Riots across the United Kingdom involving far-right elements broke out after the murder of three young girls at a dance class in the Southport knife attack was falsely attributed to a recently arrived Muslim migrant.
It is predictable but still problematic to see Israel scapegoated as the cause of the riots raging across the United Kingdom involving far-right elements. This is happening across social media. The claims have no basis and contribute to the increasing anxiety among the Jews in the country, a segment of British society already alienated by an enormous spike in antisemitic incidents.
While the far-right elements involved in the riots have their own history of antisemitism – including Holocaust denial and praise for Hitler – the riots themselves have sparked antisemitic conspiracy theories claiming the unrest is the result of an Israeli plot.
On August 3, 2024, American white supremacist and antisemite Nicholas Fuentes floated the idea that former leader of the English Defense League (EDL), Tommy Robinson (AKA Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), had sparked the riots to punish the UK Government for suspending arms export licenses to Israel. He provided no facts to substantiate this allegation.
Robinson — an anti-Muslim extremist who himself has been associated with the far-right — has made a show of support for Israel on a number of occasions, but this support has been condemned as unwelcome by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
Fuentes was joined by David Miller — a former academic who was fired from the UK’s Bristol University for spreading “antisemitic conspiracism” — who stated that the UK riots were the “flexing of Zionist muscle,” and that the Zionist message to the UK was “You block arms sales, we’ll burn your country down. And you won’t be so brazen next time.”
On August 4, Miller also connected the riots to Robinson’s supposed support for Israel, saying:
The ‘State of Israel’ is burning down the UK.
As I have been saying, ‘Tommy Robinson’ is a Zionist asset.” He added the hashtag #DismantleZionism.
The same day, rapper and anti-Israel activist Lowkey issued a post quoting Robinson’s supposed willingness to “fight for Israel in a war,” as proof of “Robinson and EDL’s very clear material relationship with the Zionist Movement” as well as “the possibility that the racist attacks and pogroms in Britain are part of that fight.”
Richard Medhurst, a presenter at PressTV – a global news network controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which functions as a propaganda outlet, regularly spreading antisemitic content reinforcing the anti-Zionist and anti-Western positions of the Iranian regime – joined the fray, stating. , that the riots were “Israel […] sending a message 1. To the British people […] not to protest its genocide” and “2. To the British govt for withdrawing its legal challenge to ICC jurisdiction.”
Like other conspiracy theorists, Medhurst used Robinson’s public positions to blame Israel for the riots, again claiming that Robinson is an “Israeli asset” who has “helped Israel promote hatred of Arabs and Muslims.”
Disturbingly, there are also examples of people holding positions in reputable academic institutions who are also pushing the conspiracy theory that Israel is behind the unrest in the UK.
For example, Dr. Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London called the rioters “useful idiots” who were the “product of subversion,” by Israel — along with Russia, China and the UAE — all of which had “ripened these communities because they see the far-right as partners against Islamism.”
In another post, he also blamed the riots on “financiers in Israel” who “invented the scarecrow of the ‘Islamist’ to smear Muslims in civil society writ large.”
This is not the first time that Krieg has characterized Israel and its supporters as being a nefarious and undermining force.
The anti-Israel falsehoods peddled after the Southport knife attacks show yet again how anti-Jewish prejudice manifests itself in anti-Israel disinformation campaigns and conspiracies.