrorist, it does handily provide an excuse for the intelligence agencies to ask for more money and a justification for them to move further into the surveillance of our online communication. 

Following the 2022 ISC hearing, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said: 

To maintain the UK’s edge in dealing with covert threats, we must protect our agents, our people and our operations. And maintaining the UK’s edge also means working with a wider range of partners than ever before. [. . .] The Extreme Right Wing landscape has continued to evolve away from structured, real-world groups such as National Action, to a diffuse online threat. From the comfort of their bedrooms, individuals are easily able to access right-wing extremist spaces, network with each other and move towards a radical mindset.

The intelligence agencies openly admit that the purported ERWT threat they are concerned about is not “real-world.” The only significant “real-world” ERWT attack the ISC can cite is Copeland’s bombing campaign. Not only were his crimes seemingly manipulated by some outside “influence,” they occurred at a time when less than 10% of UK households had internet access and social media, as we know it today, didn’t even exist.

Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson are supposedly among the online “influencers” driving the new, unreal version of the ERWT threat. The ISC’s 2022 report was published before the enactment of the OSA. Naturally, the ISC was eager to push it forward:

[A] great deal is riding on the Online Safety Bill[.] [. . .] [T]echnology and ease of communication mean that ERWT is a threat without borders. [. . .] ERWT is closely linked to a broader Far-Right movement—most of which does not directly engage in violence.

While the “broader Far-Right movement” does not engage in violence, the drug-addled mental health patients and violent criminals who become “Self-Initiated Terrorists” apparently do: they use social media and believe whatever their favourite “influencer” tells them. 

Therefore, the internet we all use must be censored and tightly controlled to keep us all safe. HNH is not only onboard with this agenda; to a significant extent, HNH is driving it. 

The Clash of Civilisations, Not Hate

The UK government’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) is part of the UK Homeland Security Group—formerly the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT). 

In March 2023, speaking on behalf of the Home Office in the House of Lords, Andrew Gordon said: 

RICU provides analysis on terrorist use of propaganda and exploitation of the internet to inform the UK’s counter-terrorism system. To support this crucial objective RICU undertakes open-source monitoring to better understand the media, online and communications environment as it relates to terrorism and extremism. [. . .] The work of RICU [. . .] has helped to position the UK at the forefront of the battle against terrorist propaganda, particularly online terrorist content. 

Breakthrough Media was a public relations company whose workforce was required to sign the UK Official Secrets Act. RICU outsourced much of its online “research” and counterterrorism activities to an “open-source monitoring” operation evidently coordinated by Breakthrough Media—renamed Zinc Network in 2019.

These activities included propaganda and psychological warfare operations. For example, RICU and Breakthrough (Zinc) set up the “This Is Woke” network, which masqueraded online as a “diverse social news platform” that hosted “critical discussions around Muslim identity, tradition and reform.” 

Amina Aweis—a young British Muslim woman—took a digital marketing apprenticeship with Zinc Network and discovered that its marketing team was creating fake online personas. Zinc personnel were trolling on social media, pretending to be Muslims, while the few real Muslims in their marketing teams, like Amina, were “shut out of meetings with clients whose target audience were people like” herself. Though Amina didn’t know it at the time, Zinc’s sole client was RICU. 

Pre-2019, Breakthrough Media’s primary task was to promote the UK government’s controversial Prevent Strategy. The strategy was supposedly intended to “stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.” 

In 2016, David Anderson QC (“Queens Council”—now KC) was asked by the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry into Government’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy to conduct an independent review of terrorism laws.

Describing what he called a “lack of confidence” in Prevent Strategy, Anderson noted that numerous leading academics had written an open letter in which they argued that Prevent reinforced “an ‘us’ and ‘them’ view of the world” and that it divided “communities” and sowed” “mistrust of Muslims.” In other words, the effect of Prevent is to bring to fruition Council on Foreign Relations member Samuel P. Huntington’s theory of “The Clash of Civilisations.” In his 1993 article articulating that theory, Huntington claimed that Islam presented an existential threat to Western civilisation.  

The same concerns about the effective polarisation of society were clearly spelled out by William Shawcross in his February 2023 Independent Review of Prevent for the House of Commons: 

Prevent has a double standard when dealing with the Extreme Right-Wing and Islamism. Prevent takes an expansive approach to the Extreme Right-Wing, capturing a variety of influences that, at times, has been so broad it has included mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation. However, with Islamism, Prevent tends to take a much narrower approach centred around proscribed organisations, ignoring the contribution of non-violent Islamist narratives and networks to terrorism. 

