Russian Fake News Site Behind Far-Right Riots In UK

The Telegraph reports:

Ali Al-Shakati has never existed, we now know, but that didn’t stop an obscure, Russian-linked fake news outlet from naming him as a 17-year-old supposedly Muslim asylum seeker responsible for the murder of three schoolgirls in the town on Monday.

Channel3 Now, a website that masquerades as a legitimate American news outlet but acts as an “aggregator” for real news stories as well as fake viral claims, published the claim on the back of speculation which appeared to have started on X, formerly known as Twitter.

What had begun as a trickle then became a flood, sending the conspiracy theory pouring out through social media anew, where the name was boosted by thousands of other Russia-linked accounts before being repeated by authentic Russian state media, which cited Channel3 Now in its reporting.

Read the full article. As the Telegraph notes, the false claims posted by Channel3 Now have been spread by prominent far-right extremists including Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate. Some of the X users spreading the claims are regularly promoted by Elon Musk. Hit the link for much more. No paywall.

A Russia-linked site helped start riots in the UK by falsely naming a killer as a Muslim immigrant, when in fact he was British to Christian parents. Fake news sites now outnumber real news sites on the internet, and that’s danger it poses is real. Beware.https://t.co/1eWNXDTITS

— Resolute Square (@ResoluteSquare) August 4, 2024