The Far Right, Foreign Interference, and the Plot to Destabilise Britain
The hidden networks and agendas behind the UK's rising tide of extremism that took advantage of the murder of three little girls.
Bebe King, just 6 years old. Elsie Dot Stancombe, a caring and generous 7 year-old. Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, with a lifetime of dreams ahead of her. These are the names forever etched in the heart of a tragedy that would shake Britain to its core. Their lives were brutally cut short at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July this year. A place meant for joy and happiness during the first week of the summer holidays transformed into a scene of unspeakable horror.
17-year-old Axel Rudakubana was apprehended at the scene and later charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder. But as we waited for the legal process to start moving, a dangerous undercurrent was already taking hold. The far-right, with their insatiable appetite for chaos and division, seized the opportunity to exploit the tragedy. False narratives began to circulate online. They claimed that the attacker was a Muslim migrant who had entered the country illegally by boat. Migrants arriving by boat by the hundreds or even thousands per day was and still is a problem, not helped by the British government. These lies quickly spread across social media and it was like turning up the heat up way too high.
Within hours this post from Eddie Murray was taken down from LinkedIn as a fake, but it was already making the rounds on Facebook and X. The reply sections of shitty accounts on X became breeding grounds for hate, with calls for revenge and violence against anyone perceived as an outsider. They were creating an echo chamber that amplified hateful messages and in turn they made a distorted reality where fear and anger was at the forefront. Had they known it wasn’t an illegal immigrant, it wouldn’t have changed any of it because it was just used as an excuse. If you said the opposite to what they wanted to hear, or you told them it wasn’t an illegal migrant, then you ‘work for the government’ or was part of some silly coverup. You know the drill. To understand the true goals of these nutjobs, we need to peel back the layers of their twisted ideology and expose the strategies they use.
One of the first sparks came from a user named "Bernie Spofforth." Just five hours after the attack and with impatience running high, Bernie introduced a name… "Ali Al-Shakati", and linked it to "MI6 watchlists," "boats," and "mental health services." This concoction of buzzwords quickly caught fire. It was a classic case of misinformation in action: a single tweet, weaving together unverified claims and ominous insinuations, rapidly spreading through the digital echo chamber. The account posted the tweet in a quoted reply of a screenshot of Eddie Murray’s earlier LinkedIn post. Using the display name ‘Bernie Spofforth’, it was five hours after the attack when this user tweeted it. The time was 16:49. By this point people were already getting very impatient waiting to hear some news - specifically, news that confirmed or denied that it was an illegal immigrant. But as you’ll see soon, even when they’re told it is not an illegal immigrant they still believe he is.
Some of the most influential users peddling the fake narrative included Andrew Tate, and some other minor faces, olympic boxers, tv presenters, etc. All of these people had tweeted this misinformation without verifying any facts at all, or even trying to, and the longer the silence went on from the police, then the longer the social engineering went on and the deeper the belief sat in people’s heads. It is normal for the police not to release details about someone they have arrested straight away, but social media would have you believe this is the only time its ever happened. It takes even longer if the person is a minor, which he was, at 17.
Not only this, but he was British born. And there was no mention of his religion anywhere by any official source at this point.
Just 2 minutes after Bernie tweeted the fake name, Channel3 Now picked it up and pushed the news further. Channel3 Now was a social media account that aggregated crime ‘news’, but it was most certainly fake. This user had tried to grow a channel in many different ways before it settled on Channel3NowNews. They posted random clips to DailyMotion, funny videos on Facebook, and they were also active on Instagram. It seems that the only point of this account was to try grow it as fast as possible and then use the account for misinformation and mislead people into believing its legit with its high follower count and official website. The website itself employs a US-based company that cloaks IP addresses - a common tactic used by online actors trying to conceal their identities.
