On the night of 9 June 2026, masked men went door to door through neighbourhoods in Belfast asking to “get the foreigners out.” Homes were set on fire. Vehicles were torched. Immigrant families were physically escorted from their homes by emergency services as mobs, organised partly online, swept through the streets. Claire Hanna, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, called it without hesitation: “What you’re seeing is a race-based pogrom.” [1]
The immediate trigger was a stabbing. But what happened in Belfast that night was not a spontaneous eruption of public anger. It was the latest instalment of a coordinated, years-long project, one in which far-right activists, social media platforms, and a billionaire with 240 million followers have systematically manufactured and weaponised fear of immigrants; and South Asians, Muslims, and people of colour have paid the price.
The statistics are stark. In the year ending March 2025, there were 137,550 hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales, a rise for the first time in three years.[2] Asian people, who make up just 9.3% of the population, accounted for over 31% of all victims of racially aggravated hate crime where ethnicity was known. They are nearly seven times more likely to be targeted than their white counterparts.[3]
Muslim communities have borne a disproportionate burden. Islamophobic hate crimes surged by nearly a fifth in 2024/25, directly correlated with the Southport murders and the far-right riots that followed.[4] Sikh communities, despite being systematically misidentified and lumped into generic “Asian” or “Indian” crime categories, report being the second most targeted group in the country, with the Sikh Federation UK describing a government that “doesn’t even recognise anti-Sikh hate.” Anti-Sikh crime remains effectively invisible in official statistics.[5] The true scale of targeted hatred against South Asian communities is, almost certainly, much worse than the numbers suggest.
These are not abstract figures. They represent a taxi driver in Wolverhampton with broken ribs.[6] A nine-year-old girl in Bristol was shot with an airgun and subjected to racial slurs, police treating it as racially motivated. Muslim men in York were attacked with tennis rackets and sticks by a group of balaclava-clad youths. Families in Belfast are locked inside their homes while crowds demand their removal based on skin colour alone.[1]
The Far-Right Machine
The Belfast riots did not happen in a vacuum. They are part of a well-documented pattern in which violent far-right networks exploit incidents involving immigrant suspects to mobilise public disorder against minority communities broadly. The 2024 Southport riots, sparked by disinformation falsely claiming the killer of three girls was a Muslim asylum seeker, resulted in 1,840 arrests, attacks on mosques, hotels housing asylum seekers, and immigrant-owned businesses.[7] The 2026 Belfast riots followed an almost identical script.[8]
What makes this pattern so dangerous is the speed and scale of online amplification. Tommy Robinson, a convicted far-right agitator with a long history of Islamophobia, posted a list of protest locations within hours of the Belfast stabbing. That post was viewed more than 8.4 million times on X. Then Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of X, shared it. “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” he added. His post reached 6.9 million more people. Within hours, immigrant families were fleeing burning homes.[9]
This was not Musk’s first intervention in UK racial politics. During the 2024 Southport riots, he posted that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain.[10] He has amplified disinformation and far-right rhetoric to millions of followers, treating the UK as a laboratory for testing the reach of his political influence. And he has paid no legal consequence whatsoever.
A Transnational Project
What is happening in the UK is not a domestic problem with a domestic solution. The far-right violence targeting South Asian and immigrant communities is one node in a deliberate transnational project, bankrolled from abroad and coordinated across borders.
Elon Musk’s interventions in UK politics did not begin with Belfast. Since 2024 he has proposed donating upwards of $127 million to Reform UK, called for the release of Tommy Robinson, [11] hosted far-right German politician Alice Weidel on X and publicly endorsed the AfD as “the only party that can save Germany. [12] He has also shifted his backing from Reform UK to the more extreme Advance UK.[13]
This is not ideological eccentricity. It is a coordinated strategy. As HOPE not hate’s State of Hate 2026 report documented, Musk’s growing involvement in British politics has seen him amplify extremist voices, attend far-right adjacent events, and use his financial muscle to push UK politics toward the anti-immigrant, anti-minority hard right. [14] The US National Security strategy, published in late 2025, explicitly stated its intention to support anti-immigration parties in Europe as part of defending “Western identity” a policy framework that provides Musk’s interventions with state-level cover.[15]
The far-right ecosystem that carries out violence against South Asian communities in the UK is therefore not a grassroots phenomenon. It is downstream of a transnational network of funding, rhetoric, and political organisation that crosses the Atlantic.