The UK is among the NATO-aligned states that have a long history of working with Islamist extremists. For example, UK-based Islamist “influencers” Omar Bakri Muhammad and Anjem Choudary openly ran the Jamaat Al Muhajiroun terrorist financing and recruitment operation in Britain. Al Muhajiroun created a pipeline of young Muslim men sent from the UK to fight with Islamist extremist groups, including al-Qaeda and affiliates, in Syria. Similarly, it is difficult to see, for instance, how the Islamic State could have become a significant paramilitary force without the assistance of the US-led coalition in Iraq. 

When practically everyone who questions state narratives is accused of being an extremist—and is usually cast as far-right, as a conspiracy theorist or, to a lesser extent, as far-left—the effect is to promote Huntington’s “Clash of Civilisations” theory. It strengthens the arguments of the alleged “far-right influencers” and invites support for their views. Simultaneously, support for Islamist extremism marginalises the Muslim community. It falls under the weight of unwarranted suspicion.  

It is noteworthy that Breakthrough Media, the RICU PR firm (now called Zinc), worked closely with many other influential UK-based Muslim organisations, including Imams Online, to promote Prevent. One of Breakthrough’s directors, Scott Brown, confirmed as much when he said in 2017: “Breakthrough Media has previously worked with Imams Online, providing creative design services for their work aimed at stopping radicalisation and recruitment to Daesh [Islamic State].” His firm, Brown added, helped Imams Online “get their messages to a wider audience in a clearer way.” 

Imams Online was part of the Muslim organisation Faith Associates (FA). Leaked documents from the UK Home Office show that FA received direct government funding to deliver Prevent training to UK Muslim communities. FA, including Imams Online, was also being used to organise community events and conferences to promote the Prevent strategy. By doing so, it was also realising Huntington’s “Clash of Civilisations” theory. 

Imams Online insisted it was “independent of any external influence,” yet it was evidently part of a network tied to the UK state. Qari Asim is a senior contributing editor for Imams Online and also a board trustee of HOPE not hate (HNH). 

Gurinder Singh Josan MP is another HNH board member. He is a former member of the Labour Party’s powerful National Executive Committee and was instrumental in removing several influential party members who were accused of antisemitism. 

Accusations of antisemitism, which were comprehensively exposed as little more than a political witch-hunt, greatly undermined the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was popular with the Labour party’s public membership but was opposed by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The legacy media’s relentless attacks on Corbyn—including widespread allegations of antisemitism—ultimately led to his political downfall. This enabled Keir Starmer and the PLP to seize control of the Labour Party and subsequently form a more “centrist” government.  

Anna Turley, another HNH board trustee, is the chairwoman of the Co-operative Party, which has an electoral pact with the Labour Party. The pact has established the Labour and Co-operative Party (LP&CP) as a wing of the Labour Party. With twenty-six current Labour MPs, the LP&CP is effectively the fourth-largest party in the UK Parliament and a major “influence” on the current Labour government. 

Turley is a close ally of Andy Burnham, the LP&CP mayor of Manchester, who is reportedly lobbying for a law that would prevent journalists from questioning the survivors of terror attacks. If successful, this potential law would practically end the ability of journalists to expose false flag terrorist attacks in the UK.   

HOPE not hate’s connections to the state and to the current Labour government in particular are extensive. For one thing, HNH mobilised its resources to effectively campaign on behalf of the Labour party in the recent general election. For another, HNH campaigned for the “remain” vote during the UK referendum on the question of EU membership. 

HNH’ behaviour is surprising, since, by law, UK-based charities are free to campaign on political issues but “must remain independent and must not give their support to a political party.” It is the responsibility of the trustees to make sure the charity “follows the rules on political activity and campaigning.” Yet rules-breaker HNH has been campaigning on behalf of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) for years, and its trustees are serving Labour Party MPs, Labour party activists and donors. 

Following the Labour Party general election win, Ruth Smeeth, Anna Turley and Gurinder Singh Josan all resigned from their HNH directorships. As yet, the Charity Commission has not investigated HNH. It would appear HNH is protected by the state. 

In 2015, the UK government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) created The Alan Turing Institution (ATI). Its purpose is to use “data science and AI” to “change the world.” 

To this end, ATI established the “online hate” research hub. It is a UK government-funded “project to collate and organise resources for research and policymaking on online hate.” The objective is to “cover all aspects of research, policymaking, the law and civil society activism to monitor, understand and counter online hate.” 

