https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/0...

> It's not about the ethnicity of one suspect.

You'll need to give me more than that, as the timelines and events strongly suggest that this is tied to the spreading of anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media by high-profile far-right activists. Islamaphobic accounts like Europe Invasion promoted false claims that the attacker was a Muslim immigrant which were viewed over 6m times. The phrase "Muslim immigrant" was employed across far-right influencers and channels; someone even came up with a false name "Ali Al-Shakati". Mosques were a focal point of the attacks. Formerly banned Islamophobic accounts like Andrew Tate and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon got involved in stirring up and validating the hatred and legitimising the violence (protestors in Belfast and Blackpool were witnessed chanting Yaxley-Lennon's alter-ego name). This is happening less than two years after Musk gutted the teams that monitor and remove disinformation on Twitter and reinstated those two accounts. Independent thinktanks and analysts are in consensus that the misinformation spreading across twitter fuelled the violence.

That said, in a sense you're correct; it has nothing to do with the suspect's ethnicity because the attack in question was perpetrated by neither a Muslim nor an immigrant. What's happened here is that far-riight groups have seized on an opportunity and exploited their social media presense (including their newfound Twitter freedoms) in order to foment unrest and thereby self-affirm their own ideologies.

> Did you know that thousands of people have been arrested in the UK over the last few years over social media posts?

I did some research on this. Thousands of arrests have indeed been made under Section 127 of the Communications Act, although this includes any electronic communication (e.g. email as well as social media), and things like sexual offences (sending unwanted obscene images), grooming, stalking, racially aggravated hate crimes etc... . I can't find a source specifically for social media posts, but happy to take a look if you have one. This feels like an irrelevant misleading stat thrown in to muddy the waters.

> did you see the multiple instances of reporters being surrounded and intimidated (maybe even attacked) by "diverse" protesters out there

I've researched this and have been able to find one instance where a Sky news reporter's van had its tyre slashed in Birmingham while covering Muslim counter-protestors. This is abhorrent but it is nowhere near the level of callous violence being perpetrated in the protests: setting fire to buildings, destroying cars, assaulting police and civilians etc... . This also feels like an irrelevant misleading stat thrown in to muddy the waters but again I'm happy to look if you have more to evidence what you're saying.