•  It is time to identify the real threat and try to eradicate or at least to keep it in check, Altikriti tells Anadolu

LONDON 

Consecutive UK governments were warned for at least 20 years that the far right was growing in a way that could spiral out of control, and the current riots are “absolute proof” that this threat was allowed to grow unchecked, according to a prominent British scholar.

“What we have today, where riots are threatening harm, carnage, and destruction … is absolute proof that the threat within society that was allowed to grow without any kind of attention, without any kind of check is the far right,” Anas Altikriti, CEO and founder of The Cordoba Foundation, told Anadolu.

The UK has been gripped by far-right riots for days, with violent mobs spewing racist and Islamophobic vitriol and targeting Muslims, minority groups and migrants.

The riots were fueled by online misinformation that the suspect arrested in Southport after the fatal stabbing of three children last week was a Muslim asylum seeker, a claim which was false.

Dozens of police personnel have been injured in the riots, while authorities have arrested hundreds of people, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that individuals involved in “far-right thuggery” will live to “regret” their actions.

Altikriti emphasized that Muslims were always “the initial targets of these elements,” but they actually pose a threat to the entire society.

“Exactly like we warned many years ago … the far-right is the biggest threat to society, and it’s incredibly unfortunate that so-called experts and advisors to government … continue to say … we shouldn’t focus too much on the far right and that it’s the Islamists we should target,” he said.

“It’s time now, especially with Reform (UK), having now five members of Parliament, to identify the real threat to society, the real threat to cohesion, to integration … and to try to eradicate it, or at least to keep it in check.”

‘Younger people’ joining far-right groups

Speaking about the dynamics of the rising far-right threat in the UK, Altikriti said former soldiers returning from war zones have been known to join extreme-right groups.

“At the time of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, one thing that several research centers here in the UK and across Europe pointed out was that returning soldiers were immediately joining far-right elements and immediately engaging with far-right narratives,” he said.

“Maybe it was PTSD, maybe it was because of what they saw, maybe it’s because of what they came to believe, but generally speaking, those soldiers who were sent on illegal, immoral, unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq … many of them came back to join those far-right elements.”

He reiterated that authorities were repeatedly warned at the time that this trend “constitutes an imminent danger to all of society.”

“Over the years, we’ve seen signs of the rise of various elements … 20 years ago, it was the British National Party, more recently, it was Britain First, and then the English Defence League, and characters like Tommy Robinson and Nick Griffin and the likes,” he said.

“But the thing is that new crops of younger people are also joining that kind of element, because they’re stoked by either economic difficulties, the cost of living crisis, by failed governments ... both Labour as well as Conservative.”

Far-right misinformation

Regarding the misinformation spread about the identity of the Southport attacker, he said: “What is tragic is that … there was the narrative that not only was he a Muslim, that he had arrived as an illegal immigrant by boat through the ways that the government always flouts … to justify its own economic failures.”

He stressed that police and other officials have confirmed the suspect, identified as 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, is “neither a Muslim nor an immigrant.”

“He’s someone who is Welsh from Rwandan heritage, a Christian. So, all the information that this (far-right) element has is absolutely wrong, yet still, day after day after day, we’re seeing riots targeting mosques, targeting Muslim businesses, targeting women in hijab, as well as police who are trying to protect elements of that community,” said Altikriti.