Men ‘pushed in direction of soccer violence’ by ‘grifters’ as ‘good storm’ brewing

Young men are being driven towards football violence and public disorder by far-right “grifters” online, experts are warning. It follows reports that football ultras are heading to forests and fields for pre-arranged fights with rival supporters.

There are also warnings of a growing threat from extreme far-right groups willing to spark violent protests against minority groups. Dr William Allchorn claims that a “perfect storm” is rising which encourages young men to turn to extremism.

The far-right expert said it combines the cost-of-living crisis and rising homelessness with the toxic online “manosphere”. He said that the departure of summer weather and the decreasing number of small boat channel crossings will not be enough to stop racism.

The expert told the Daily Record that a generation of far-right influencers, who have monetised their social media output, will continue to drive Brits to extreme thoughts and actions – as the spreading of lies and distortions brings them a living.

Dr Allchorn, of Anglia Ruskin University’s international policing and public protection research institute, said football violence will tend to come around in cycles. He said: “Young men will periodically tend towards violence but we should look at the reasons for this rising today.

“Immigration has become a scapegoat for a lot of brewing forms of resentment issues. I’m not saying that every young man wants to get involved in these movements but if you’re in deprived estate or circumstance, and you’re seeing this very chaotic international environment – you will also almost certainly be at risk of being pushed towards ideology that involves scapegoating.

“We have a cost-of-living decline as well, which is building pressure on people, forcing a lot of people to go on staying with their parents. That’s something they may wish to rebel against.”

Dr Allchorn claims social media has been a game changer that allows leaders and local activists to “amplify and scaffold” response, especially on more unregulated social media platforms like Telegram. He said: “We’re what in the academic literature call the ‘post-organisational’ phase of the far right, where you have a lot of these leaderless formations and constellations of movements and actors.”

This has “turbo charged activity” such as the the torching and firebombing of asylum accommodation in various places, he added. The criminologist said Scotland’s recent flashpoints have both echoed what has happened elsewhere in the UK and acted as a “grim foreshadow” of what was later witnessed in the south of England. The recent fire at a block of flats in Possilpark, Glasgow, came after a false rumour was spread about immigrants being housed there.

A string of “silent demos” by groups of black-clad men in the Scottish cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh was repeated in Dover, Kent, where masked men recently blocked roads in protest at the arrival of a boat full of migrants.

Dr Allchorn said: ” I would believe that there is discussion of this kind of strategy in covert groups that connect various players up and down the country. We can probably expect more of it.

“A lot of the conflict we see now is obviously down to the messaging, as perceptions around migration versus the actual picture are very skewed. There has been a 43% decline in irregular migration across the channel over the past year yet the clamour for stopping the boats has grown.

“That is something that has been confected by these groups in the sense that they give the target, and they put it on the back of migrants when, actually, there’s a lot of other structural and economic issues that are brewing.”

He added: “They have a very clandestine way of communicating in encrypted or closed groups. This is giving a big potential for more vigilante type mass type action and we can see it happening in Scotland as well as England.”

The expert believes the way social media rewards its busiest influencers can lead to an amplification of untrue messages about immigration and exaggeration of the frequency of crimes committed by immigrants.

He said: “I’ve often questioned that in relation to like streamers and influencers, like whether they’re just there for the monetary value of things. But many of these bloggers and streamers are YouTubers are monetising what they put out and some of them are simply grifters.

“When they wake up in the morning they are thinking about how they can monetise content rather than any ideological treatise they might expound upon that day.” He added: “The prospects of young people right now are so dire and there is a mainstreaming of manosphere-type ideas.”