ExtremismHateful Extremists Have Been Exploiting the Current Pandemic

The U.K. government needs to ensure that their response to dealing with COVID-19 and future crises takes into account the significant threat of hateful extremism and the dangerous narratives spread by conspiracy theories.

The Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) has published a report Thursday, looking at the way in which extremists have sought to exploit the current pandemic. Through the use of conspiracy theories and fake news, the Commission has found that hateful extremists have used divisive, xenophobic and racist narratives to sow division and undermine the social fabric of our country.

“We have heard reports of British Far Right activists and Neo-Nazi groups promoting anti-minority narratives by encouraging users to deliberately infect groups, including Jewish communities,” the report warned.

One conspiracy theory detailed in the report claims the virus is fake and part of a “Jewish plot” to mislead the public while another falsely claims that Muslims are responsible for the spread of the contagion by keeping mosques open during lockdown.

Far-right politicians and news outlets have also played a role in normalizing hatred against religious and ethnic groups by “push[ing] forward their anti-immigrant and populist message,” the report said.

The U.K. report follows State Department findingslast month warning the threat of racially and ethnically motivated terrorism from white supremacists is “on the rise and spreading geographically” across the country and world.

“We have already seen how extremists discussed the 5G conspiracy theory on fringe social media platforms such as Telegram.”

Conspiracies falsely linking the virus to the mobile network have led to 50 incidents this April in the UK where residents either burned down or otherwise vandalized 5G masts, according to the report.

The false conspiracy theory about the connection between 5G and the coronavirus was aggressively promoted on social media by Russian government’s disinformation specialists at the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence branch) and the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency – the same propaganda and misinformation outfits which led the effective Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.

The CCE warns that investing in counter extremism work and urgently publishing a new strategy is critical as extremists will seek to capitalize on the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 to cause further long-term instability, fear and division in Britain.