As asylum seekers' centres go into lockdown in preparation for another day of violent protests in the UK on Wednesday, X owner Elon Musk has stoked tensions by labelling British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “#TwoTierKier” and spreading a far-right conspiracy theory claiming white rioters are treated more harshly by police than minorities.
Musk has been trying for days to use his enormous influence to suggest that diversity is the cause of the riots: “When incompatible cultures are brought together without assimilation, conflict is inevitable,” Musk wrote. Responding to a video of riots in Liverpool on Monday, Musk warned: “Civil war is inevitable.”
Six thousand police officers are on standby in response to far-right figures sharing a list of dozens of targets, including the locations of asylum centres and the offices of lawyers who help asylum seekers. Officers have faced resistance from X to remove posts deemed a threat to national security, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Following the deaths of three children in a mass stabbing in Southport last week, which sparked the riots, conspiracies flooded social media platforms, including X. But it was on Telegram that much of the initial organising for the attacks took place.
According to a WIRED review of multiple Telegram channels, far-right channels not only posted information about the locations and times of protests, but also shared information about making Molotov cocktails and setting fire to buildings.
But while Musk and X have done little to stop their activities, it appears that Telegram has taken action against at least one channel set up to spread hate and disinformation surrounding the Southport stabbings.
The Telegram channel “Southport Wake Up” was set up within hours of the stabbing incident last week and quickly gained a huge following. It shared details of local protests but quickly degenerated into violent threats against named individuals and locations.
On Monday night, Telegram appeared to remove the channel, which at the time had nearly 15,000 members. It is unclear whether Telegram made the decision on its own or was ordered to do so by authorities in the United Kingdom.
The channel's creator, who was reported to police by investigators but whose name has not been publicly released, has attempted to set up new channels several times, but all of them were shut down within hours of being created.
Telegram told WIRED that its moderators “are actively monitoring the situation and removing channels and posts that incite violence.”
A spokesperson told WIRED the Home Office could not comment on whether it had called for Stockport Wakeup's telegram channel to be blocked, as it was “an operational issue”.
Many far-right figures had migrated to Telegram in recent years after being kicked off all other platforms due to Telegram’s notoriously lax censorship. But since Musk took over Twitter in November 2022, many of those previously banned extremists have been welcomed back, including Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the leader of the now-defunct English Defence League (EDL), who goes by the name Tommy Robinson.
