Thread by @rajanbasra

On October 30th, a man threw petrol bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, injuring two. Minutes later he killed himself.

Three days on, the attack has been largely forgotten.

But it's worth taking a closer look at what he posted online, and what it says about radicalisation:

The earliest posts online are from a 2014 twitter account, with just 4 tweets.

His first message was “I love the world”.

A day later: “It’s time to intern all radical Muslims”.

That’s quite the one-two. The remaining tweets were about jihadists and grooming gangs.

He was following 59 accounts. 58 were mainstream; the type twitter suggests you follow when you sign up.

The remaining account he followed was the BNP.

So it seems he held far-right views since at least 2014.

He next popped up on Twitter in November 2015.

After the ISIS attacks in Paris that month, he posted:

"We're an island and we've been attacked before. It's time to close the borders, sink all these boats, let's sort out the strong from the weak"

His response was, ironically, exactly what ISIS wanted: to (further) polarise European societies, provoke a backlash, and force Muslims to decide “us or them”.

ISIS wanted to destroy, in their words, "the grey zone" and reduce the world to black and white choices.

Not all of his tweets were extremist, and on he was still following mainstream accounts (but no BNP this time).

He fired off a few tweets over 7 days, and stopped using the account.

It was “just another” Twitter user. A few red flags, but nothing immediate.

Then there's radio silence until he pops up on YouTube.

At first, some innocuous videos: him drinking in the street (2016), an intelligible rant (2017), and complaints about internet speed (2017).

So far, nothing wild. Videos sent into the ether, watched by virtually no-one.

One 2018 video suggests he was delusional:

"I will bring knife crime down by 50% in 2 years"

But it gives insight into his life:

"I'm 63 years old, I've been in prison, I know about violence ... about being disadvantaged ... and abused, and neglected. I know all that."

Then a step change. A 2019 video after Parliament voted to reject a no deal Brexit (on March 13)

Titled: "Treason buy Facebook zuckerman..." (his typos)

He said: "Facebook has committed treason on the British people. They have blocked Facebook and Instagram because of the vote"

Here we see signs of conspiratorial thinking.

Facebook and Instagram (and Whatsapp) were actually down on 13/03/2019, for technical reasons.

But for Andy Leak, the outage was deliberate interference into the UK by outsiders: "You will be brought to the tower my friend"

Throughout this time, the grooming gangs issue was still on his mind.

He even made a Pinterest post (!) about it in 2019.

(Look at the contrast between his post and what Pinterest suggests you use the search bar for... just unreal)

I don't have coverage of what he posted in 2020 when the pandemic hit.

But by the end of 2021 he was posting anti-vaxx content, so again we see elements of conspiratorial thinking.

Then there's his posts in the last few months.

In April he posted a video on Youtube titled "I am broken".

"I buried my 41 year old son yesterday, and I'm devastated"

Immediately after that, another YouTube video:

"I'm dying, but no-one will believe me. I've been dying for the last 2 years mate. I'm fucked. I just, I lost it 6 months ago"

And then after that, a truly bizarre video:

"If you want to be in on the next biggest dating site, contact me. £100 will get you a long way..."

In the context of him just saying he's buried his son, this was a real change of pace.

He also posted about his difficulties on Twitter.

(This account was created in May 2022, but was suspended after the attack).

Said he had stage 3 cancer, that his son Jamie had recently died of suicide, and his mother "was beaten by drunken men most of her life"

At the same time he was posting anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and general xenophobic tweets.

Less common were homophobic and anti-trans posts. As far I can see, anti-Semitic content was limited to just one retweet.

(Some of his tweets may have been deleted by Twitter after he posted, and we just don't see them in the Google cache we're looking at)

He styled himself as a “Defender of free speech” and “Protector of women and children”.

And then there were scattered calls to action and some signalling of intent.

These tweets are hints he wanted to actually DO something about what he perceived to be an injustice. Red flag.

All of this makes me ask:

What separates Andy Leak from everyone else that makes threats online but never acts on them?

So many others consume the same racist and xenophobic material as him - why was he the one to act on it?

He'd held these views for years - so why attack now?

Those questions are tough to answer. But when you put all of this together, we can see a complex mix of racism and xenophobia, conspiratorial thinking, and what appear to be mental health issues. I wouldn't be surprised if there was drug/alcohol misuse too.

In Andy Leak's case, it culminated this last weekend.

On Saturday he drove to a migrant centre in Dover, and was seen looking at the buildings, driving past multiple times.

This was possibly hostile reconnaissance (or was he backing out of an attack last minute?).

He returned the next morning, driving ~110 miles from his home in Buckinghamshire.

Eyewitnesses describe him “laughing” and “shouting” as he threw a handful of improvised petrol bombs at the migrant centre.

His final tweet, as reported by @hopenothate (who’ve done a good job highlighting the accounts he was following):

“We will obliterate them Muslim children [they] are now our target. And there [sic] disgusting women will be targeted mothers and sisters Is burn alive”

The next day the Home Secretary said: “The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our Southern coast...”

What followed was debate over the word "invasion", but next to nothing about how this rhetoric relates to an attack like this.

So far the police haven’t decided if it meets the “threshold for terrorism”, instead saying it was “likely to be driven by some form of hate-filled grievance”.

What is that threshold? Can it be publicly stated?

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…

As a thought experiment, let's imagine if the perpetrator had, say, brown skin.

That he made negative comments online about the government.

And then threw petrol bombs at an army recruitment centre, before killing himself.

Would there be a delay in classifying it as terrorism?

After Andy Leak committed his attack, he drove off, and told nearby lorry drivers (who were transporting migrants):

“Do you know what you're doing? Your children should be raped and killed!”

He then killed himself as a petrol station, just a few minutes away.

The "is this terrorism?" debate can obscure the insightful things Andy Leak's case shows us.

There's much more to say about this, but I'll stop here.

You can amplify this thread to your audience, if you've found it interesting. Thanks for reading. /END

NOTE: in the replies there is a photo circulating of Nigel Farage, with claims that Andy Leak was standing next to him. That is not true.

Here's the video, from the "March to Leave" on 29/03/2019 at Parliament Square. It's not Andy Leak.

UPDATE: Counter Terrorism Policing have today said the attack "meets the threshold for a terrorist incident".

While "mental health was likely a factor", the attacker had an "extreme right wing motivation", a statement says.

counterterrorism.police.uk/attack-at-dove…