Media Storm - Southport stabbings: Why do people join the far-right?

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

On Monday, three young girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport at a Taylor Swift themed dance class. They were 6, 7, and 9 years old. Eight other children were stabbed. A community, and a country, are in shock. Even though male violence against women and girls is commonplace, it can be hard to understand in these particular set of circumstances.  A 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. That is all we know about the boy who carried out this attack.  But - alternative narratives were formed online, and they spread quickly. On Tuesday evening, rioters believed to include English Defence League (EDL) supporters, formed outside the Southport mosque, screaming abuse and smashing windows. They broke garden walls, and threw bricks, bottles, and rocks. They set a police van alight. 27 police officers were hospitalised. The 17-year-old has no known links to Islam, but those behind the violence had been fired up by social media posts which incorrectly suggested an extreme Islamist link to the stabbings. What makes somebody hijack the grief of a community, and instead use it as an excuse to spread racism, Islamophobia, and more violence? How do people get radicalised into the far-right? In this Media Storm investigation, we speak to reformed Neo-Nazis, far-right grooming victims and undercover counter-extremists. We investigate the recruitment tactics of violent terrorists attempting to spread hatred, and uncover proof that mainstream media and politicians may be playing into their hands. We're finding out what pushes people to the far-right, and crucially, how we can pull them back. Hosts: Helena Wadia @helenawadia Mathilda Mallinson @mathildamall Speakers: Julia Ebner @julie_renbe Dr Rajan Basra @rajanbasra Music: Samfire @soundofsamfire Exit Hate UK offers non-judgemental support for individuals & families impacted by far-right extremism. For support please contact [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi Media Stormers, it's Helena here. We're still on our mid-series break, but this week, given the huge story about the tragic events that unfolded in Southport, we wanted to bring back a Media Storm investigation from last series, which is incredibly relevant to what happened this week in the Northwest Town. Before we get into it, a reminder of the Media Storm timeline, we'll be back with our weekly current affairs episodes every Thursday from next week, August the 8th. It'll be Matilda and I every week bringing you the biggest stories from the perspective of the people living it. For this week, we wanted to focus on events in Southport. A third child has died in the

stabbing attack in the British seaside town of Southport. The girls were six, seven and nine years old. Late Monday morning, three young girls were killed in a knife attack. in Southport at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event. All are love and thoughts and support go to the family of B.B. King, Elsie Dot Stankum and Alice de Silva Aguir. Eight other children were stabbed. At the time of recording, five children and two adults are in a critical condition. Understandably, a community and a country are in shock.

Children stabbed at a dance class. in a small seaside town. It's something that will cause unimaginable grief. And even though male violence against women and girls is commonplace, it can be hard to understand and increasingly shocking

in these particular set of circumstances. A 17-year-old boy who cannot be named because he is under 18 has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after Monday's attack. And really, that is all we the public know about the boy who carried out this attack. But narratives were formed online and they spread easily. On Tuesday evening, at 6pm, more than a thousand people gathered in Southport at a vigil

for the victims of the dance class attack. But then, at 7.45pm, a large group formed outside the Southport mosque, chanting abuse and smashing windows. Things escalate. The now rioters are breaking garden walls, they're throwing bricks, bottles and rocks. They set a police van alight. At around 9pm, police clear the area around the mosque,

but rioters continue to attack them. Many police officers are hurt, about 50, with varying injuries. 27 officers were taken to hospital. Ibrahim Hussein, the chairman of the Southport Mosque, called it a frightening evening. He says rioters smashed all of the windows and burned the mosque's fences while screaming and chanting. The violence was believed to have involved English Defence League or EDL supporters, the far right. Some rioters were from Merseyside, but many were from outside the town of Southport and travelled in purposefully to be violent. So why on earth are there riots at a mosque and beyond

because three girls were killed at a dance class? We'll give you a hint. It's not to do with people caring about the epidemic of male violence against women and girls. Those behind the violence have been fired up by social media posts which incorrectly suggested an extreme Islamist link to Monday stabbings. And we think it's worth saying that even if there was an extreme Islamist link to these stabbings, this behaviour is still not okay.

