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
🧵1/ Thought I'd zoom in on the data from the Southport riots, especially given the recent arrest of a man in Pakistan - which has prompted some commentators & news outlets to use it as an opportunity to target people of colour once again. Let's look at what happened
2/ A man in Pakistan, Farhan Asif, who ran Channel3NowNews, was just arrested for spreading misinfo. Channel3NowNews used the made-up name "Ali Al Shakati," However, contrary to some right-wing i/allusions, Channel3NowNews was NOT the first to tweet this name, or be arrested
3/ The first known person to post the name "Ali Al Shakati" on X was actually Artemisfornow, aka Bernie Spofforth, a wealthy woman from Cheshire. She tweeted the name over an hour before Channel3NowNews. She was arrested over a week ago, and released on bail.
🚨Important thread highlights how X under Musk is putting people at risk
1) This account impersonating a man who helped stop a knife attack in London is still live, & has accumulated well over 1 million impressions.
2) It's history indicates it is a pro-Putin "bot" connected
possibly to Pakistan. However, it also has pro-Ismail Haniyeh & Hamas content
3) Regardless of what you think of Hamas, this is far right rocket fuel. Tommy Robinson already tweeted out the fake account, wrongly accusing him of supporting an "islamist genocidal regime"
4) Despite Musk claiming he would clamp down on impersonator accounts this account has not been suspended yet. This is happening amidst a wave of anti -immigrant and anti-muslim violence in the UK.
🧵🚨This account @abdullahfromuk is impersonating a man who stopped a knife attack in London's Leicester Square. His original account handle was ZartashaPti and he has been tweeting pro-Imran Khan content in Urdu and English for most of his account history.
It has also tweeted content that would suggest it's pro-Vladimir Putin (although not in any particularly sophisticated way). The account is in the process of deleting its tweets, and it looks like a classic sockpuppet farm, for-hire type account.
@jneill has already highlighted some other content from the account, which again includes some Putin apologism
🧵🚨New analysis showing ALL tweets mentioning both "Muslim" & "UK" with over 500 retweets since 29 Jul. Graph shows which accounts got most impressions over time. Red/pink dots show anti-Muslim &/or anti-immigrant tweets, brown=neutral, green=tweets defending Muslims #UKRiots
2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly the impressions gained by the number of 'anti' tweets was over 155 million (65%) while those 'in defense of' around 31 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million.
3/ Parsing them finer we see that that the majority of the tweets were anti-Muslim, with half as many being both anti immigrant and both anti-Muslim. Some were solely anti-immigrant. #UKRiots
🧵🚨1/Somewhat depressing graph. I calculated whether all X posts with over 500 retweets mentioning the words "Muslim" and "UK" sent since 29th July were anti-muslim, anti-immigrant (red), neutral (blue), or in defense of muslims and/or immigration (green). #Ukriots #hatespeech
2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly, the impressions gained by the number of 'Anti' tweets was over 159 million (67%), while those in defense of around 28 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million
3/ Some of the most xenophobic and anti-muslim accounts include. @radiogenoa @goldingbf @tpointuk @jimfergusonuk @ashleasimonbf @europeinvasionn The degree of hate varies, from outright conspiracy theories, to suggestions that Muslims enjoy special treatment by the police.
🧵🚨I wanted to do another thread on the account @EuropeInvasionn. It's been one of the most widely viewed anti-immigrant & anti-muslim disinfluencers on X since the #Southport murders. Read more to learn about its shocking reach, disinformation, & hate speech #UKRiots
2/ Reminder. @Europeinvasionn is engaged in deception. We can tell this because it's a hijacked account. The account was created in 2010, but hacked/sold & scrubbed & has only tweeted since Feb 24. It's previous handle was makcanerkripto. Note the 'crypto' red flag...
3/ First up. Impressions. Since 27th July, the account has racked up over 133,475,023 impressions. To put that in words, that's one hundred thirty-three million four hundred seventy-five thousand and twenty-three. That is phenomenal.