I tried to find them elsewhere, the accounts that are still up have been totally inactive for quite a long time. Although I did see that they had a Wikipedia page. It claims that Channel3 Now was a website based in Pakistan which aggregated crime news while presenting itself as an American-style TV channel. It appears the only goal of this channel was misinformation. After Donald Trump’s attempted assassination it falsely spread news that the shooter was a Chinese man. A man did end up getting arrested in Pakistan for cyberterrorism related to this account but he was later released. Weirdly, 11 years prior this, Channel3Now used to have Russian videos. Russian titles, Russian content. They then repurposed and became Pakistani? Strange, but I wasn’t surprised with the Russia link. Pakistani authorities said the admin of the account, a man named Farhan Asif, said he posted things from other social accounts without verifying it. He also said he chose to publish mainly American, British and Australian stories so that he could get online traffic from those countries and earn revenue via Google Ads. Asif told police he would earn close to a thousand dollars a month by doing this. After a statement from UK police, after the riots, Asif deleted the story and then put a message up on the Channel3 Now website apologising and claiming that the person responsible had been “fired”, even though I’m pretty sure it was just the one guy doing it.
But with the channel starting with Russian videos and everything about the channel early on being about Russia, I wanted to look deeper. The channel was started 11 years ago with uploading videos of rally-driving in the snow in Izhevsk - a Russian city about 750 miles east of Moscow, in the birthplace of the Kalashnikov rifle. These were not just any rally videos though! The drivers named in the videos have connections to the Russia’s defence and IT industries, including one who appears to be a former KGB operative now serving in Russia's parliament.
Channel3 Now totally vanished and stopped uploading anything for the 6 years. Then out of the blue it was active again, this time uploading videos in full English. One video showed a tiger getting beaten to death, and the next video was a match report on the Manchester City women's football team. Okay… Then in June last year, Channel3 Now set up its website, the one which has been accused of sharing 'racially motivated click-bait'.
The website has always changed name repeatedly and has gone by 'Fox3 Now' and 'Fox3 News' in an obvious attempt to copy the names of legitimate news organisations. It appears to be using internet servers in the US and is registered with an online hosting company in Lithuania, but has privacy tightened so you can’t see who it’s registered to.
“The online lies spread so far and so quickly that Merseyside Police was forced to take the unusual step of releasing a statement saying the name circulating on the internet was 'incorrect' and that the suspect was in fact born in Cardiff.”
But of course… As I said earlier, no matter what they were told. Born here, not born here. Came on a boat or had never been on any boat… They were just intent on causing mayhem. “It’s a cover up!” Obv!
And after all of this shit - when police released photos of the three girls, some users claimed that the girls photos were AI-generated.
Russia Today - Vladimir Putin's state broadcaster - repeated Channel3 Now's lies on it’s website in an article about the Southport stabbings. I don’t know how long it took but it later put an 'editor's note' on the article saying 'the outlet later retracted the claim'. Likely after it knew it was “mission complete!”2
“The violence we have seen in Southport is an insult to the memory of the victims of this heinous attack. These are not protesters fighting injustice, they are thugs fighting the police, tearing up a community that is already trying to process an unimaginable horror.” - Tory MP James Cleverly.
After the debunking of the Southport attacker's false identity, the site's YouTube channel mysteriously disappeared. Only time will tell if Mr. Fox ABC BBC C4 ITN Now News (lol) will return again.
Another important account in the mix is @EuropeInvasionn. Probably the most notorious of the accounts - this account had millions of engagements and spread misinformation at every opportunity. The account was made in 2010 but used to use the name @makcanekripto back then, it appears the account was either bought, or hacked and then wiped. The account only started tweeting in February. and even had a few responses from Elon Musk, which obviously gave it much more engagement. They posted a video of what they claimed was a man garbed in a niqab getting caught red-handed for attempting to kidnap a child. The video was actually some skit made by Indian YouTuber, Ankur Jatuskarn. There are countless examples from this account like this, whose posts are then boosted with botting, which helps the algorithm pass it along to more users.
Not only that, but it uses fake sensationalist tweets. It did this same method all the time, and users wouldn’t bother fact-checking it. If they spent 10 seconds Googling any of the things this account tweeted they’d see that it was all nonsense. But so long as there was some sort of attack and it was attributed to the “right people” ie. migrants, muslims, etc., then the followers of EuropeInvasionn would run with it and share it.
