While foreign agitators and far-right leaders leapt upon false claims the Southport attack suspect was an immigrant who had arrived in a small boat, the allegations can be traced to social media accounts closer to home.
The woman accused of being first to post a false Muslim name for the suspect is the managing director of a clothing company. The mother of three in her mid-fifties enjoys walking, is married to an artist and counts an actor among her children. The family live in a £1.5 million farmhouse in the rural north.
She posted on Twitter/X that “Ali Al-Shakati” was the suspect, he was an “asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year” and was on an “MI6 watch list”.
Why did this person deliberately spread such specific lies? Did someone pay her to do this? Or was this part of an elaborate plan to cause this rioting? In that case the initial stabbing may have been caused by the rioters themselves
She appears to be deep in the rabbit hole of far right, anti-lockdown, anti-immigrant echo chambers.
She says she copied the tweet from elsewhere, but she better remember exactly where, because if she made it up she incited several riots and thousands of crimes based on her idiocy.
Lies that have consequences like this, need to carry a punishment that suits those consequences.
Racism.