Merseyside Police said the 17-year-old has no known links to Islam. The suspect was born in Cardiff and moved to the Southport area in 2013. There are reports his parents are Rwandan. So what makes somebody hijack the grief of a community and instead use it as an excuse to spread racism, Islamophobia and more violence? Well, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Those who join the far right don't suddenly wake up one day and decide to do so. In this media storm investigation, Matilda speaks to reformed neo-Nazis, far-right grooming

victims and undercover counter-extremists. We investigate the recruitment tactics of violent terrorists attempting to spread hatred and uncover for proof that mainstream media and politicians may be playing into their hands. We're finding out what pushes people to the far right and, crucially, how we can pull them back. This is Radical Thinking, how to fight the far right. Today, we will ask those who have been in their grip, being groomed, leading groups, or going undercover. Because if we can't understand those across the divide, we're doomed to drive the wedge only deeper.

So my name's John, and I guess the reason I'm talking is because I'm a former right member. My name's Sarah, and I'm the mother of John. A teenage boy groomed and the woman who raised him. John and Sarah spoke to me separately, but their stories belong together. Oh, John was just, he was a delightful baby, all £8, £9 ounces of him. I was sort of just a very typical councillor state British working class lad. He was just a cheeky chapie, big personality. The class clown.

You know, a life like it is for everyone, it's not always easy. Money can be tight and times can be tough, but we had each other and we got through it. When he was 14, things did start to change. One of my friends at the time in school, he was already involved in the far right. One day when he showed me a post on his phone, he said, if you think British soldiers shouldn't be on the streets, share this post. I had an uncle at the time that was struggling, really bad mentally. He used to be a soldier.

And that was sort of my ticket into this online group. You just saw this really dramatic change from being very close and having a lot of fun and laughing to the point where it felt like he absolutely hated me. Now, of course, the group didn't immediately start sending me pictures and people doing Nazi salutes or anything like that. They know if they give you too much too quickly, it's going to scare you off. So it started off very, very slowly. It started off with people messaging me saying,

John, the only reason your uncle is struggling so much right now is because we send billions off in foreign aid. There definitely was a stage where the propaganda started to take a turn where it did start to become much more violent. He was just a boy that I didn't recognise. anymore. He looked like my son. He sounded like my son, but it just wasn't my son that was in front of me. As a parent, you try everything from reasoning with them to grounding them. None of it was successful. Everyone just saw him as a bad lad as a problem. Not everybody gets involved

in the far right immediately because he hates somebody of a different skin colour or a different religion. A lot of the times, do you have a vulnerability and the far right will manipulate that vulnerability to blame it on these groups. I think just a lot of the people who are in, you know, are just very hurt people. Parents blame themselves more than anybody. Night after night, I'd replay his life and our life from him being born, thinking, is he anywhere that I went wrong? My physical health suffered. I lost a lot of weight. You see lots of parents with children involved in radicalisation, sadly, separate. Would you say there was anyone to blame for your radicalisation?

They would be the far-right recruiters. They look for, you know, vulnerabilities that they can exploit. They look for autism. They know that they give somebody with autism a task. They'll work on that task until it's completed. They're looking for a lot of these people who, you know, are socially outcast. And as well, they look for quite well-built lads, people that have been involved in the military before. You think that they're safe at home.

They're in the bedroom online. You think what's the worst thing that can happen? They're not walking the streets. But I never forget one Saturday He said, I've been to a march, a demo And all he'd say to me is there was another one coming up And it was going regardless of what I thought So I said to John, if you want, we'll drop you off

I said, I'm not coming with you, getting involved in whatever you doing I'll go and have a coffee and when you finish Give me a ring and I'll pick you up He spoke to me more in the car that day than he ever had been He was so excited The demonstrations are a massive adrenaline done. That's the only way to describe it. We arrived and we said, right, off you go.

And what you didn't know, we went and sat in a bus shelter opposite, so I could see what we're going on. You're going into a town or a city where you know people don't like you. You know you're hating. You've always got a massive police presence. You know that it's going to be people there to oppose the demo, often in numbers more than those who are attending the demo. And it is almost like that feeling of walking behind enemy lines.

Within minutes my world just came crashing down. I watched him start marching and singing racial slurs and the pride on his face was just soul-destroying. That was the moment when I found out. That's when everything kind of, yeah, changed. It's only afterwards where you get home and, you know, you sort of wind it down for the day, you realise how bad some of the things they seem really are.

