For the US Capitol riots on January 6 2021, some people drove hundreds of miles to participate. It’s the classic example of the connection between violence and social media.
It was because of Facebook, Twitter (as it was then), Instagram, TikTok and special channels on Telegram that the thousands who stormed the Capitol knew when and where to go. Social media showed them how to find each other.
Of course the racist rioting, assaults and looting in Belfast last weekend were on a much smaller scale, but exactly the same processes allowed the mob to congregate and know where to divert to.
Police also knew because they can read social media just as well as anyone else. At the Policing Board just days before the outburst of violence, the chief constable indicated preparations had already been made to deal with disturbances.
In the event, the scale turned out to be greater than the police bargained for, mainly because they underestimated the power of social media.
The planned riots, for that’s what they were, attracted far-right figures from the Republic who’d also tuned into the date, time and place advertised. They teamed up with well-known figures from loyalism in a bizarre show of solidarity waving Irish tricolours alongside Union and loyalist flags.
Gardaí recognised notorious Dublin far-right agitators including one on bail charged with public order offences in Dublin. No doubt gardaí and the PSNI will have noted the links between loyalists, notorious for their extremist far-right prejudices, and the Dublin-based visitors. Let’s hope police north and south make the most of that shared intelligence.
It’s not only the PSNI but police across England who were wrong-footed by the speed with which rioters gathered and switched locations. Instant information topped up by algorithms feeding disinformation and rumour allow crowds to mass rapidly.
Confronted by police, a breakaway crowd can pop up in another location social media directs them to. The mugs who buy the disinformation and conspiracy theories are electronically identified and driven by more algorithms specifically directed at them because they’ve already bought the lies on social media.
The algorithms send them the most shocking, emotionally charged comments, videos and fake pictures that enrage them and provoke them to violence.
At a lower level it’s been going on for years with kids in Belfast using social media to organise fights between different groups at interfaces, but now it’s a global phenomenon in which the far-right excel.
Some of the stuff that people attacking asylum accommodation in the south think is generated in Ireland is in fact created by far-right groups in the USA.
On the Lilliputian scale of Belfast, a lot of the agitation calling for ‘action’ against Muslims comes from a very small number, predominantly loyalists, who create a large number of fake sites using pseudonyms that give the impression that a large number of people are going to take part in a ‘protest’ or a rally.
What happened last Saturday was fomented by a very small number of people who successfully manipulated a large number of suckers into coming onto the streets, several of whom are going to end up with a criminal record or in jail.
What happened last Saturday was fomented by a very small number of people who successfully manipulated a large number of suckers into coming onto the streets
Police forces everywhere are at a loss about how to deal with this phenomenon. Fundamentally it’s down to what is allowed on social media platforms, which is a matter for governments.
The British government is currently threatening to bring in legislation that allows tech companies to be prosecuted for incitement, but how do you do that if the messages and videos originate in another part of the world? It hasn’t worked anywhere else except China and do you want to go down that road?
One solution might be for political parties to unite in condemning the lies and propaganda extremists spread, but that’s a forlorn hope when you listen to the language used by English Conservative and Reform party politicians.
Rishi Sunak’s slogan plastered on his rostrum was ‘Stop the Boats’, now chanted at riots. Suella Braverman talked about an ‘invasion’ and Nigel Farage implied last week “the truth is being withheld” about the mass stabbing in Southport.
Let’s hope when Stormont’s toytown assembly is recalled the north’s politicians can speak with one voice not only in condemning the rioting and burning, but in avoiding weasel words about ‘understanding’ why people are angry and misnaming rioting as ‘protests’.
Last Saturday was organised with only one objective: violence and destruction.