The ATI hub uses Zinc Network’s online propaganda and hybrid warfare activities to drive “social change.” Ironically, Zinc is tasked with countering “fake news.” 

The ATI hub—meaning the UK government—also uses HNH for “research” and to deliver campaigns which the UK state hopes will raise “awareness about hate and the far right.” 

Via ATI’s hate hub, a global public-private partnership has formed to “raise awareness” of so-called online hate in the UK. It is filled to the brim with public and private partners.

Among its twelve UK public stakeholder partners (all involved in government, regulation and law) are: 

• The Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) 
• The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 
• The National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO)
• The Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU)
• MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) 
• The Metropolitan Police’s Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime with its Online Hate Crime Hub 
• The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit 

There are also seven international partners (again, all involved in government, regulation and law). They include three separate European Commission bodies set up to counter hate, racism, xenophobia, and intolerance in the EU: 

• The EU Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online
• The EU Commission on Racism and Xenophobia 
• The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
• The hate crime unit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) 
• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—which next year turns 80   

There are two-dozen so-called “civil society” organisations, which tend to feature “hate” in their titles—and which contribute significantly to the intelligence-gathering operations of the ATI hate hub. They include:

• HOPE not hate (HNH) 
• The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)
• Stop Funding Hate 
• Amnesty International’s The Troll Patrol
• Stop Hate UK 
• Hate is a Virus
• Antisemitism Policy Trust

The six think tank and other research centre partners in the hub are:

• Demos, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media
• The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)
• Royal United Services Institute, The Global Research Network on Terrorism and Technology
• Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)
• Runnymede Trust
• Media Diversity Institute

Finally, there are six purportedly “private sector” corporate partners working to “change the world” by raising awareness of “far-right extremism”:

• Moonshot Countering Violent Extremism
• Google’s Jigsaw (Perspective)
• Faculty AI
• Zinc Network (formerly Breakthrough Media)
• Factmata
• Crisp

HOPE not hate (HNH) is not the independent charity it claims to be. Rather, it is a highly politicised campaign group for a G3P aligned to UK state propaganda operations. Moreover, it is closely tied to the Labour Party—in particular, the current UK government. 

HNH is also part of UK-based public-private intelligence network. Its research, intelligence operations and reports are used by the intelligence agencies justify public expenditures to counter alleged far-right terrorist threats that do not appear to exist in any meaningful sense. 

Hoping For a Far-Right Threat

HOPE not hate (HNH) is the focus of our discussion here because it provides a useful window into the activities of a much larger operational network. HNH is influential in the UK and to a lesser extent in the US. It partners with larger organisations like the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which has a global footprint. 

Illustrating this point is the ISD’s own description of how it operates:

ISD partners with governments, cities, businesses and communities, working to deliver solutions at all levels of society, to empower those that can really impact change. [. . .] [The] ISD is uniquely able to turn research and analysis into evidence-based policy and action. [. . .] The ISD has provided policy support and training to over 40 governments and hundreds of cities worldwide. [. . .] Beyond partnerships with institutions like the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum, ISD has spearheaded and led inter-governmental initiatives in the domains of counter-extremism and digital regulation.

To be clear: the ISD is an unelected, unaccountable public-private network that uses “research and analysis” provided by groups like HNH, among many others, to shape government “policy and action.” It is highly influential at the “inter-governmental” level and instructive in forming global policy initiatives such as “digital regulation.” 

The HNH’s partnership with the ISD and with other ATI hate hub members is a reciprocal relationship. The ISD supports HNH in its efforts to engineer UK and US “policymaking,” and, in turn, HNH promotes global policy agendas, mainly in the UK, on behalf of the ISD and its other partners. 

HOPE not hate started in 2004 as a faction within the “anti-fascist research” organisation Searchlight. Nick Lowles was the Searchlight co-editor at the time. Searchlight’s publisher was Gerry Gable, a man perhaps most noteworthy for his 1964 conviction for burgling the flat of political and military historian David Irving, who later achieved notoriety as a “Holocaust denier.” 

In 1984, prior to Lowles’ involvement in the organisation, Searchlight was commissioned by the BBC to provide ostensible “research” for its Panorama investigation, which alleged that certain members of the UK Conservative Party were extremist Nazi supporters. Rather than defend the subsequent libel suit brought against it, the BBC settled out of court, paid damages and costs and withheld its reasons for dropping its defence. Evidently, the BBC wasn’t overly confident about Searchlight’s “research.”

