When President Trump retweeted three inflammatory anti-Muslim videos by a British far-right group he managed to do something rare in post-Brexit Britain – unite the country. But Prime Minister Theresa May had good reason to express her concern over the tweets, writes Therese Raphael for Bloomberg View. The extreme right threat is growing there – and the President’s intervention only added fuel to the fire.
“In the past, extreme-right groups in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have been fragmented, lacked leadership and generally were a low-level annoyance. These days they are highly networked, sophisticated and organized. They know how to tailor their rhetoric to attract particular audiences. They feature attractive people in their messaging and cooperate with groups in other countries to form online troll armies and fake social-media accounts to spread disinformation,” Raphael writes.
Meanwhile, “the U.K. has experienced a rise in hate crimes (which also spiked during the 2016 campaign that preceded the vote to leave the European Union) following terrorist attacks on Manchester and London Bridge in May and June this year. The U.K. government reports a 27 percent increase in hate crimes this year over last year.”
Back to Politics
“In the past, extreme-right groups in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have been fragmented, lacked leadership and generally were a low-level annoyance. These days they are highly networked, sophisticated and organized. They know how to tailor their rhetoric to attract particular audiences. They feature attractive people in their messaging and cooperate with groups in other countries to form online troll armies and fake social-media accounts to spread disinformation,” Raphael writes.
Meanwhile, “the U.K. has experienced a rise in hate crimes (which also spiked during the 2016 campaign that preceded the vote to leave the European Union) following terrorist attacks on Manchester and London Bridge in May and June this year. The U.K. government reports a 27 percent increase in hate crimes this year over last year.”
Back to Politics
No comments:
Post a Comment