What makes this transnational dimension even more corrosive is that the people manufacturing the hatred need not hold any of it themselves. A Bureau of Investigative Journalism investigation published in May 2026 exposed a case that makes this stark: a devout Muslim man in Pakistan, was running a Facebook page called “Britain Today” with 192,000 followers, generating hundreds of thousands of views and earning around $1,500 a month by posting AI-generated Islamophobic deepfakes targeting UK audiences. One viral video showed a convincing AI likeness of Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Islamic dress delivering an inflammatory speech about “crazy violent Muslim immigrants,” deploying racial slurs for Pakistani people. The creator told TBIJ in Urdu that he had no interest in the content of the videos and had not understood them due to his poor English. “Whoever is doing this work is doing it to make an earning,” he said. [16]
This is the logical endpoint of algorithmic monetisation applied to hate: a global gig economy of outrage, where the identity or beliefs of the producer are entirely irrelevant. AI tools have lowered the production cost of inflammatory content to near zero; platform ad revenue models pay out based on engagement regardless of what that engagement is responding to; and the people who actually suffer the consequences, British Muslims targeted by Islamophobic deepfakes circulated to hundreds of thousands of accounts, are located in an entirely different country from the person who manufactured the harm and pocketed the profit. A spokesperson for London Mayor Sadiq Khan, one of the regular targets in the Pakistani creator’s videos, described it as “an outrage economy where people are profiting from the poisonous narratives they push online.”[17] Meta deleted the accounts after TBIJ flagged them, but only after millions of views had already been served, the ad revenue collected, and the content absorbed into the ambient Islamophobic noise that preceded and followed the Belfast riots. The Bureau had previously documented an identical operation run by a Sri Lankan influencer pushing anti-migrant AI content to UK audiences. [18] These are not isolated cases. They are a business model.
The Monetisation of Hate: A Platform Business Model
X under Musk has become structurally hostile to content moderation. Since his acquisition, the platform has gutted its trust and safety teams, reinstated thousands of previously banned accounts, including white nationalists and anti-Muslim extremists, and made algorithmic changes that systematically promote inflammatory content. But to understand the full picture, it is not enough to describe this as neglect or ideological permissiveness. The monetisation infrastructure of X has made hatred financially profitable, for the platform and for the individuals who produce it.
X’s ad revenue sharing programme pays creators based on engagement generated in reply threads. Under this model, the content that earns the most money is the content that drives the most replies, and on political and social topics, nothing drives replies like outrage. As one analysis of the platform’s algorithm noted, “controversial or rage-bait posts performed better” than educational or informational content under the ad revenue model, directly incentivising inflammatory material.[17] X’s own algorithm documentation has identified “politics and current events” as a high-earning “topic amplification zone,” rewarding political outrage with enhanced distribution and advertising revenue.[18]
In practice, this means that anti-immigrant content, fear-of-crime narratives targeting ethnic minorities, and Islamophobic disinformation are not simply permitted on X, they are financially rewarded by it. A far-right creator who posts incendiary content about a Sudanese asylum seeker stabbing earns more from ad revenue sharing than one who posts a calm news summary of the same event. The platform’s business model has a structural bias toward the exact type of content that preceded the Belfast riots.
This contrasts sharply with decisions taken by other platforms. YouTube demonetised Tommy Robinson’s channel for violating advertising policies.[19] Facebook banned him entirely for posting content that “uses dehumanising language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims.”[20] On X under Musk, he was not only permitted but amplified by the owner himself. The pattern across platforms reveals the choice X has made: not a failure to moderate, but a deliberate decision to make extremist content the engine of platform revenue.
The South China Morning Post reported that Musk, when accused of inflaming tensions in Belfast, deflected by blaming “uncontrolled immigration” for the unrest, a rhetorical move that reframes racial violence as a reasonable response to policy failure, and displaces responsibility from those who incite and commit it.[21] This pivot is not incidental. It is the platform owner protecting his product by redefining the story.