What sort of things? There was one demonstration where there was a young Muslim, woman. She sort of had a full berker on. She had no idea that the far out was in town. I remember she had two kids. I remember she was getting spat out. She was getting bath thrown at her. Ten plus guys saying these horrifically racist things towards her and the kids. The kids one day being suicide bombers. I made eye contact with her very, very quickly. Just to see the terror in her eyes, I don't think it's possible for me to forget that look. There's lots of things that I did involve in the far right. There's people that I hurt that.

I can't reach out to. I don't know who they are. There's people that I did try to recruit, the worst people that I did try to radicalize. It is something that I feel immensely guilty of. John, you left the far right through the government-led counter-terrorism program, prevent, and the help of an intervention provider. How did he help you to change your views?

There was around about 20 or so quotes that I had from the Quran at the time. I believe them to be like a declaration of war against British people in Western culture. And all he told me to do is, as simple as this might sound, is he told me to download an app on my phone which was just a Quran translating into English and it's obviously to research the quotes of myself

that I researched him that night and it turns out that all but one of them was completely fake and the only one that was real was taking out of context and at that point it was like that light bulb above the head where a real ice that I've been lied to in when it 32 you know as the famous phrase goes once you've had your eyes open to the truth

it's very hard to be blinded again I'll prevent both our lives I know what it's like to carry the weight of the world around on your shoulders, constantly be aggressive and drained all the time, argue with your family, fall out with your friends. It is awful being in that world. You know, if I can help people get away, I always will do.

There's so many parents like me in the same position. Please don't judge them. These people are very vulnerable individuals that have just been manipulated by some horrible organisations. A lot of the families are petrified of what's going to happen. And when we're going through that, we need friends. If Johns is a story of underage grooming, what of the generation above? Founders at the forefront of the UK's far right.

My name's Darren, Darren Carroll. I'm a father, the grandfather now. And that's me, really. That's about who I am. I could give Darren Carroll many introductions. Founder of the Migs in the 1980s, Luton Towns' hooligan firm, uncle of Tommy Robinson of far right notoriety. Ambassador for Exit Hate UK, or the title that led him there and sits him here today,

founding member of the English Defence League. I was a good lad at school, I was a prefect at school, I was an altar boy in church, didn't have a lot, no more happier than when I was out playing with my mates playing football or with my mum. After its origin in 2009, the EDL swiftly rose to global infamy. They are a notorious right-wing group accused of being violent racist. An intelligence suggests the EDL is essentially made up of football hooligans. I can give you the backstory of where I think it led to from this point.

Well, my dad died when I was 12. My mum died very shortly after. So at the time I was 13, I started playing up at school when I was getting into a lot of fights. So I got expelled. And then, you know, I've done a big long, lonely walk home. And I got home and I just sat there for weeks on end, really, trying to think of something to do. I've always been a very passionate person and my passion in life was my football

I'd be down to my local football club which is Luton Town Football Club and I was someone I was somebody at the football ground it was at a time when there was a lot of hooliganism going on around the country and you saw clearly the thuggery of a group of hooligans

who could never have claimed to have come along simply to enjoy the football there was a lot of violence in the grounds and indeed I was hurt you know punched a few times etc even as a kid by older men. Maybe it was my anger and my anger turned to hate. I started a football hooligan firm myself in Luton. There was a lot of social economic issues going on in the town. People leave in town. And that brings in its own fears as well. So if I'm going to stay,

what's going to become of my future? The thing is that so many people feel these things, what made you take such drastic action that you set in motion one of the fastest rising far-right groups in the country? 2009, I was going down to welcome the troops home. They had come back from Iraq. There was a demonstration or a protest. I wasn't expecting that. So it kind of like rooted me to the spot now. I felt leaden about it. We started a demonstration and in my mind it was to welcome the troops back through. I thought 20 people had turned up, but hundreds turned up, hundreds. But it just got out of hand. And it all went wrong. The home secretary bandled demonstrations in Luton for

three months. There's probably really no excuses for me at this point. We started a demonstration Birmingham and that's when we decided to start the EDL on that particular day. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Why was it the biggest mistake of your life? The kind of the EDL turned into an anti-Islam thing really very quickly. The liberties have been taken across a whole nation and the days of militant Islam walking across our country unchallenged are gone. It was just there all of a sudden you could see organizations like neo-Nazi organizations and then the chance went up about Islam and Muslims the battle for it was lost to try and turn it into anything other than that it was lost the EDL are now being

