Thread by @marcowenjones

1/ 🧵There is another anti-immigrant, racist and unsubstantiated rumour being circulated online about the tragic stabbing of a woman in #Brantham, UK. I just wanted to provide some analysis of the emergence of this rumour, and the protagonists and sequence of the story. #Southport

2/ The known facts. A woman called Anita Rose was tragically stabbed and killed as as she walked her dog on Wednesday 24th July. A number of people have been arrested in the course of the investigations. Apart from age and sex, no other information has been publicly shared.

3/ Cue a pro-Trump account on Jul 30 says without basis that a 'Somali' man was arrested. She links to an @Daily_Express article about the murder but the article does not mention the ethnicity of the murderer.

4/ Then lots of anonymous accounts start also saying that they 'heard' the attacker was Somali - none providing evidence. These rumours quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of impressions. Again, no one providing any links, buts lots of 'I saw it somewhere'

5/ Then the 'influencers' picked up and spread the rumours. Many of those people are the exact same people who spread the false rumours about the #Southport stabbings, including @DaveAtherton20 , @europeinvasionn and @AshleaSimonBF . Again, none of them provided evidence.

6/ Indeed, @daveatherton20, who apologised recently for spreading false news, admits that his source for the 'Somali' conjecture are 'two followers'. Always a reliable source - two anonymous and unnamed Twitter accounts.

7/ Another influential account with almost 200k impressions is @europeinvasionn, which as I have mentioned several times, is a hijacked (cuckoo'd) account use to spread xenophobic & anti-Muslim hate speech. It has an absurdly amount high amount of engagement for a *new* account

8/ Politics-wise the head of Britain First is once again spreading the rumour (She did the same for #Southport) - again, absolutely no sources provided

9) The unfortunately unfamiliar strategy here seems to be someone making a claim, then using a poor excuse of a 'source' (in this case what looks like an email). The poster then posts another screenshot to highlight that she is right but it actually contains no mention of Somali

10) So rumours spread by dodgy accounts on X, then spread up a hierarchy through receptive xenophobes, right wing politicians, and anonymous accounts that appear to be part of a larger influence operation.

11) That this is happening as Sunderland burns due in part to racist disinfo in the wake of the tragic #Southport murders is an indictment that whatever Starmer says, this problem of disinfo and hate speech isn't going away over night.

12) Weirdly there's a few false claims particularly related to attackers in the UK being Somali (not quite sure why but possibly because it ticks the African and Muslim hate speech box). Here's another false but widely shared claim

Correction: I said stabbed when the cause of death is not clear

See here for a BBC article on the post mortem