The Law That Isn’t Working
The UK has, on paper, one of the most robust online safety regimes in the world. The Online Safety Act 2023 requires platforms to assess and mitigate risks of illegal activity, including content that stirs up hatred or provokes violence. Ofcom, the regulator, responded to the Belfast riots by issuing an open letter to all major platforms warning of “possible legal consequences” and reminding them of their obligations.[22] Technology Secretary Liz Kendall announced that Parliament would be asked to update the Act to require faster action during “times of crisis.”[23] Ofcom confirmed new “crisis protocol” requirements, including dedicated law enforcement channels and temporary response teams.[24]
All of this is serious in principle. In practice, it has so far amounted to a series of strongly worded letters.
The Guardian reported, with devastating clarity, that despite everything that happened in Belfast, despite the videos of burning homes and fleeing families, despite Musk’s own posts directing millions of followers toward protest locations that became sites of racial violence, X will face no government action. Not a fine. Not a suspension. Not even a formal investigation.[25] The UK government, apparently, is not prepared to pick a regulatory fight with the world’s richest man.
This matters enormously. The Online Safety Act was designed precisely for situations like this. Its failure to be enforced against the most powerful actor in the episode sends a message that resonates far beyond Belfast: that the law protects communities on paper, but that in practice, certain actors operate above it.
Impunity Has Consequences
Hate crime does not exist in isolation. It is part of a continuum that begins with rhetoric, escalates through organised harassment and incitement, and ends, in cases like Belfast, with families being burned out of their homes. South Asian communities in the UK have lived along this continuum for decades.[26] What is new is the transnational scale at which hatred is now organised, the financial infrastructure that rewards its production, and the degree to which those with the power to check it, regulators, governments, platform owners, have declined to do so.
X earns advertising revenue from the outrage that precedes riots. Far-right creators earn creator payouts from the engagement their anti-immigrant content generates. Musk earns political capital in the US and Europe by positioning himself as the champion of movements that terrorise South Asian and immigrant communities in the UK. The violence is not a side effect of this ecosystem, it is its output.[27]
Every time Elon Musk reshares a Tommy Robinson post to hundreds of millions of followers and faces no consequence, he signals to far-right networks that the platform is theirs to use. Every time Ofcom issues a warning letter without enforcement action, it signals to those same networks that the law has limits they can exploit. Every time a government declines to act because of the diplomatic or political cost of confronting the world’s richest man, it tells South Asian communities, Muslim families, and people of colour across the UK something they already know in their bones: their safety is conditional, and the people who endanger it operate above the law.[28]
The question is no longer whether the UK has the legal tools to hold platforms, their owners, and transnational political actors accountable for incitement to racial violence. It does. The question is whether it has the political will to use them, against powerful, wealthy, globally connected actors who have calculated, correctly so far, that it does not. And in the gap between law and enforcement, families are fleeing burning homes.
Footnotes
[1]: TIME Magazine, “Masked Men, Burning Homes, and Destroyed Streets: Belfast Protests Erupt After Knife Attack,” 10 June 2026. https://time.com/article/2026/06/10/belfast-protests-erupt-knife-attack-violence-spreads-online-discourse-immigration/
[2]: UK Home Office, Hate Crime, England and Wales, Year Ending March 2025, October 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-year-ending-march-2025
[3]: UK Home Office / GOV.UK Ethnicity Facts and Figures, Victims of Racial and Religious Hate Crime, April 2025. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/crime-and-reoffending/victims-of-racial-and-religious-hate-crime/latest/
[4]: Express & Star, “‘Deeply Worrying’: Thousands of Religious and Race Hate Crimes Recorded by West Midlands Police in a Year,” 18 October 2025. https://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2025/10/18/thousands-of-religious-and-race-hate-crimes-recorded-by-west-midlands-police-in-a-year-new-data-shows/
