Hundreds arrested in connection with rioting across parts of UK | BBC News

Intro now a UK government Minister has said the impact of the riots which hit parts of the UK over the past 2 weeks will be felt for years to come thousands of anti-racism protesters rallied in towns and cities across the UK on Saturday with people taking to the streets in cities including Belfast Birmingham Cardiff and Glasgow it follows the disorder in areas of England and Northern irland fueled by online disinformation following the Southport attack in which three young girls were killed more than 775 people have been How far right groups used social media arrested while the far right used social media to organize some of those protests with me is Lizzie didan who is a security and home Affairs journalist and I know Lizzy you looked on social media uh how these far right groups organize themselves just take us through how they use social media so what we saw was a massive mobilization following the Southport attack that took in all different parts of the far right both in the UK and internationally there was a mobilization across different social media platforms which includes X formerly Twitter Facebook Tik Tok Snapchat and also more encrypted and secure platforms like Telegram and what they were seeking to do was really use the grief and anger and confusion that so many people felt after the murders in Southport to turn that into something that would be useful to them and the way they see the world and to get their message out to people and so what we've seen is the use of protests the use of misinformation and fake news all by these different groups trying to get their points across about how they say that non-white people are dangerous how they say that Muslims are dangerous to a much wider pool of people and say for How far right groups used Telegram example on telegram how many people would be involved in a group that was talking about protests well telegram works like other social media channels uh for instance like WhatsApp in that you can join a to one chat or you can join very large groups and what we saw after Southport is specific groups set up uh with that name in the title so that people could find them some of them got up to 15,000 20,000 people in them but what we saw very quickly is that when the discussion in those groups turned violent when people started to discuss targeting Asylum Seekers and mosques telegram did take action and take those groups down so from those very large Peaks they then split into much smaller groups some of which only had a dozen people in each of them do we Who is behind the riots have any idea who's behind them yes it's a it's a range of people um some people have been trying to keep their identity secret some people are actually very high-profile activists who have been uh kind of large voices on the scene for many years and we're seeing a kind of shift in tactics now because the police in the UK have started to very openly say that they are going to seek to go after people who have incited some of this disorder some of these figures are now climbing down and they've stopped calling for kind of disorder and protests but some people are doubling down and they're still trying to get people onto the streets and it remains to be seen if that will continue working Motivation behind the riots yes because this is an interesting tactic from the government to push forward with those prosecutions I know you've been in a number of the courts seeing the people being processed did you while you were watching all of that get any idea of their motivation the people that are up before the the judges and it it's actually a very confusing picture and part of that is a product of British law a lot of the offenses that people are being prosecuted for for example violent disorder and assault they don't actually need prosecutors to prove motivation but in court a lot of people are saying you know I'm not racist I wasn't out there to attack Muslims I was just caught up in the energy of the moment and at the moment we're going through I guess you could say the slightly more simple cases people who were caught on the scene throwing a rock but it's going to get more complicated and more involved in that kind of motivation picture as we start moving into seeing people prosecuted for online offenses where they've been encouraging people to come out and organizing events so at the moment some people are denying any motivation uh at all really they're just saying they were simply there uh but that may change as more cases come through the court yes and I suppose um More cases coming through the court when it is someone who's done something that there is video evidence of them carrying something out that is easier to prosecute and for them to plead guilty rather than something online yes exactly and that's what we're seeing in the kind of initial wave of prosecutions some people are being jailed within 2 3 four 5 days of as you say being caught physically at the scene with footage uh and they plead guilty and it's over very quickly but we will start moving into a more complex space where people will start denying offenses or if more serious crimes are charged then that we might start going to full trial Lizzy fascinating stuff thank you very much time really appreciate it and you can get more of course on all of this on the BBC News website and app