Young Scots are being driven towards football violence and public disorder by far right “grifters” online, experts have warned. A summer of anti-immigration chaos in housing schemes has also seen an eruption in football violence.
The Daily Record told yesterday of the growing craze for football hooligans – often influenced by far right and Nazi ideology – arranging to meet in forests and fields for pre-arranged fights. We have also uncovered a growing threat from extreme far-right groups willing to spark violent protests against minority groups.
Expert warns of 'perfect storm'
Far right expert Dr William Allchorn claims a “perfect storm” is rising which encourages young men to turn to extremism, combining the cost of living crisis and rising homelessness with the toxic online “manosphere”. Allchorn told the Daily Record that the departure of summer weather and decreasing of small boat channel crossings will not be enough to douse the flames of racism.
And he believes that a generation of far right influencers, who have monetised their social media output, will continue to drive Scots to extreme thoughts and actions – as the spreading of lies and distortions brings them a living. Allchorn, of Anglia Ruskin University’s international policing and public protection research institute, said football violence will tend to come around in cycles – with recent renditions tending to lean to the far right.
Social media 'amplifies' far-right response
He said: “Young men will periodically tend towards violence but we should look at the reasons for this rising today. Immigration has become a scapegoat for a lot of brewing forms of resentment issues.
“I’m not saying that every young man wants to get involved in these movements but if you’re in deprived estate or circumstance, and you’re seeing this very chaotic international environment – you will also almost certainly be at risk of being pushed towards ideology that involves scapegoating.
“We have a cost of living decline as well, which is building pressure on people, forcing a lot of people to go on staying with their parents. That’s something they may wish to rebel against.”
Allchorn claims social media has been a game changer that allows leaders and local activists to “amplify and scaffold” response – especially on more unregulated social media platforms like Telegram. He said: “We’re what in the academic literature call the ‘post-organisational’ phase of the far right, where you have a lot of these leaderless formations and constellations of movements and actors.
“This has certainly turbo charged activity like the mini pogroms in Belfast and the torching and firebombing of asylum accommodation in various places.” The criminologist said Scotland’s recent flashpoints have both echoed what has happened elsewhere in the UK and acted as a “grim foreshadow” of what was later witnessed in the south of England.
Scotland flashpoints foreshadow Dover
The recent suspected fireraising at a block of flats in Possilpark, Glasgow, came after a false rumour was spread about immigrants being housed there. And a series of “silent demos” by sinister groups of black-clad men in Glasgow and Edinburgh was chillingly repeated in Dover, where masked men blocked roads in protest at the arrival of a boat full of migrants.
Allchorn said: “In Glasgow, the silent gatherings of men in sinister black clothing seems to have been a grim foreshadow of what happened in Dover. I would believe that there is discussion of this kind of strategy in covert groups that connect various players up and down the country. We can probably expect more of it.
“A lot of the conflict we see now is obviously down to the messaging, as perceptions around migration versus the actual picture are very skewed. There has been a 43% decline in irregular migration across the channel over the past year yet the clamour for stopping the boats has grown.
“That is something that has been confected by these groups in the sense that they give the target, and they put it on the back of migrants when, actually, there’s a lot of other structural and economic issues that are brewing.”
Allchorn said English leaders like Tommy Robinson and Daniel Thomas – aka Danny Thommo – who orchestrated the blocking of roads by masked men in Dover are pivotal to other groups across the UK and Ireland. He said: “Daniel Thomas, for several years, has been running his form of citizen journalism and ‘auditing’.
“What we have seen recently is more sinister because of the black uniforms and also the fact that these men are taking the law into their own hands, with the threat and reality of violence. Things have certainly moved on from the asylum seeker hotel protests of two years ago.
“We’re seeing a lot more sophistication in terms of organization, with seven or eight groups under this banner of Thomas’s Patriot Platform, who’ve been doing these Christian, anti-migrant type patrols. They have a very clandestine way of communicating in encrypted or closed groups.
“This is giving a big potential for more vigilante type mass type action and we can see it happening in Scotland as well as England.”
Monetisation drives extremism
On the recent Possilpark fire incident, Allchorn said: “I can’t overstate how depressingly familiar this is, where there’s a rumour being circulated around far right figures, and then you have local individuals or vigilante groups willing to swoop in and take action. This momentum has been growing and it’s part of a post truth era, where people can believe what they want to believe without being too bothered about checking any facts.
“It can lead to extreme acts of destruction and violence and the reality is that those carrying out such acts are having their strings pulled by other people online or in covert groups.”
Allchorn believes the way social media rewards its busiest influencers can lead to an amplification of untrue messages about immigration and exaggeration of the frequency of crimes committed by immigrants. He said: “I’ve often questioned that in relation to like streamers and influencers, like whether they’re just there for the monetary value of things.
“But many of these bloggers and streamers are youtubers are monetising what they put out and some of them are simply grifters. When they wake up in the morning they are thinking about how they can monetise content rather than any ideological treatise they might expound upon that day.”
The Daily Record has recently told how of monetisation of social media by influential figures like UVF bank robber Mark Sinclair and Craig Houston, who travels around with a selfie stick and a drone to describe alleged conspiracies amid Scotland’s anti-immigration conflict. Restore Britain leader Rupert Low boasts about how he donates his MP salary to local causes on social media but he’s gaining so much money monetisation from the content that he puts out on X that he doesn’t need to have a salary on as an MP.
Allchorn added: “The prospects of young people right now are so dire and there is a mainstreaming of manosphere-type ideas. The rise of far right movements right now is an attractive avenue for young men in particular and they see this as a legitimate option.”
When asked where the social discord is heading, Allchorn said: “People are hoping that when the weather worsens and boats stop coming in, things will die down. But the likelihood is that action will turn inland to wherever there are perceived immigration issues.”
He added: “We are in an interesting legal space, waiting to see how law and order responses catch up with the disorder. There is a bit of a game of cat and mouse and we shall see if the authorities have sufficient intelligence gathering systems in place to disrupt direct action events. The state also has to contend with the backlash to tough policing – and we already see the claims of two tier policing when action is taken against rioters etcetera.”
The Daily Record told yesterday of Scottish football turning to “forest fights”. These included ultra fans from the Rangers Riot Crew, who took on hooligans from Germany and France. The latest flashpoint followed similar clashes involving fans of Celtic, Hibs, Falkirk and St Mirren.