[5]: The Federal, “Why South Asians, Especially Sikhs, Are Living in Constant Fear in the UK,” 7 November 2025. https://thefederal.com/category/analysis/south-asians-in-uk-sikhs-leaving-in-fear-215073
[6]: Human Rights Research, “The Rise in Racial Tension and Growing Anti-Immigration Sentiment in the United Kingdom,” 26 November 2025. https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/the-rise-in-racial-tension-and-growing-anti-immigration-sentiment-in-the-united-kingdom
[7]: Wikipedia, 2024 United Kingdom Riots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots
[8]: Wikipedia, 2026 Northern Ireland Riots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Northern_Ireland_riots
[9]: The Journal (Ireland), “‘Civil War Is Coming’: Belfast Protests Were Planned and Inflamed Online Before Turning Violent,” 10 June 2026. https://www.thejournal.ie/how-the-belfast-riot-protests-were-promoted-and-enflamed-online-tommy-robinson-elon-musk-7066410-Jun2026/
[10]: Fortune, “Elon Musk Lashes Out at UK Government After Being Snubbed from Top Investment Summit Over Race Riot Posts,” 26 September 2024. https://fortune.com/europe/2024/09/26/elon-musk-uk-government-snubbed-from-top-investment-summit-race-riots
[11]: HOPE not hate, “Elon Musk: Amplifying the British Far Right,” State of Hate 2026, March 2026. https://hopenothate.org.uk/state-of-hate-2026-elon-musk/
[12]: Newsweek, “Elon Musk Makes Major Push in Europe to Boost German, British Far-Right,” 2 January 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-far-right-germany-england-europe-2008828
[13]: Wikipedia, Advance UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_UK
[14]: HOPE not hate, State of Hate 2026, March 2026; HOPE not hate poll of 8,000+ UK adults, January 2026. https://hopenothate.org.uk/state-of-hate-2026-elon-musk/
[15]: The Unpopulist, “The Far Right Is Rapidly Remaking England’s Politics,” February 2026. https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-far-right-is-rapidly-remaking
[16]:The Devaut Muslim making A Living From Islamophobic AI Slop
[17]: nuelink.com, “X Monetisation Explained: Payouts & What Changed in 2026,” January 2026. https://blog.nuelink.com/x-monetisation/
[18]: ModernComment, “X (Twitter) Algorithm Changes in 2026: What Creators and Brands Need to Know.” https://moderncomment.com/blog/x-twitter-algorithm-changes-in-2026-what-creators-and-brands-need-to-know/
[19]: The National News, “YouTube Stops Anti-Muslim Activist Tommy Robinson Monetising Videos,” 2021. https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/youtube-stops-anti-muslim-activist-tommy-robinson-monetising-videos-1.814801
[20]: NBC News, “Facebook Bans UK Far-Right Activist Tommy Robinson Over Hate Speech,” February 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-u-k-far-right-activist-tommy-robinson-over-n976091
[21]: South China Morning Post, “Elon Musk Accused of Inflaming Tensions, ‘Weaponising Fear’ in Belfast,” 10 June 2026. https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3356672/elon-musk-accused-inflaming-tensions-belfast-after-knife-attack
[22]: Ofcom, Open Letter to UK Online Service Providers Regarding Civil Unrest in Belfast, 10 June 2026. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/open-letter-to-uk-online-service-providers-regarding-civil-unrest-in-belfast
[23]: GB News, “Labour announces Social Media Crackdown ‘In Times of Crisis’ After Belfast Attack,” 10 June 2026. https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-crackdown-social-media-belfast-attack
[24]: Ofcom, Stopping Illegal Content Going Viral in a Crisis, 9 June 2026; Digital Watch Observatory, “Ofcom Confirms Platform Crisis Protocols Under UK Online Safety Act.” https://dig.watch/updates/ofcom-platform-crisis-protocol-online-safety-act
[25]: The Guardian, “Elon Musk’s X Not to Face Action from UK Government Over Posts Inciting Violence in Belfast,” 10 June 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/10/elon-musk-x-not-face-action-uk-government-posts-inciting-violence-belfast
[26]: We Are BRIG, “Near Neighbours: Local Cohesion Forum Report — Birmingham,” June 2025. https://www.wearebrig.co.uk/news/near-neighbours-local-cohesion-forum-report-birmingham
[27]: Truthout, “British Politicians Accuse Elon Musk of Stoking Racist Violence in Belfast,” 10 June 2026. https://truthout.org/articles/british-politicians-accuse-elon-musk-of-stoking-racist-violence-in-belfast/
[28]: House of Commons Library, Hate Crime Statistics, March 2026. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8537/
Elon Musk Was ‘Irresponsible’ For Stoking Violent Belfast Riots | Lord Macdonald