“HOPE not hate” was the name given to a Searchlight campaign slogan used in the run-up to the 2004 UK MEP elections to the European Parliament. The nascent HNH grouping, coalescing around Searchlight activists and editor Nick Lowles and others, like Paul Meszaros, provided the research for the BBC’s 2004 documentary “The Secret Agent.” The film reportedly “exposed” the activities of Nick Griffin’s genuinely far-right British National Party (BNP). 

Of “The Secret Agent,” Searchlight’s/HNH’s Lowles wrote: 

[T]he documentary had “Searchlight” running through it like “Blackpool” in a stick of rock. The magazine had approached the Corporation [BBC] with the idea of the documentary a year earlier [and] had consulted on the programme throughout its production.

The documentary had not just Searchlight running through it but, more specifically, HNH “running through it.” You would have thought the BBC had learned not to trust Searchlight’s investigations. But two decades was apparently time enough for the broadcaster to forget the whole Panorama debacle. 

“The Secret Agent” appears to attack the far-right. That is because the effect of the HNH research and campaigning was to increase “awareness” of the British National Party far beyond its own ability to attract attention. That single documentary, broadcast by the BBC to a national television audience, immediately resulted in a significant, if temporary, upswing in the BNP’s political fortunes. It was not without good reason that independent author and investigative researcher Dr Larry O’Hara described “The Secret Agent” as “the BNP’s best-ever publicity.” 

While the HNH focus was allegedly on its “Stop the BNP” campaign, it was using this perceived threat, which it was chiefly responsible for promoting, to support the Progressive Movement within the Labour Party. The HNH/Searchlight “anti-fascist” Labour election campaign was primarily fought in the northern UK county of Yorkshire. 

In reference to that campaign, Lowles and colleague Paul Meszaros contributed to a book published in 2007 for the Fabian Society, titled Stopping the far right: how progressive politics can tackle political extremism. 

For those readers unfamiliar with the Fabian Society, it is known as an incredibly influential eugenicist-founded policy think tank that formed the Labour Party and that dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). 

In the book, Lowles and Meszaros wrote: 

From the beginning the local [Labour] Party (including the MP) [. . .] decided to work closely with HOPE not hate. [. . .] We were determined from the outset to run a co-ordinated strategy that would bring party-activists, trade unionists and anti-fascists into a coherent, focused campaign. Anyone who was serious about stopping the BNP was now mobilised behind the Labour Party campaign. 

At the time, the public-private intelligence assets in HNH were sowing division in the UK anti-fascist movement, which had hitherto found its home in the UK’s radical-left. HNH was essentially weakening the radical-left and strengthening the neoliberal, progressive hold over the Labour Party—and the unions—as the party continued to move to the so-called “centre ground” of British politics. 

For example, in 2005 Searchlight resigned its affiliation with the Socialist Worker Party (SWP)-backed Unite Against Fascism (UAF). In doing so, it also split the resources of the unions, which as a result faced a new funding dilemma. This process, of HNH weakening the radical left to the benefit of the progressive left, was set to continue. 

Four years later, in 2009, the HNH wing of Searchlight, still led by Nick Lowles, boldly claimed that they had exposed Tommy Robinson’s real name and could “exclusively reveal” him to be Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Taking full credit when none was due, it was only towards the end of their revelations that they reported the information had come from Paul Ray, the UK police informant, Zionist intelligence asset and co-founder of the EDL. 

Once again, a story reported by Searchlight wasn’t accurate. Yaxley-Lennon’s name was revealed not in the video Searchlight referenced but in another video posted on YouTube from an account called “mrmuppet100.” That video used some footage from an EDL rally filmed in July 2009 by Searchlight/HNH. 

Analysis of the mrmuppet100 video suggested that Ray was responsible for it. HNH “revelations” referenced the wrong video, suggesting they hadn’t analysed any intelligence but had simply reported information from a source, likely to have been Paul Ray. 

HNH finally splintered from the Searchlight “anti-fascist research operation” in 2011. The split was protracted and seemed to be acrimonious. HNH received initial seed money from both the unions and the UK government. The socialist revolutionaries at Workers’ Liberty discussed the corresponding diffusion of the far-left in 2011:  

Gable and Lowles, through Searchlight and HnH, represent one of the two distinct trends of “official” anti-fascism (the other being the SWP-run UAF). Together, these groups benefit from the vast bulk of trade union funding and support. [. . .] At a time when the fortunes of the British National Party look grim, and when the English Defence League’s support seems to be plateauing out, we need a serious discussion about what is to come and how to counteract it. [. . .] A weakened and divided Searchlight/HnH that continues to benefit from trade union and activist support can only be a block on the road to effective, working-class anti-fascism.

