Farrukh Dhondy | UK should check social media use to spread hatred, instigate violence

Goes out of fashion

The sceptics have their way

When every loving notion

Is subject to commotion

The cynics win the day

But Bachchoo, even so

The faithful will still know

That white and black are merely dark

Or cleaned up shades of grey”.

From Sweeter Kavita, by Bachchoo

This week a flimsy dingy carrying an overload of wretched asylum seekers trying to get to British shores across the English Channel sank, killing twelve people -- including several children.

This is a recurring tragedy. These asylum seekers are, most of them at least, fleeing persecution from countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and a hundred others.

They pay criminal gangs thousands of pounds to get them to Turkey, Europe and then to Britain. The Tory and now the Labour government say the solution is to target and eliminate these gangs. Easier said than done. The gangs operate from the countries where the asylum seekers originate, through subsidiaries in Europe and to flunkeys in France who are low-level members of the gangs and are entrusted with cramming perhaps ninety people onto a dingy meant to hold thirty or forty and setting them loose at night to sink or swim if the boat collapses.

The French authorities, whom the UK governments subsidise for the operations of crackdown on the people-smuggling gangs, have publicly stated that they blame Britain’s lax employment laws, which facilitate cheap immigrant labour, which lure these asylum-seekers.

Those who survive the crossings are picked up by Britain’s Royal Navy or the Coast Guard and lead a suspended life for months and even years while their claims to asylum are being assessed by what has been proved to be a slow and woefully under-manned department of the home office.

Accommodating the asylum-seekers during this process is seen by the rabble-rousers as an unnecessary drain on the exchequer and hence the British taxpayer.

In July this year three very young children were brutally murdered in a dance class in Stockport when a young man, with some acquaintance with this Taylor-Swift-themed dance class, entered with a sword and attacked the children and the adults who then confronted him.

His identity, under British law which forbids under-age criminals being named, was kept from the media. Rabble-rousers, people opposed to immigrants of any sort and others who have long felt and asserted that “Muslim” immigrants are responsible for horrible crimes, got in the act and onto the social media.

These included far-right politicians such as the leader of the Reform Party, Nigel Farage, who said on TV that the police were keeping the identity of the murderer under wraps because he was perhaps a Muslim immigrant.

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

The rabble-rousing worked. Riots followed in perhaps twenty cities of the UK from July 30 to August 5. Hundreds of rioters attempted to set fire to mosques and buildings where asylum seekers were housed and attacked the police who were on duty to preserve the peace.

The Labour government was not going to stand by and Sir Keir Starmer and home secretary Yvette Cooper swiftly deployed the police in force to stop this thuggery.

You may recall, gentle reader, that the fellow Elon Musk used his X platform to ridiculously assert that Britain was on the “brink of civil war”.

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

Some of the 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 the protestors 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, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care ... If that makes me racist, so be it.”

I think, gentle reader, the post makes Lucy more than just a racist.

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

Another offender called for the burning of mosques with the worshippers inside.

The latest statistic says that 800 people have been charged with offences arising from the riots. Some of these didn’t offend physically by setting fire to bins and attempting 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 hapless; malevolent shepherds goading grubby sheep.

The government has taken note of it and now seeks to find a way to prevent the use of the social media to spread hatred and provoke attacks such as we saw in early August. No doubt some right-wing cry-babies (and I can name names -- the Spectator and Telegraph columnists?) will characterise it as an attack on free speech.

It isn’t. Expressing hatred should be allowed. Instigating violence against Muslims, Jews, immigrants or even Zoroastrians, shouldn’t.