Neo-Nazi and far-right agitators from Europe and the United States are using Telegram to promote racist violence and undermine efforts of the police nationwide with malicious hate crime reports, a Tell MAMA investigation can reveal.
Our earlier investigation into a prominent Telegram channel established following the horrific stabbings in Southport boasted over 15,000 members. A notable figure in this channel before its removal due to its posting of violently racist and terrorist material was an individual from Finland.
Tell MAMA revealed how that Telegram channel had, before its removal, glorified the Christchurch terrorist, shared footage of the terror attacks and posted demonising comments about Muslim and Jewish communities. A second neo-Nazi Telegram channel that re-shared that content was removed from Telegram hours later.
A further investigation into a much smaller account, with 328 subscribers, with links to this individual revealed a channel that had largely focused on promoting neo-Nazi messages in northern European, with the occasional commentary on European and North American politics, before the killings in Southport.
In the days that followed the stabbings that resulted in the deaths of Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Bebe King and the subsequent murder charges against Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, the channel re-shared material from various UK-based Telegram channels, in calls to violent actions and in racist invectives against refugee and Muslim communities.
Neo-Nazis based in different Nordic countries called for and encouraged violence towards Muslims in English cities.
On the evening of 5 August, a video appeared on the channel promising that “many things are going to happen” invoking racist and violent responses that included, “We should target the central hub of these p*kis like Bradford and Birmingham.” A Swedish-based neo-Nazi, called for violence in London, with the group admin sharing their agreement, as someone else posted a winking Totenkopf (death skull) emoji.
It was within this time frame that the Finnish neo-Nazi our investigation had identified had uploaded a racist video to TikTok titled “DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR HOMELAND DEAR ANGLOS” with a racist German-language song “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus!” (“Germany for the Germans, foreigners out!”) that became a worrying TikTok trend in Germany, according to the public broadcaster NDR. Various neo-Nazi and white nationalist accounts in the UK and abroad posted approving and racist statements in the comments.
A second racist TikTok video was captioned “Defend your birthright! #england #christisking” and included a clip of Prime Minister Keir Starmer with a Star of David on his forehead, splicing content posted lifted from a racist X-user (formerly Twitter) in the UK (an individual they often retweeted).
More broadly, the responses of Elon Musk, including about potential “civil war” in the UK and policing responses to far-right violence is subject to ongoing government rebukes and wider public condemnation.
In the early hours of 7 August, a US-based Telegram channel that boasts over 15,000 subscribers (who have links to the extremist far-right nationalist Proud Boys group) posted a screenshot of the online hate crime reporting hub for communities in England and Wales and a link. What followed in the comments of screenshots purporting to show malicious hate crime reports, including one report calling Muslims rapists and the N-word.
An example of an alleged malicious hate crime report that called Muslims the N-word, captured during our investigation.
The tactic was equal parts racist and disruptive: hoping to undermine the efforts of police forces nationally to collate genuine hate crime reports from Muslim and other minority communities and to follow up with support.
Comments that our investigation found is that the admins of the Northern European channel actively encouraged such racist trolling (re-sharing the post to their channel) – with clear instructions to not “make credible sounding reports” as to also disrupt police responses to racist and far-right violence on a street level.
Last week, we highlighted the role of disinformation and misinformation on social media related to the stabbing suspect.
Tell MAMA will pass the findings of this investigation to the authorities, government and the relevant social media platforms.
Update: Following the publication of our investigation, a spokesperson for Telegram contacted Tell MAMA and gave the following statement: “Telegram’s moderators are actively monitoring the situation and are removing channels and posts containing calls to violence. Calls to violence are explicitly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service.
Moderators use a combination of proactive monitoring of public parts of the platform, sophisticated AI tools and user reports to ensure content that breaches Telegram’s terms is removed.”