Farrukh Dhondy | UK must check use of social media to spread hatred and incite violence

Going out of fashion

The skeptics get their way

When every loving idea

Is subject to commotion

The cynics win the day

But Bachchoo, still

The faithful will still know

That white and black are just dark

Or cleaned up shades of gray”.

By Sweeter Kavitaby Bachchoo

This week, a dilapidated sloop carrying an overload of asylum seekers trying to reach the British coast via the Channel sank, killing twelve people, including several children.

This is a recurring tragedy. These asylum seekers are, most of them, fleeing persecution from countries like Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and hundreds of others.

They pay criminal gangs thousands of pounds to get them to Turkey, Europe and then to Britain. The Tory and now Labour governments say the solution is to crack down on these gangs and shut them down. Easier said than done. The gangs operate from the countries the asylum seekers come from, through subsidiaries in Europe and through lackeys in France who are low-level members of the gangs and who are charged with cramming perhaps ninety people into a dinghy designed for thirty or forty and turning them loose at night to sink or swim if the boat collapses.

French authorities, who are subsidised by the British government for their crackdown on people-smuggling gangs, have openly stated that they blame the laxity of British labour laws, which allow for cheap immigrant labour, for the lure of these asylum seekers.

Those who survive the crossing are picked up by the British Navy or Coastguard and endure months or even years of life in disarray while their asylum claims are assessed by a Home Office department that has proven to be slow and grossly understaffed.

The accommodation of asylum seekers during this process is seen by the agitators as an unnecessary drain on the public purse and therefore on the British taxpayer.

In July this year, three very young children were brutally murdered at a dance class in Stockport. A young man, who was familiar with the Taylor Swift dance class, entered with a sword and attacked the children and the adults who then confronted him.

His identity, under British law that prohibits child offenders from being named, was withheld from the media. Rioters, anti-immigrants of any kind and others who have long believed and claimed that “Muslim” immigrants are responsible for terrible crimes, swung into action and took to social media.

They included far-right politicians such as Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, who said on television that police were withholding the killer’s identity because he may have been a Muslim immigrant.

I have to be clear here. Mr Farage did not say this explicitly. He simply said that we were not being told the whole truth. And yet I think that people who vote for Mr Farage and Reform and follow the policies of Mr Farage and Reform would take the implication that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker and that this type of horrific slaughter was attributable to such a person.

The incitement worked. From July 30 to August 5, riots ensued in perhaps twenty cities across the UK. Hundreds of rioters attempted to set fire to mosques and buildings housing asylum seekers, and attacked police on duty to keep the peace.

The Labour government did not sit idly by and Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper quickly sent in the police to stop the criminal activity.

You may remember, dear reader, that that guy Elon Musk used his X platform to ridiculously claim that Britain was on the “brink of civil war”.

Hundreds of arrests were made, some for throwing stones at police, others for trying to set fire to buildings housing asylum seekers, and still others for inciting attacks on Muslims and mosques.

Some offences are ridiculous. Babara Barker, 52, from Manchester, pleaded not guilty to a charge of violent disorder for buying eggs which were then used by protesters to throw during a riot.

Some are more serious: Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor, posted this message on Musk’s social platform X: “Mass deportation now, burn down all the f****** hotels full of these bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist then so be it.”

I think, dear reader, that this post makes Lucy more than just a racist.

Provocative arsonist? “Intellectually challenged” idiot? The political F-word?

Another perpetrator called for setting fire to mosques with worshippers inside.

According to the latest statistics, 800 people have been charged with offences arising from the riots. Some of them were not physically abusive, setting fire to rubbish bins and trying to push them through the doors of asylum seekers’ residences. They were provocateurs from the safety of their premises, using social platforms — provocateurs of the unfortunate; evil shepherds inciting filthy sheep.

The government has taken notice and is now trying to find a way to prevent the use of social media to spread hate and provoke attacks, as we saw in early August. No doubt some right-wing crybabies (and I could name names — the Spectator And Telegraph columnists?) will characterize it as an attack on freedom of expression.

It is not. Expressing hatred should be allowed. Inciting violence against Muslims, Jews, immigrants, or even Zoroastrians, should not be.