urgently investigated by various police forces this thing was like holding onto a team of horses with one rain there was EDL in every village town or city it was like where's this going to end up do you feel responsible? I feel responsible for people that turned up that were looking for help. Those people looking for friendships, for groups to belong to, and we're turning up thinking, is this the answer? The gravity of like someone looking to you for leadership to give them the answer for their issues and their life, that weighs heavy. And I'm looking at them thinking, wow, you think I've got answers to your problems. I haven't. And I kind of never told

them that I did, but there are people that do. And that's worrying. Darren, was there a moment that shook you out of it that caused you to turn your back on the movement you helped to start? One of the things that rooted me to the spot was I was walking in a demonstration in Birmingham and there was two ladies about my mum's age when she died and I went to give way as you do and they spat in my face they just said Nazi scum getting out of Brum at that stage I just felt so little about myself

you felt like if the ground would open up, me drop into it and then the pavement sort of covered back over my head it was probably the best thing that would happen at that moment for me you know, I wonder what, let's call her Mao, I wonder what Mao would think or say or do it at this stage, you know. And I know she would have been saying, then first 13 years I raised you, I raised the Orta Boy, the prefect time thing.

You should be ashamed of yourself, really. Why not leave all this behind you? Why sit here with me today, reliving it? there is a one of rectifying things there is that but there's also more strongly for me is if this can happen to me i know it's happening to others and i know there's people that are feeling disenfranchised polarized if you like all those words that i've learned okay but if i'm speaking up i know then that there'd be people that may hear maybe this podcast or my story it just might stop them words break through at different times for people and that just might just might

might be the right time and right moment for them to come off that path. Today, John, Sarah and Darren work with a group called Exit Hate to guide people away from radicalisation. It was founded in 2011 and since then demand for its services have escalated tenfold. It's one thing to grasp why people are radicalised, another to understand why more and more are being so. When I was in a weak position or myself not, feeling well, I was becoming more prone to starting to believe in some of these ideas. I reached out to Julia Ebner, a counter-terrorism expert whose research has taken her undercover into the darkest fringes of our democracy. What explanations are there for the apparent

rise in far-right extremism? One is the series of crisis that we've faced since the turn of the millennium. We first had the financial crisis in 2008, then we had the so-called migration and refugee crisis in Europe. We also had a kind of security crisis, as I would call it, with the rise of ISIS. Then now we, of course, had the global coronavirus pandemic, as well as the Ukraine war. And then on a completely separate level, there's a radical change happening on a technological level. Digitalization, but also globalization. have left many people feeling like they're being overrun by these developments. Some people fear that they lose their privileges,

and those identity crises could really be exploited by extremists. Extremist groups are sometimes quicker than politicians or NGOs in offering alternative solutions. They paint the world in black and white, and that can be very appealing. What is distinct about extremism today? The really extreme conspiracy myths and radical ideas that I've been looking at for a long time for the last seven years. I've seen them enter the mainstream.

It's an invasion of America. If you count the legal votes, I easily win. Now their leader stands in the House of Commons parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascist. We spend most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Saville. There was a time when the media provided a lot of amplification. They gave a lot of space to this really disfriended.

community at the time. And now something similar is happening in debates around, for example, trans rights, where we see that it's a hyper-polarizing and a hyper-emotional debate. Have you actually seen those debates being picked up by far-right recruiters? Absolutely. This is one of the main topics where they manage to mobilize new audiences. It's quite interesting because the trans-rights debate has been exploited to the extent that they are using a lot of the narratives that extremists were using in the so-called migration refugee crisis. There were a lot of similarities in terms of the language around pedophilia, painting the

trans community as people who would be at risk of exploiting our children. So there's also often this language of our children or our women. That has been successful with female audiences. And of course, extremists have in the last few years noticed that they need more women. women in a similar way really that Islamist extremists have identified women as key to seem legitimate to help their branding, but also to reproduce, of course. Radicalization is a human story, a story of grievance, hardship and loss. But so too is it a political story. People are not being radicalized in a vacuum. Their personal grievances are being

repackaged as struggles between an us and a them. And who are the thems? they're taught to fear and hate. Be it migrant or trans people, it's those that populate our mainstream debate, those used as clickbait. There's been one story sitting in the back of my mind, the terrorist attack that everyone forgot. On the 30th of October, 20th of October, 22,

a man threw petrol bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, injuring two. Minutes later, he killed himself. I was able to trace the earliest, digital footprint of his, back to 2014. And his first tweet on December the 15th was, I love the world. And then the second one, a day later, was it's time to intern all radical Muslims. What led Andrew Leake to attempt mass murder?