That same year (2011), the far-right in the UK was a spent political force. Public support for its brand of racist rhetoric and religious bigotry—common to real far-right extremists—was, for all intents and purposes, negligible to the point of nonexistent. This is not to suggest that there are no far-right extremists in the UK, only that their realistic chances of posing any socially or politically significant “threat,” especially a terrorist threat, are extremely remote. 

Over the next few years, the radical left, with an assist from groups like HNH, was inexorably crushed by the centrist political might of the progressive neoliberals seeking to continue the Blairite tradition. The Blairites, like Starmer, eventually finished off the resurgence in socialism—at least within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP)—that loomed following Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise Labour Party leadership victory in 2015. Again, HNH trustees and “research” helped in this effort. 

After the split from Searchlight, HNH branded itself as an anti-fascist campaign group. With no significant far-right threat on the horizon, this presented an existential problem, at least from a public-relations perspective. Therefore, without any enemy of note, HNH set about creating the image of one. HNH achieved this feat by continuing to work closely with its legacy media partners. 

Between 2011 and 2019, HNH continually exaggerated the scale of the far-right threat. Social media influencers like Robinson and Tate were widely promoted by the legacy media working with HNH’s “intelligence” assets and researchers. That strategy drew attention away from the real extremists, and, most importantly for HNH, constructed a phantom narrative that purportedly justified censorship of the internet. 

For example, in 2017 an HNH intelligence operation provided the basis for the ITV documentary Undercover: Inside Britain’s New Far Right, produced by David Henshaw’s Hardcash Productions. The documentary promised to reveal who the leaders of the “new” far-right were as well as their scale and the nature of the threat they posed. 

But, as noted by Dr Larry O’Hara, that is not really what Henshaw and HNH’s documentary was about. Instead, said O’Hara:

As I watched the documentary, and deconstructed the content, it became clear the programme wasn’t fundamentally about these things, but two others: an attempt to undermine Brexit by associating it with fascism, and yet another plea for state controls on social media of unauthorised viewpoints.

The Undercover documentary alleged that the group Britain First had a huge following. HNH highlighted Britain First’s 1.7 million Facebook followers. Britain First leader Paul Golding was said to have 1.4 million “followers.” HNH therefore alleged that Golding’s post about the 2017 Manchester Arena attack afforded the far-right significant “reach” and “influence.” However, Dr O’Hara noted that Golding’s post “received a mere 9 ‘Likes,’ indicating these large numbers are virtually meaningless in terms of signifying actual support.”

Continuing to wildly exaggerate the so-called Britain First threat and alleged influence, undercover HNH agents claimed Britain First protests had “far more supporters” than expected. Yet, at around the same, when journalist William Morgan went “undercover” at Britain First conference, he found “a gathering of about 30 people with greying hair and loose polo shirts talking about how much they hate and/or fear Islam.” 

Following up with further investigation, Morgan concluded: 

[Britain First] consists of only about 30 to 40 real members, many of whom I recognise from the conference. [. . .] None of them struck me as very physically or mentally threatening.

The inconvenient facts Morgan mentioned mattered little to HNH. Its brand was being embellished via the documentary. And, to its credit, the public was increasingly fearful of the fake far-right threat that HNH had manufactured. 

In order to take its propaganda to the next level, further investment in social media marketing was required.  

Enter Blue State (formerly Blue State Digital). This fundraising and marketing consulting firm claims, with some justification, that it can “move people to elect presidents, change laws, fall in love with brands, donate millions, and more.” In 2008, Barack Obama surged from being an obscure US Senator from Illinois to the White House largely because his campaign was the most effective at leveraging the power of social media. Blue State can take its share of the credit for the Obama campaign’s success. 

Blue State has also helped HOPE not hate. Here, Blue State explains what it did for HNH: 

A fresh identity, website, visual language and tech platform gave HOPE not hate the building blocks to expand into new markets and fight the far-right on a global scale. [. . .] We rebranded HOPE not hate to create an activist identity for the modern age. [. . .] The new brand not only invites action, but makes it easy to rapidly respond to current events. [. . .] We then helped bring their anti-hate agenda across the pond, and launched HOPE not hate’s first presence in the US.

HNH is not a grassroots activist movement. It is an extremely well-connected public-private intelligence outfit representing the interests of a global network. It is part of the UK and international legacy media’s state propaganda operation and works very closely with the BBC and other “public-service broadcasters” in the UK. 