I also want to discuss some groups that are on other platforms that I don’t believe are from Britain, but at least pretend they are. Telegram is full of groups of users that are not from anywhere near Britain that spend the whole time pretending that they are. It is like when you see a tourist in your city, and you “spot it a mile away”, usually cos of their fashion sense. It is the same with the admins of these groups on Telegram. They can push all day long like they are British, but to me it isn’t convincing at all. I don’t believe EuropeInvasionn is British either.
Of the top 20 Telegram channels spreading content about the riots, only six were based in the UK, with others originating from the U.S., Europe, and beyond.
Unity News Network operates on Telegram and they promote violent rhetoric, celebrate violence and disorder, and they call for the execution of the Prime Minister and other Government officials. Yes, I get how easy it is to blame outsiders for stirring up division and causing shit, but we’ve been laying the groundwork for this for years. The constant scapegoating of migrants, both online and in the media, created this tinderbox atmosphere. It doesn’t take much in Britain to spark an explosion. It feels like it’s constantly there bubbling under the surface and we’re just waiting for the next thing to blame on someone who isn’t British.
Yeah there are bad actors, foreign governments and dodgy online groups who love to exploit our divisions and spread misinformation whenever possible. They play a role in most conflict here, but we can’t pretend they’re the root of it. We need to look in the mirror. We are so quick to blame others that we seem to be forgetting our own responsibility.
TBIJ3 attended one of the protests in the UK when this happened, this one outside Downing Street, and spoke to dozens of people and asked them what brought them there, what the motivation is, whether they were motivated by false information, and asked them where they looked for trustworthy news. There were lots of different reasons people had for going, but there was one commonality - most incorrectly blamed illegal migration for the girls murders, and for knife crime all over the country.
Almost all of the attendees mentioned Tommy Robinson, and not a single one of them mentioned the name Ali Al-Shakati, which was apparently the reason for all this, right??
It shows that false or misleading narratives can gain traction through influencers, with or without disinformation. When the suspect was brought up, most protestors correctly identified that he was British-born, but then they focused their criticism on the fact that his parents immigrated here from Rwanda. Also, at this point in time, when the protest was at Downing Street, very few even thought he was muslim anymore, but still they led with anti-Islamic and racist views. One woman said she believed migrants were trying to force British people to practise Islam.
The killer of the three girls is due to go on trial in January. Axel Rudakubana, of Lancashire, appeared via videolink from HMP Belmarsh for a plea and trial preparation hearing at Liverpool Crown Court but he was not asked to enter any pleas to the charges he faces. He did not speak as he was twice asked by the judge to identify himself. He was asked to confirm his name, and that he could hear the proceedings but did not answer.
Why isn’t this incident labelled terror-related?
This question comes up a lot by people inside and outside of far-right groups. Most people would probably say this should be labelled as a terrorist incident. The police have stood firm in their reasoning - that there are a few conditions that must be met for UK law to recognise this as a terror incident. The main one being that the attack must have been carried out “for the purpose of political, religious, racial, or ideological cause.” So far, neither the police or the prosecution could establish the motivation behind the stabbings.
Section 14 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is clear that for an incident to be declared terror-related that it must be “designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation” or “to intimidate the public or section of the public.”
The question was yet again asked after the police added some new charges in the last few weeks. Already facing 3 charges of murder and 10 of attempted murder, he has now been charged with a further 3 offences - the first charge is for possession of a knife, but it’s the other two that are interesting. One is for the production of biological toxin, ricin, and the other is for possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism. The information he had for the Terrorism Act charge relates to a PDF file on his computer. Another important element is that Rudakubana has not been charged with possessing a terror training manual. Rather, the pdf allegedly found on his computer was more akin to an academic study. Not that the title of the document would help anyone - “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual”
Even if a suspect has been charged with a separate offence under the Terrorism Act – in this case section 58, relating to possession of material5, there would need to be evidence of a sufficient motive in order to class an ensuing attack as “terrorism”. In this case, that threshold has not yet been met.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, told the BBC, the line between violence and terrorism is often “wafer-thin”. “It doesn’t follow, I’m afraid, that because someone has carried out a big attack that they therefore must be advancing a cause,” he said.
