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Axel Rudakubana has been named as the 17 year-old charged with three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. Rudakubana was not initially named as he is a minor. The judge lifted the anonymity order on Thursday, but Rudakubana had been successfully identified online as early as Tuesday. Internet users pieced together his identity after the BBC reported that the teenage suspect was born in Cardiff, with parents from Rwanda. The murder of Bebe, six years old, Elsie, seven, and Alice, nine, has been followed by violent far-right protests across the country. These riots were fuelled by disinformation that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker called Ali Al-Shakati. The first known use of this name was by Bernie Spofforth, an X-user who has previously spread Covid and climate disinformation, and appeared on GB News as an anti-lockdown campaigner.
The Southport murders triggered a range of disinformation from major accounts on X. The YouTuber Andrew Tate falsely claimed the attacker was an “illegal migrant”, the former boxer Anthony Fowler posted a video saying it was a “fellow from Syria”, while a third account called Europe Invasion said the suspect was a “Muslim immigrant”. These three posts alone have had 26 million views and impressions. None have been removed.
Disinformation that the attacker was called Ali Al-Shakati appears to have spread organically, but the name was also suggested to users as a trending topic in the UK.
Many of the major right-wing accounts who incorrectly named the suspect cited a report from a news website called Channel3 Now. The origins of the site, which is makeshift and posted graphic photos of children being treated at the scene, are unclear.
The earliest videos on its Youtube channel are in Russian. After a five-year gap, the channel began posting about Pakistan and later US news. This drastic change in subject matter suggests the account may have been hijacked and then repurposed.
Tortoise could only find one named author on the news site, a young man who runs a lawn mowing business in Nova Scotia in Canada. The site has apologised about falsely naming the Southport suspect, saying its article did not meet its “standards of reliability and integrity”. That was too late to stop the pursuant violence.
In Southport, London and Hartlepool, far-right protesters threw bricks, injured police, shouted racist chants, and set vehicles on fire. A video posted online showed Hartlepool rioters cheering as a person of colour walking past was punched in the face. Police are investigating the assault.
Far-right groups appeared to mobilise, in part, through TikTok, with screenshots encouraging people to organise then shared on Telegram and X. One user who shared a protest poster wrote that children were being slaughtered at “the alter [sic] of uncontrolled mass migration.”
Locals in Southport, a community in grief, have been left to pick up the pieces. A mother of one of the victims called for the violence to stop, saying “we don’t need this”. The protesters who descended on the seaside town shouting “English ‘til I die” aren’t thought to be local.
On Wednesday, Southport residents came together to repair a mosque deliberately targeted in the riot. Young children were among those who helped.