HNH has misled and continues to deceive the public into fearing the “far-right threat” that HNH has largely spun out of the ether. It has done this to advance a number of agendas. 

It supports the global initiative to censor freedom of speech—initially online—in order to protect the legacy media gatekeepers of information and news and to limit dissent against state narratives. Through its partnerships with the government, it is promoting the rollout of the biosecurity surveillance state and providing the “research” used by the intelligence agencies to increase the reach of state surveillance and biometric digital ID control. 

Perhaps worst of all, far from combatting the “far-right,” HNH, through its working partnerships with the ISC, the ATI hate hub, and its network connections to companies like Zinc Media, it is promoting “The Clash of Civilisations” myth and thereby fuels the racism and religious bigotry it claims to oppose. 

In short, HNH is actively polarising society. 

“Shaking the jar” is standard operating procedure for HOPE not hate. 

Shaking the Jar

Prior to the UK civil unrest that started in Southport, HNH acted as one of the leading UK representatives of the public-private network that perpetually shook the jar. The adage—frequently misattributed to P.T. Barnum—that there is no such thing as bad publicity certainly applies to the “post-organisational far-right” in the UK. 

HNH’s resident “expert,” Joe Mulhall, claimed that de-platforming “works.” It certainly works if you want to lend anti-establishment credibility to your selected “far-right influencer.” 

In Mulhall’s expert opinion, John Stuart Mill got it all wrong. Mulhall threw away Mill’s plea for freedom of expression and instead argued that information should be controlled—though he didn’t specify by whom.

Mulhall is of the opinion that, left uncensored, “ill-informed opinions will flood the debate.” He added that the “the quality or value of the speech” needs to be judged before being allowed, especially on social media. Emphasising the so-called ERWT threat, Mulhall argued that free speech is dangerous: 

One also has to explain how nearly a century of “sunlight” on far-right ideas has yet to “disinfect” them, and begs the question how many more people have to die in terrorist attacks such as those in Poway, Christchurch and El Paso until someone finally manages to comprehensively debate white supremacy out of existence.

If we temporarily ignore the fact that there is no appreciable ERWT threat in the UK . . . and if we forget about the absence of evidence that any terrorist is “radicalised” online . . . and if we overlook the fact that the “white supremacy” argument would have practically vanished were it not for the considerable efforts of groups like HNH to promote it, . . . then we can ponder Mulhall’s expert opinion for a moment. 

He is suggesting that by handing over censorship control to the public-private global governance network his organisation represents, we will all be safer. He completely ignores the categorical fact that despotic tyrannies are by far the most egregious perpetrators of democide in human history. 

So, it is not unreasonable to ask: how many more people need to be killed by governments before people realise that freedom of expression is the most crucial defence against democide and that discarding freedom of expression is an extremely dangerous idea?

Proposing to hand total control of all information over to the most brutal mass murderers humanity has ever faced is a stupid, suicidal argument. Acknowledging this is not a defence of terrorism. Political violence is an ever-present threat. To the extent that non-state terrorists of any ilk kill human beings, it is nothing compared to the monumental and perpetual violence of state actors. We could argue that the definition of “terrorist” needs to be expanded to reflect this fact. 

When G3P partners like HNH decided to use their significant “influence” to de-platform people, many turned to, or even started, alternative social-media platforms. As pointed out by Off-Gaurdian journalist Kit Knightly: 

What good is it spending the budget of a medium-sized country on influencers, bots and shills, and then stopping people from seeing them? [. . .] Outside the system is bad, they need everyone inside. They don’t care if you’re praising or criticising, loving or hating, defending its existence or denying it — everything is acceptable, as long as you do it where they can see you. [. . .] Enter Elon Musk, and “X”.

People like Robinson and Tate were subsequently welcomed back on X by Musk and immediately afforded immense “reach.” With everyone safely gathered back in the tent, Musk’s X platform, in particular, could be blamed for causing far-right riots. Musk, or rather his PR team, assisted by posting inflammatory comments like “civil war [in the UK] is inevitable.” 

The ant jar was certainly shaken, but the far-right influencers were little more than patsies in a much larger propaganda operation. All of it is based upon the strategy of tension, heightening fear and uncertainty and stoking social division.

Seeking to promote “The Clash of Civilisations” narrative, justify censorship, and protect the “gatekeepers of information,” HNH’s Nick Lowles wrote on X at the height of the unrest in early August: 

Reports are coming in of acid being thrown out of a car window at a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough. Absolutely horrendous.

