More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis has found.
Of the 8,672 accounts on X whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3 per cent were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function.
Some 4.5 per cent came from the Republic of Ireland, while 16.8 per cent came from the US and about a quarter from all European countries other than the UK.
Seven of the 12 most-read tweets about Belfast and Southampton came from the US – including one from Musk himself and two other US “alt-right” commentators – while an eighth was linked to North America.
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The analysis underlines that US rightwing actors are seeking to influence the UK and boost their position on X in moments of disorder – an exploitation of flashpoint events that has only intermittently attracted political attention in Britain.
The Guardian collected 43,000 tweets mentioning Belfast, Southampton, Henry Nowak or Vickrum Digwa posted on X during the period of the unrest in both cities.
This covered the period from June 2nd to the end of June 3rd for Southampton and from the evening of June 8th to the end of June 9th for Belfast.
Nearly a third of all 43,000 posts on X relating to the two incidents contained racist or anti-immigration comments. Almost one in 10 relating to Belfast contained calls for violence or paramilitary or vigilante action.
[ A visual timeline of how foreign agitators helped spark racist riots in BelfastOpens in new window ]
Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said the data demonstrated that X had become “a weapon of choice” for hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate shocking and divisive content.
Their goal, he added, was “to amplify local tragedies and crises, intensify racist narratives, and incite violence in communities they have never set foot in and to whom they have no real connection.”
A post from Musk after the life sentencing of the killer of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who had been falsely accused of racism by police after being stabbed in Southampton, has been viewed more than 28m times.
“Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak,” Musk posted shortly before 3pm on June 2nd, in effect promoting his own platform at a time of heightened tension and disorder in the Hampshire port.
Eleven police officers were injured on the night of June 2nd in Southampton as people claiming to protest over Nowak’s murder marched to the site of his death. This followed a rally, addressed by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, outside the city’s main police station.
Musk is based in the US and has not visited the UK since November 2023. A Guardian analysis last month found he posted about race and immigration in the UK twice as often as he did about SpaceX in the run-up to the aerospace company’s initial public offering in June.
Security experts have warned that the UK is a soft target for online manipulation by overseas actors because it does not take the idea of civil, or “psychological”, defence seriously.
Four of the top 12 most-seen tweets came from UK accounts: two were by the leader of the Restore Britain party, Rupert Lowe, whom Musk has endorsed; another was from GB News, while the most popular, with 37.6m views, was written by the “anti-woke” rightwing political commentator Konstantin Kisin.
Other accounts located in the US were anonymous, though familiar. @EndWokeness posted a blurry still image of a black man attacking a white man in Belfast, saying the full video was “too graphic” to post. It attracted 16.3m views.
[ Podcast: How the Belfast riots unfoldedOpens in new window ]
The assault, a stabbing incident in which the victim, Stephen Ogilvie, lost an eye, prompted three nights of racially motivated rioting targeting non-white people in Belfast. An asylum seeker from Sudan was charged with attempted murder and at least 23 people were arrested.
The @EndWokeness account, which has 3.9m followers, was cited by a parliamentary committee after it amplified a false claim that the 2024 attack in Southport, in which three girls were killed, was carried out by a Muslim man.
The account has been linked by an open source analyst to Jack Posobiec, a rightwing influencer who promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy, a false accusation that leading US Democrats were engaged in satanic child abuse at a child-friendly pizza restaurant in Washington. – Guardian
