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'Far-right riots are ravaging the UK. Why are they happening now?', by Katie Marie Davies, Christian Science Monitor (07/08/2024)

‘“Social media has allowed for networking and far-right influencers,” says Aaron Winter, a senior lecturer at the University of Lancaster. He argues that social media has helped create a “post-organizational” far right. “I don’t think the violence we’ve seen is disconnected from the return of far-right and fascist figures to platforms such as X,” he says, referencing Elon Musk’s decision to unban figures like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a far-right agitator who uses the name Tommy Robinson, after Mr. Musk bought Twitter, now called X. But both Dr. Winter and Dr. Mondon stress that large underregulated tech platforms are just one small part of a bigger, more uncomfortable truth – that traditional, mainstream media and politicians are also responsible for normalizing far-right rhetoric.’

‘In some cases, journalists and politicians believed that submitting far-right ideas to scrutiny would help to defuse tensions. “The argument has long been that if we don’t talk about these ideas, if we don’t legitimize concerns about immigration, we’re going to have a far-right government or the far right in the streets committing violence,” says Dr. Winter. “Well, now we have the latter.” Yet while some news outlets platformed or parroted far-right fears, others actively fanned the flames. In 2016, in the run-up to the Brexit campaign, analysis by journalist Liz Gerard showed that the British tabloid Daily Express had run 179 front pages dedicated to anti-migrant stories in the previous five years, while the Daily Mail had published 122. “There seems to be no accountability for the idea that anti-immigration discourse, moral panics, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and racism are now part of mainstream politics. The mainstream media has been full of these discourses, expressing them as legitimate concerns, or as populist as opposed to far-right or fascist,” says Dr. Winter. “These riots, these confrontations, these attacks, are feeding off of that.”’