Since the rioting in England a powerful narrative has taken hold that algorithmically driven “disinformation” and “hate” on social media is a major, if not primary cause. At the helm of this sits Elon Musk, a villain in chief presiding over a “polarisation engine” that is wreaking havoc across Britain’s streets. Indeed, as parts of Britain burn, and violent mobs rampage its cities, members of the British government have taken time to pointedly address what is evidently perceived in Downing Street as a serious cause to be dealt with in the coming reckoning. 

There is little doubt that social media — not just the maligned “X”, but also Facebook, LinkedIn and a host of private messaging apps — has played a role in the violence. But the technological determinism that seeks to elevate its role from catalyst to prime mover has its history in a longstanding and indeed now controversial narrative that has been levied by an influential cadre of journalists, academics and NGOs since 2016. 

Not only does this narrative rest upon pseudoscientific and deeply criticised assumptions around the means by which people assent to beliefs and follow through on them offline. It also offers an ever appealing off ramp for refocusing away from the material conditions of the British state that have enabled these events, instead framing them and their British idiosyncrasies as part of a broader, ill defined struggle against global networks of disinformation.

To consider the nature of the violence alone is to put this narrative to the test. Those taking part in the violence are members of the British extreme far-right and they are a historical constant, organise in pre-existing networks, and communicate on private messaging channels such Telegram and Whatsapp. In turn they are joined by opportunistic, usually drugged up members of the British underclass who fill the vacuum of order. These people rarely spend their days scrolling on X debating immigration policy, and you will not find them in the heat of drug fueled looting recalling the ideological positions of Elon Musk. That they feel “emboldened” has as much to do with the perceived breakdown in law and order since Starmer took power, and indeed their own personal experiences with the light touch of British law and order. 

The other is the localised and targeted nature of both protests and violent disorder (it has already been reported that the majority of suspects live within 5 miles of the area). Prior to the violence, it was already a talking point on the left to analyse such discontent from a “community” lens, far removed from the globalised discourse engines of social media. In response to the violence at a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley in 2022, Guardian columnists were warned that the system was designed to stoke community tensions with a corresponding need for “the left” to rethink its engagement tactics offline. Even vocal activists readily traceable by journalists through online activity have no connection to the local area. But in the aftermath the specific, and localised pretext for conditions involving everything from mob violence to legitimate protest have been overlooked by politicians and journalists who prefer to talk about algorithms and Elon Musk. 

In its place, hapless members of Britain’s keyboard bound commentariat indulge in their favourite game of “rhetoric”, turbocharged by their belief that the interventions of Elon Musk, and their own heroic struggle over the “information space”, play a divine role in the course of violence unfolding in Britain’s streets. Here a relentless swarm of aggrieved users whipped up by this blame game goes after everyone from powerless Twitter accounts to Labour MPs. Comparisons to QAnon conspiracism and January 6th are made, perhaps out of some vainglorious idea to connect the unfolding events in Britain to America’s upcoming drama in the imperial capital. 

The reality is more painful, if not more difficult to comprehend in Britain’s own failed backwater of waning American interest in Europe. Like an already bored and beleaguered colonial administration, groaning at the prospect of administering and rebuilding the vast swathes of its periphery after a revolt, much of our media and establishment prefer to engage in the rhetorical high drama of “the global war against populism”.  Blows are traded amongst its opposing talking heads around nebulous concepts such as “disinformation” and “hate” as vague technocratic solutions around the regulation of public forums are debated. Anything other than focus on the specifics of this very British tragedy, all of which all too often boil down to matters of enduring and seemingly unresolvable issues of state capacity, competency and long term decline. 

Prior to the disorder and before the election, the idea of a “tinderbox Britain” in its northern provinces was already whispered about in the salons of respectable middle class opinion. Areas of growing sectarian division, failed local institutions, and deprivation that rivals the poorest parts of Europe had created a post-pandemic vacuum of authority already rife with fevered speculation and conspiracy on a variety of matters. That these areas now possess the preconditions for the proliferation of vigilantism, paranoia and violence that follow patterns of behaviour involving social media seen in developing regions of the world is as much a fault of the British establishment than Elon Musk. 

As we saw during the pandemic, the idea you can micro-manage and regulate narratives breeds only greater mistrust

Indeed, perhaps the best way to prove this point is to allow the hardliners on social media to follow their arguments to logical outcomes. This would involve implementing measures that range from banning anonymous accounts to effectively denying certain groups access to, or shutting down the entirety of social media in times of crisis. As we saw during the pandemic, the idea you can micro-manage and regulate narratives breeds only greater mistrust. Regulating platforms like Twitter, either through banning anonymous accounts or relying on civil servants or NGOS to clumsily adjudicate matters of free speech and identify foreign disinformation will do little to prevent the historic norms that lead to rioting and disorder. Instead it will further entrench the perception of a state committed to managing public responses to atrocities, something which contributed to the initial confusion and in itself galvanised those wrongly speculating about the killer’s motives and identity in the aftermath of the Southport. 

Yet after these riots it seems clear that this is the path Labour are intent on pursuing. Starmerite MPs have singled out the battle over the information space from foreign powers and the enemy within as the one to be fought. The Home Secretary has, in perhaps a symbolic foreboding of Labour’s response, equated the actions of those online with that of rioters. This takes its cues and obsessions from that of the previous government, whose MPs would rather sulk and fuss over trivial laws around social media and “hate” than deal with the manifest problems of British governance. 

But herein lies the appeal of this narrative. Combating the far-right enemy within and online provides an immediate legitimising narrative for Labour’s already embattled administration. In dealing with British decline it has little else to talk about. Big narratives about national renewal have failed to resonate, as it already finds itself chained to the economic consensus that plagued the previous administration. As small boat crossings ramp up, it clambers to find levers of the state capacity and executive power that seem either broken or non-existent. 

All this might lead to a very British dystopia committed to fighting an “information war,” where the state’s power is felt solely through a digital authoritarianism that believes that to stifle dissent online is to legitimise a decaying state. In time, and once inevitably put out to pasture, this government’s ministers may come to gloat to the technocratic denizens of the Tony Blair Institute and its adjacent influencers that it has helped bring an end to the age of disinformation. After all, this is a task surely far easier to address than the problem of Britain in 2024.