I went to meet Dr. Rajan Basra at King's College London to retrace the digital footsteps that Leake left behind. So Andy Leake had a Pinterest page. and he had seven posts there and one of those was titled Pakistani grooming gangs. I'll read it. It says, We in the UK have a serious problem with Pakistan and Muslim grooming gangs, grown men in packs,

track down white Christian girls to rape. This is part of their culture. These are scum, paedophiles and they will get what's coming to them. God save the Queen. Here, he's coming out with the typical narrative that was used by the far right in the wake of the Rotherham grooming scandal, but you would also find it in mainstream press.

You would find this reported in the Times, on the BBC, in the Daily Mail and elsewhere. More on that later. We've seen his thoughts on Pakistani grooming gangs, refugees as well. There's clearly a racialised strand here. What else is happening in the news cycle at the time that plays into his apparent radicalisation? The eyes to the right, 312. March 2019, there was a vote in Parliament against a no-deal Brexit. So the eyes have it, the eyes have it.

And at the same time, there was also an outage on Facebook and on Instagram. For Andy League, that was a sign. Facebook has committed treason on the British people. They have blocked Facebook because of the vote that was taken tonight. So this is straight up conspiratorial thinking. Are you aware of a movement that was pushing this narrative? This was actually a mainstream narrative, right? The judges were looking to thwart Brexit,

media was looking to thwart Brexit and so on. He seems to be taking that a step further. Just a few months before the attack, in April 2022, he posted a lot more about his personal life. I buried my 41-year-old son yesterday. 16 views when I archived it. He's just posting it out into the void, into the ether of the internet.

And then he posted another video. I'm dying. but no one will believe me. We now know that he had stage three cancer. I mean, it's difficult not to empathise with him. Bizarrely, he follows those with another one, again, posted on the same night. If you want to be in on the next biggest dating site, contact me. 100 pounds will get you a long way.

Something is not quite right with Andy. The year of the attack, Leake's extremism appears to snowball. on Twitter. Between May 2022 and October the 30th, when he launched this attack and killed himself, he tweeted 4,271 times. His bio is quite interesting. He's caused himself the defender of free speech, protector of women and children, and his location is listed as in the trenches waiting. So there's this tweet from June a few months before the attack. He's commenting on a GB news video about the Rwanda asylum plan, next bank holiday get to London,

let's bring this to an end, no more raping of our women and children. This is something a bit more concerning because now he's actually advocating specific action. And then on the 11th of October, so just a few weeks before the attack, he replied to a tweet that said refugees are,

quote, laughing at us. Not for much longer, there is more than one way to skin a cat. immediately before the attack he made one tweet which said your children will feel the pain we will obliterate their Muslim children

are now our target and their disgusting women will be targeted mothers and sisters is burn alive this is a red flag why are we looking at this today maybe I'm too optimistic but I always hope in the aftermath

of an attack regardless of ideology that there'd be some kind of a discussion it's something that I would hope from the media and people forgot about the attack almost as soon as it happened. There was almost no commentary afterwards about why did this man do what he did. It's not just a case of someone who was sad and isolated. It's someone that was sad, isolated and framed their difficulties through this lens of an existential crisis between migrants, Muslims and White Britain. The day after the attack, the Home Secretary made a statement

saying that there's an invasion of migrants, right? Where's to that effect? The British people deserve to know which party is serious. about stopping the invasion on our southern coast. In many ways, I think media coverage actually falls into the trap that terrorists lay out for us. They want to destroy the nuance, the moderate views, the understanding that could maybe bridge divines. They want us to think in us versus them, black and white.

And I don't know if that's the way the media is constructed. I don't know if that's because the audience that the media is playing into. You should listen to some media storm, and we go into the reasons behind that a lot. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast

and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helena Wadia and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover and who you'd like us to speak to.