Rise of far-right extremism fuelled by internet propaganda

Security minister warns of threat of ‘online grooming’ while arrests for domestic terror offences surge

THE Government’s security minister has warned of the rise of far-right extremism in Britain, as the latest Home Office figures showed a sharp increase in arrests for domestic terror offences.

The number of people held for suspected domestic terror offences has jumped nearly five-fold in the past 12 months in Great Britain.

Far-right terrorist suspects drove the increase, security sources told The Daily Telegraph.

Speaking after the Finsbury Park terrorist attack, Ben Wallace, the security minister, said: “What I can say on this case is this individual, so far as we know at the moment, was not known to us, but we are aware of a rise in the farright.”

He said online propaganda was helping fuel far-right radicalisation, just as it was feeding Islamist extremism.

He said: “One of the biggest problems we all have is multimedia today. The speed and grooming that these people involve themselves in, whether Islamic or far-right, are something we all have to grapple together.”

Home Office figures released last week showed that while international Islamist violence continues to account for most terror arrests, the number held for domestic terrorism, which is dominated by the far-right, leapt from 10 to 48 in Britain last year.

The jump came after a neo-nazi group called National Action in December became the first extreme Rightwing group to be banned as a terrorist organisation. The anti-semitic, white supremacist group had celebrated the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by Right-wing extremist Thomas Mair.

Aaron Winter, an academic at the University of East London who researches far-right extremism, said neo-nazi groups had increasingly pushed an anti-muslim agenda.

He said: “In the past number of years, from 7/7 but also more recently, there’s been organisation around antimuslim activism. There’s an increasing mobilisation against Muslims.”

He said recent years had seen “increased activism and plots, increased public statements about calling for violence”, from Right-wing extremists, but police had also been paying more attention to their activities. He said there had been an increase in hate crimes such as arson at mosques, as anti-muslim rhetoric became more prevalent.

Police in London recorded a rise in Islamophobic incidents after the London Bridge terrorist attack earlier this month, with 20 recorded on June 6, compared with a daily average of 3.5.

The tally was the highest this year and more than after the Paris attacks in November 2015, and the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013.

A retired police chief last week warned that online anti-muslim sentiment had been “relentless” after the London Bridge attack, which killed eight. Mak Chishty, a former Metropolitan Police commander who had been the country’s most senior Muslim officer, said: “The backlash has been something of a different scale.”

Extremists were hoping to “feed off the tension” caused by Islamist terrorist attacks to plot violence of their own, the Government’s independent terror law watchdog warned earlier this year.

David Anderson QC said in February: “The threat from extreme Rightwing terrorism in the UK is currently fragmented but the massacre perpetrated by Anders Breivik in Norway is a warning against underestimating the threat. Both the Government and the courts treat the threat with the seriousness it deserves. Extreme Right-wing ideology can be just as murderous as its Islamist equivalent. A sophisticated network is not a prerequisite for mass slaughter.”

A quarter of those referred to the Government’s Channel programme, which seeks to protect those vulnerable to being radicalised, are now singled out for suspected far-right extremism.

The increase in far-right arrests has contributed to a jump in the proportion of white suspects being held under counter-terrorism legislation. In the year to the end of March, there were 113 arrests of white people, compared with 68 in the year before, a 66 per cent rise.