Since the 1980s, Sheffield has been jokingly referred to as the ‘Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’. While undoubtedly many residents of Sheffield (‘Dee-Dahs’ if you’re from Barnsley or Donny) would regard this as a pejorative or romantic (delete according to political preference) view of the left-wing instincts of the city where I live, it is at least true that it is unlikely to be the first place in the country you would expect a far-right racist attack.
Cities of sanctuary, not far-right violence
After all, since 2007, Sheffield has been a city of sanctuary with the explicit aim of being a safe haven for our fellow human beings fleeing violence or oppression.
Then last Sunday, a bloodthirsty crowd descended on the Holiday Inn in Rotherham, a short tram ride away from Sheffield city centre, setting it on fire and breaking into the building to terrorise the refugees sheltering inside.
So, how did this happen? How did we go from greeting new arrivals to our home with open arms, to greeting them with bottles, bricks and fire?
The national inquest into the right-wing racist violence on our streets in the past fortnight has suggested many, often connected, causes: decades of austerity shredding our public services, local economies and housing supply; a constant diet of racist dog whistles in the press blaming refugees, immigrants and poor people for these problems; and a failure to spread power and money out of London and around the country to regions that never really recovered from losing our traditional industries in the 1980s.
Social media: prime source of misinformation
All of those things likely fuelled the flames – but the match that lit the bonfire was struck on social media.
As assistant chief constable of South Yorkshire Police Lindsey Butterfield said: “Those who choose to spread misinformation and hate online also need to take responsibility for the scenes today. This was not a protest, just angry people reacting to a false narrative who have their own motivations for doing so.”
There’s another word for misinformation: lies. And lies were what appeared on social media following the horrific knife attack on a dance class for young girls in Southport on 30 July. Posts about the teenager arrested by police for the attack said he was a Syrian refugee named Ali Al-Shakati who had recently arrived on a small boat.
Every detail was wrong. That isn’t the suspect’s name; he’s Welsh, not Syrian; and he lives in a village near Southport.
But the damage didn’t stop there. Posts on social media went from spreading lies about Southport to planning violent attacks, leading directly to what happened in Rotherham.
Challenging social media as a weapon of hate
At Foxglove, the tech justice non-profit I work for, we are no strangers to social media being used as a weapon to spread racist hatred and mayhem. We are supporting a legal case brought by an Ethiopian man, Abrham Meareg, who was forced to flee his home with his family after his father, a respected chemistry professor, was murdered after racist lies suggesting he was a traitor to his people were published on Facebook – along with his home address.
As soon as he saw the posts on Facebook, Abrham saw them for what they were: a death sentence. He pleaded with Facebook to take them down. They didn’t. Weeks later, his father – who didn’t even have a Facebook account – was dead.
Foxglove will continue to challenge the complicity of social media companies like Meta and X in conflicts like these and it’s likely you’ll hear more from us on this in the coming weeks.
For now, all I will say is that Foxglove intends to continue to stand up for everyone who is abused, oppressed or targeted with violence as a result of lies and threats made on social media, whether in Ethiopia, in Rotherham, or anywhere else.
Meareg’s case against Facebook’s owner, Meta, continues. If you’d like updates on the case, you can sign up to Foxglove’s mailing list here.
- Protecting children from violence and sexual abuse by Dr Stella Perrott
- What hope for an anti-racist society? by Paige Furlonge-Walker
- We are many, you are few by Sue Wilson MBE
