Counter-terrorism police have finally concluded that a firebomb attack on a migrant centre last week was terrorism motivated by the far right. But you’d never have guessed it from this past week.
There haven’t been column inches from counter-terrorism ideologues laying out the drivers of this terrorist attack, nor has there been round-the-clock media coverage of the community where the perpetrator is from, asking why they hate so much. Most national newspapers didn’t give the attack front-page prominence the next day.
The day after the attack, the home secretary appeared to go out of her way to say that the attack was not being treated as terrorism. This is despite the fact that the perpetrator had tweeted that he planned to “obliterate Muslim children” an hour before his attack. He referenced the far-right Islamophobe Tommy Robinson, repeatedly wrote about Muslim “grooming gangs” and shared content from far-right Islamophobic groups including Act for America.
Is it possible that the comparatively muted reaction to this despicable act of terror is because the perpetrator was not “foreign”, but instead a Briton hating immigration: a cause much of the rightwing media and our government stand behind?
At the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring, we analysed the media reporting of 16 officially designated terrorist attacks between 2015 and 2020 in painstaking detail. The report uncovered a huge disparity in the way the term “terror” (and related terms) has been used by the media. Unsurprisingly, “terror” was used far less commonly when the perpetrator was from the far right.
For example, the report cites how many were unwilling to call Thomas Mair, who murdered Jo Cox, a terrorist, despite the murder being described by the Crown Prosecution Service as a terrorist act. ITV’s Rohit Kachroo, a contributor to the report, highlighted how a young man inspired by white supremacists in El Paso, Texas, shot 20 people dead in a supermarket, yet media outlets were initially unwilling to call it a terrorist attack. These should not be challenging cases.
On a side note, it is worth noting that mainstream reporting appears to have become more consistent since the Christchurch terrorist attack that killed 51 Muslims. This has included a greater willingness to call attacks by the far right “terrorism” where appropriate, and being more circumspect and not jumping to conclusions about motivation when the terrorist is, for example, inspired by Islamic State.
But it’s not merely about the reporting of terrorism. It’s also about why this far-right terrorist had such disgusting views about Islam and Muslims.
It’s important not to assume that media discourse about Islam, Muslims and immigration directly led to this attack, but given the awful reporting about Islam, Muslims and immigration that has become commonplace in the rightwing press, the correlation is worth exploring.
Columns by Melanie Phillips were quoted several times in the manifesto of the anti-Islam far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway more than a decade ago. Unfortunately, however, rather than this prompting some reflection, sections of the press have since doubled down.
In the week following the far-right terrorist attack on a migrant centre in Dover, the home secretary, Suella Braverman, claimed asylum seekers were engaged in an “invasion” of the south coast, defended by newspaper columnists such as Allison Pearson; and the Spectator published an article hostile to immigration with an image of a tidal wave of Muslim-looking individuals hitting the white cliffs of Dover. The Daily Mail, which did report the Dover centre attack on its front page, described it as an “intensification of Britain’s migrant crisis”, which came “amid new fears over the number of arrivals”.
It appears that even after a terrorist attack from someone who used such language, incendiary language about Islam, Muslims and immigration has not died down, but has actually escalated.
The question to ask is, why has this happened? First, there is a deliberate unwillingness to take far-right extremism seriously across the media and political establishment. In fact, there are even attempts to decrease focus on the far right, including most worryingly by the reviewer of Prevent, William Shawcross, although also across the pages of news outlets such as the Spectator.
Second, it is because anti-Islam sentiment remains acceptable in mainstream discourse. Why else would people like Rod Liddle, Douglas Murray and William Shawcross be considered reasonable interlocutors at the BBC, for example? And why else would Islamophobia in our governing political party be ignored?
Finally, it’s because in parts of the media and politics, narratives blaming an “other” for society’s ills play a crucial role. They distract from the real forces undermining British society, and get a lot of clicks.
We are at a crucial moment. And things look set to worsen as we face a probable recession, far-right voices are poised to return to social media platforms and far-right forces across the globe continue to rise.
If our media and political establishment cannot reflect and confront far-right terrorism and its drivers after a terrorist attack on a migrant centre, when will they?
Miqdaad Versi is part of the public affairs team of the Muslim Council of Britain. He is writing in a personal capacity.
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