After the riots in Britain, some instigators are calling for attacks on Jews
While riots against Muslims and asylum seekers have rocked Britain over the past two weeks, some instigators have also called for attacks on Jews and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories online.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested and at least 466 are on trial for the violence that rocked Britain on July 30. A day earlier, an attacker stabbed three children to death at a dance class in Southport, northern England. The 17-year-old suspect was born in Wales to Rwandan parents. However, false rumours circulated online that he was a Muslim asylum seeker, causing uproar in far-right groups on platforms such as Telegram and X.
A number of far-right groups, neo-Nazi activists and influencers have sparked days of violent protests in more than 20 cities across the UK. Rioters stormed mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, attacked non-whites, set cars on fire, looted shops and injured dozens of police officers.
British politicians are reportedly considering tougher internet safety regulations after seeing unrest fuelled by online organisations.
Some of the online platforms that fomented violence against Muslims also encouraged attacks on Jews, according to the Community Security Trust, a group that monitors anti-Semitism in the UK. A Telegram group called “Southport Wake Up,” which had 14,000 members before it was shut down, called for tolerance of “neither brown people nor Jews,” among other things – although the online rhetoric did not translate into physical attacks on the Jewish community.
“There were a lot of people in that group encouraging others to join the protests, and many others were saying quite openly that not only mosques should be targeted, but synagogues as well – ‘It’s not just about the Muslims, it’s about the Jews,'” Dave Rich, CST’s policy director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Within the far-right online ecosystem, anti-Islam and anti-immigrant activists often interact with neo-Nazis who call for attacks on Jews, Rich says. The internet and social media have built global networks of white supremacists who draw inspiration from each other’s attacks on Muslims, Jews and other minorities.
One of the administrators of “Southport Wake Up” is said to be a Finland-based neo-Nazi, according to an investigation by Finnish public broadcaster YLE. The unnamed man, who was investigated by Finnish police in 2021 for making an illegal threat, also runs a Telegram channel dedicated to Nazi ideology. In one post, he filmed himself walking through a synagogue in Helsinki and saying: “We are tired of explaining to you why we want Nazism.”
Several posts in Southport Wake Up promoted Holocaust denial and praised Adolf Hitler. One member wrote that Hitler was “the only politician since Roman times who really cared about his people.”
“As we see today, Germany in the 1920s was an abyss of despair,” the article said. “The Weimar Republic had immigration, child prostitution, obscene inflation and degeneration.”
The member added that the Jews “invented” the Holocaust to ensure that “they would never be questioned again by the Europeans while they were destroying their homelands.”
Another post showed an AI image of a person’s middle fingers in front of an Israeli and Palestinian flag, accompanied by the caption: “We do not support brown people or Jews. Our nation is our land and our people. Rise up, you free European armies.”
The unrest occurred in British cities plagued by economic decline, labour shortages and overstretched public services – some politicians blame immigration. Nigel Farage, once a key Brexit supporter and now leader of the right-wing Reform Party, falsely claimed the suspect from Southport was an undocumented immigrant before police released details.
Increase in anti-Semitism
In addition to politicians and far-right activists stoking Islamophobia, there has also been a recent rise in anti-Semitism among British Jews, particularly following the October 7 massacre and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza. According to CST, anti-Semitic incidents in the UK more than doubled in the first half of 2024 compared to the previous year, reaching 1,978 reported incidents.
CST works closely with Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks), a parallel organisation that supports Britain’s Muslim community. Since October 7, the groups have been meeting almost every week and speaking together with police and prosecutors about tackling hate crime, Rich said.
But the impact of the war between Israel and Hamas on Jews and Muslims in Britain has strained relations between the two communities. The past decade has seen a spate of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and university camps against Israel’s actions in Gaza, involving thousands of protesters, including some British Jews. While the protests have been largely peaceful, a few high-profile incidents of violence against Jews have heightened the fears of many British Jews. And the rhetoric that has emerged from the protests has also made some Jews uneasy, according to Rich.
“It’s pretty clear that Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue took a serious hit after October 7,” Rich said. “I think a lot of people struggled to maintain those conversations for quite a while. More recently, there’s been a concerted effort to rebuild things and maybe learn why that kind of dialogue might not have been able to withstand the pressure of October 7 and the war that followed.”
Rabbi Alexandra Wright, president of Liberal Judaism in Britain, said the scenes of right-wing violence had moved many members of her community to express solidarity with their Muslim neighbors. As a member of a Jewish-Christian-Muslim clergy group in London, she helped prepare a letter of support for the Muslim community in Southport.
Rabbis have visited their neighboring mosques to stand alongside imams and talk to them, Wright said. Other community members have joined last week’s flood of counter-protesters who outnumbered the rioters and formed human shields around asylum centers.
“There’s quite a bit of activism in the progressive and conservative Jewish community that is very vocal about supporting asylum seekers,” Wright told JTA. “It’s been really important for Jews to stand with Muslim communities and individuals during this time.”
After Oct. 7, Wright said, she was focused on protecting her own deeply worried and frightened community. But the far-right riots reminded her of the importance of maintaining relationships with other minorities, she said.
“There is a trauma that has caused us to look more inward,” Wright said. “It has taken us much longer to look outward and say, ‘What do we need to do to build dialogue with people who are not of our faith, who are not part of our communities?’ While that requires a greater effort, it is still an effort that needs to be made.”