This was a false statement. It was nothing more than a rumour. The “context” of Lowles’ post was exactly the same as the context which contributed to the sentencing of the people convicted of “encouraging racial hatred.” Quite evidently, given the purported context, Lowles’ post did the same. 

However, unlike those “far-right” patsies, Lowles had the blessing of the state, which was providing him immunity. As a result, he was not arrested—and so was not charged with any offence. Instead, The Telegraph and other legacy media outlets gave Lowles room to apologise. 

That kid glove treatment didn’t mollify him. Lowles and HNH had greater ambitions in mind. To all appearances, HNH tried to start a real civil war. 

As we’ve already discussed, the UK “far-right” riots amounted to some relatively limited civil unrest, street brawls, nasty insults and spats on social media. The disorder was short-lived, sporadic and—in UK terms—something of a damp squib. 

In order to make it seem more threatening, the legacy media often resorted to simply making up stories about riots that didn’t happen and blamed “far-right” groups that no longer exist. And, to make sure everyone was suitably terrified, HNH distributed an information guide titled “Staying Safe Amidst Far-Right Violence.” 

HNH was clearly concerned about the lack of real “far-right” anger. Hence, the anti-hate group took it upon itself to whip up social anxiety and fear. On 6th August, after the unrest had fizzled out, HNH reported: 

HOPE not hate [is] continuing to pick up a large number of actions across the country planned for the coming days. [. . .] HOPE not hate is aware of a list that has circulated widely on social media over the last 48 hours. [. . .]This is a “hit list” of aspirational targets that calls for action, up to and including terrorism. [. . .] It has been circulated by an anonymous fascist.

This operational “intelligence” from HNH was subsequently plastered all over the legacy media. Reporting that “there are at least 30 potential gatherings planned,” the BBC relayed Kier Starmer’s reassurances—after convening another unnecessary COBRA meeting—that communities “will be safe.” 

The BBC also told us that, due to circulation of the “hit list” on “social media,” immigration officers had been “advised by police to work from home, board up office windows and install fireproof letterboxes.” It was all extremely scary and assuredly divisive. 

HNH’s list caused the fear of disorder that “might take place—but didn’t—in Derby. HNH created the alleged “context” for Dmitrie Stoica’s so-called offending. 

HNH were perfectly content to risk possible violence. In Birmingham, for example, a group of armed Muslim men, opposing the non-existent far-right attacks that HNH promoted, engaged in disorder in the Bordesley area of the city. The BBC reported: 

[S]everal vehicles and a pub [. . .] were attacked by a group of Muslim youths, who broke away from the main demonstration and were wearing masks and carrying weapons. [. . .] The West Midlands force said there had been at least three cases of criminal damage, one offence where someone was seen carrying an offensive weapon and one of assault.

Unlike those who engaged in unrest in Southport and other regions, who were referred to a “far-right thugs” or “far-right extremists,” etc., the armed protesters in Bordesley were called a “group of lads” by sections of the UK legacy media. 

HNH’s undercover intelligence operations led them to allege that an account called “Stimpy” had set up the “Southport Wake Up” Telegram channel to organise the Southport “riot” that triggered the wider unrest. This was among the Telegram channels blamed for using social media to “cause” disorder

The allegedly far-right Telegram channel was clearly infiltrated at an early stage. Ehsan Hussain was subsequently convicted to two years imprisonment for “encouraging” racial hatred after he posed as a far-right agitator in the Telegram group. 

Ehsan Hussain was trying to lure “Southport Wake Up” group members to attend the Bordesley protests, where they would be confronted by armed Muslim gangs. There is no firm evidence to suggest HNH were involved in Ehsan Hussein’s efforts. The circumstantial evidence strongly suggests HNH attempted to instigate the confrontation. 

While HNH led claims the “Southport Wake Up” Telegram channel ultimately “caused” riots that spread across the UK, as we have no idea who Stimpy supposedly is, the only member we can positively identify was not a “far-right” activists at all. He was an “anti-fascist” agitator evidently pursuing objectives shared by HNH.  

On 7th August, HNH “researchers” provided an update of their “hit list,” noting: 

This single list [was] created by one Telegram channel, and likely one individual. [. . .] The fact that a list compiled by and first published in a relatively small Telegram channel subsequently spread nationwide shows how easily far-right individuals can spread fear and possibly mobilise violence by using social media.

It is absolutely impossible for one individual with a small Telegram channel to spread their “hit list” to a “nationwide” audience. The sole reason that the list circulated at all was because HNH intelligence assets reported it in the first place. Then, through its symbiotic relationship with the legacy media and the major social media platforms, HNH distributed the list as widely as it possibly could. 

