In my Spectator column this week I’ve written about the wrong-headed attempt to blame the recent social unrest on bad actors spreading ‘misinformation’ online. Not only is social media a politically expedient scapegoat – see this piece in the Conversation – but just as many people on the Left have put out misleading information in the past week as on the Right, including the Prime Minister. Here’s an extract:
For all the talk of “whipping up violence”, this sounds like a case of blaming the messenger in much the same way that ‘pirate radio’ was fingered for the riots in Birmingham in 2005, and BlackBerry for the unrest in 2011. The authorities have already started arresting right-wing social-media users for stirring up racial hatred, which looks like another example of ‘two-tier policing’. After all, no such arrests were made in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, even though hundreds of thousands of social-media users in the UK ‘whipped up’ violence against the police by accusing them of racism. During one demonstration, which the BBC described as ‘largely peaceful’, 27 officers were injured. Social media companies were also culpable – more so than now – because they promoted pro-BLM posts and, in some cases, included a BLM logo on their platforms. But Sir Keir didn’t demand they should feel “the full force of the law”. On the contrary, he took the knee.
I suppose the Prime Minister could argue he wasn’t in charge back then, but that doesn’t solve the ‘two tier’ problem, because people on the Left have been guilty of disseminating ‘harmful misinformation’ in the past week and I doubt they’ll have their collars felt. Last Saturday, Nick Lowles, the chief executive of Hope Not Hate, tweeted: “Reports are coming in of acid being thrown out of a car window at a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough. Absolutely horrendous.” Those reports turned out to be baseless, but it’s possible they contributed to young Asian men engaging in running battles with anti-immigrant protestors in the town the following day. Indeed, you could argue that the PM’s statement blaming ‘far-right’ outsiders for organising the unrest in Southport – and singling out their attack on a mosque – contributed to the violence by Asian counter-protestors over the following days. Is Sir Keir going to urge the police to investigate his own role in “whipping up violence”?
Worth reading in full.
