The far right has conquered space on social media and has become more dangerous than ever.

The resurgence of far-right violence in the UK, such as that seen in recent days, is largely due to the decision to allow its leaders to return to social media with disinformation manoeuvres, say researchers interviewed by the British press.

Bristol University Professor Stefan Lewandowsky, disinformation expert and ISD policy director Jacob Davey and Hope Not Hate research director Joe Mulhall agree that social media “like X” are fuelling the rise of extremism by giving their “leader figures” access to a platform to manoeuvre violence to their advantage through lies.

According to these researchers, the situation is aggravated by the multiplicity of “unknown and unreliable sources” that have taken the traditional place of an immediately identifiable political structure or even movement.

The experts spoke to The Guardian after far-right riots in several English cities and Belfast, Northern Ireland, over the past three days following the killing of three girls in Southport, north-west England, in an attack on a children’s dance studio last Monday.

The Independent and The Prospect magazine, for their part, tracked down the original messages calling for violence based on research by Professor Mark Owen Jones of Hamid bin Khalifa University in Doha, an expert in social justice, political repression and digital authoritarianism.

Jacob Davey of the ISD told the Guardian that the danger was growing as “traditional” fascist movements such as the English Defence League (EDL) ceased to function as an organisation and expanded their activities onto social media.

In the UK, as elsewhere, there is now a “much more decentralised far-right movement,” he told the Guardian. “There have been high-profile figures at the protests, including some outspoken neo-Nazis, but there is also an informal network that includes concerned locals and football hooligans.”

“All these people are connected by these ‘online’ networks, activated by ‘deeply cynical’ figures, many of whom are based outside the country, inspired by viral disinformation coming from unknown and unreliable sources.”

According to Joe Mulhall, a researcher at Hope Not Hate, it is a “post-organisational” movement in which far-right leaders manipulate people into “taking ‘special’ measures or posting ‘online’ their own misleading and false videos on issues such as migrants and child care networks.”

The murder of three children in Southport has sparked a spiral of growing violence, fuelled by false claims that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker named “Ali al-Shakati”.

According to Mark Owen Jones’ investigation, “just hours after the boy was arrested for stabbing” and authorities assured he was born in the UK 17 years ago, “false stories began to spread on social media identifying him as a Muslim immigrant” under “MI6 surveillance”. [serviços secretos] and Liverpool Mental Health Services.”

None of this is true, writes Prospect editor Alan Rusbridger, citing research by Mark Owen Jones, who found that the “suggestion quickly gained 27 million social media engagements” following posts by “self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate”, detained by Romanian authorities for human trafficking, rape and organised crime, who has ten million followers, and British far-right leader Tommy Robinson, who has 800,000.

“One of the most prominent amplifiers of this disinformation,” writes Alan Rusbridger, “was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now,” which began by broadcasting “videos from Russian motor rallies,” although it may claim origins in Pakistan or the US.

In this context, the leader of the far-right Reform Party, Nigel Farage, who distinguished himself in the Brexit campaign, simply stated that the press and the authorities “were not telling the truth”, asking why “the incident was not treated as an act of terrorism”.

The editor of Prospect, in an opinion piece in The Independent, directly blames Elon Musk for a significant portion of the polls, removing controls on false information and support for violence in X (formerly Twitter)), when resetting previously blocked accounts, after purchasing the network.

Professor Stefan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol criticises Facebook’s ‘scandal machine’: ‘This is a serious problem and could be easily solved by changing the algorithms so that they highlight information based on quality rather than shame.’

“There is strong evidence that blocking works. If you exclude someone from a social network, their influence is reduced,” said the disinformation researcher, although he cautioned against the risk of “some bias” in followers to other platforms and the need to “not act as a censor.”

Jacob Davey reminded The Guardian that far-right online activity needs the right conditions to thrive, from unemployment to housing. “The answer from the far right is simple: ‘The reason you haven’t had a pay rise is because of this group.’”

Mulhall believes there is an urgent need for a community cohesion strategy, launched by central government itself and extended to the local level. “Multiculturalism demands.” “When [diferentes comunidades] interact,” in clubs, parks or libraries, “it is more difficult to spread misinformation.”

Davey called for “much closer cooperation between government departments” and “links between local authorities and the police.” “We’ve seen the far right emboldened” by the lack of such cooperation, said an ISD investigator, recalling recent attacks on migrant centres in Kirby and Dover. “This didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said, referring to the violence of recent days.

The editor of Prospect reinforces the warning about social networks: “We risk returning in a dream to the world analyzed by Hannah Arendt, six years after the Second World War.” And in conclusion, he quotes one of the philosopher’s key works, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “The ideal subject of a totalitarian regime is not a convinced Nazi or a convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, as well as the distinction between truth and lies, no longer exists.”