In distributing the list, contrary to its claims of omnipotence on all things “far-right,” HNH had absolutely no idea whether any real “far-right” groups might actually turn up at the “protests” it had promoted. Thankfully, so impotent is the UK far-right “threat,” no “fascists” emerged. 

What did emerge was a national wave of extremely well-organised anti-fascist protests. All carrying the same branded placards, people in these coordinated processions marched through the streets to confront the “far-right threat” that does not exist.

The Financial Times reported: 

Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators turned out in towns and cities across England on Wednesday night in response to a rumoured wave of far-right disorder that ultimately failed to materialise. [. . .] Huge rallies in Liverpool, Brighton, Bristol, Newcastle and London mobilised in the early evening to defend a list of locations thought to be targets for violence, including refugee charities and immigration lawyers. [. . .] But despite fears [. . .] anti-racism protesters were met with little opposition.

If the “far-right” threat were genuine, it would have been able to “materialise” and mount “opposition.” HNH failed to attract any supposed “far-right” presence to the clashes it seemingly tried to start. 

This debacle, exposing the HNH’s propaganda operation, convinced Nick Lowles to engage in some hasty backtracking. Using Musk’s X platform, he was able to “reach” plenty of people with the message: 

Yes, the list was a hoax, but just look at the front pages of today’s papers. An anti-racist message is being transmitted to millions of homes this morning[.]

Probably realising he had blundered again, a couple of hours later Lowles added:

Just to clarify, by hoax I’m meaning that the bloke simply compiled a list and hoped people would turn up, rather than being arranged by local people. 

The legacy media glued the necessary cover story together. Sometimes the propaganda is so risible it borders on the hilarious. Apparently, the list was a hoax with Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints all over it. Of course, it wasn’t the Russian government that circulated the hoax. It was HOPE not hate. 

Speaking at the anti-fascist protest in Walthemstow (London), local Labour Party Councillor Ricky Jones gave a rousing speech to the gathered peacefully protesting crowd: 

They [the mythical far-right] are disgusting fascists and we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.

Jones’ apparent death threats were applauded by an Amnesty International “organiser” who had presumably helped distribute the placards reading “smash fascism and racism — by any means necessary.” The global NGO later claimed that its unnamed organiser didn’t hear Jones, despite having stood next to him and clapping enthusiastically at his speech. 

Jo Cardwell, the Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) chief steward at the Walthamstow peace protest, definitely heard Jones. She smiled broadly when Jones seemed to be advocating murder. Incorrectly and alarmingly saying the alleged far-right riots were on a scale never seen before, Cardwell told journalists that multiculturalism was something to be “fought for.” Thankfully, there was no one there to fight—just unanimity of opinion.  

Unlike the far-right patsies, the anti-fascist “violent thugs” do not face “swift justice.” Jones was arrested and charged with “encouraging murder” under the Public Order Act 1986. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is set for January 2025. 

There was nothing organic, grassroots or spontaneous about the anti-fascist protests. Although undoubtedly well-intentioned, the vast majority of people who marched are afraid of a manufactured far-right “movement.” Of course, racism needs to be challenged wherever it persists, but these people were manipulated through propaganda to believe a fairy tale. 

Without the constant stream of HNH public “awareness” campaigns directed toward influencers like Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, few people would have heard of them. 

Absent HNH research and its claimed infiltration of the far-right, the intelligence agencies wouldn’t have been able to cobble together their preposterous characterisation of the so-called ERWT threat. 

In falling for the propaganda, the anti-fascist protestors were unwittingly contributing to “The Clash of Civilisations” narrative that “far-right” influencer puppets like Robinson use to garner what limited support they can for their Islamophobic nonsense. 

Lowles had a point, however. The “anti-racist” message was being transmitted to homes across the country. Even right-wing readers were told about “the night the anti-hate marchers faced down the thugs.” Obviously, the slight drawback with this propaganda is that there were no “far-right” thugs for anyone to face. 

The more pressing problem is that genuine anti-racist and anti-fascist opinion is being abused by groups like HOPE not hate for the purpose of ushering in a biometric surveillance state and removing everyone’s freedom of expression.

The entire UK nation has been thrown into a fake binary choice between allowing the fake “far-right” threat to cause an “insurrection” or acquiesce to the removal of their freedoms in order to stay safe. If the people choose the latter, a global governance tyranny in the UK truly is “inevitable.”