Tell MAMA reported a racist to Lincolnshire Police last November, months before he received a three prison sentence last week for stirring up racial hatred online, we can reveal.
Wayne O’Rourke, 35, came to our attention after members of the public reported an X post (formerly Twitter) that read made in late November that read: “Palestinian genocide is way more funny than you are” and other posts of concern.
O’Rourke (@Waynegb88) posted under his real name (@WayneOrourke88) last year, “Should I live stream a Quran burning? F*** Islam”, “A vote for labour is a vote for the continued islamifaction of Britain”, and that mosques would have “beheading rooms” for Christians.
As our investigation continued, we found that O’Rourke had posted AI-generated images linking Muslim men to bestiality and used “white lives matter” in some posts.
He also has a history of posting racist, anti-Black memes, evoking older historical racist tropes.
Other racist material included examples of him dehumanising refugees by calling them “foreign invaders” and later posting racialised memes linking refugees to criminality.
Weeks before his jailing, Tell MAMA wrote to the courts citing several posts we believed breached Contempt of Court laws regarding the Southport killings and how they pushed anti-Muslim conspiracies more broadly in early August. One such post had almost 700,000 impressions on X. He had also published details about the suspect on his X account, generating millions of impressions, before the judge had lifted an anonymity order.
On 2 August, posting on X, O’Rourke called for the mass deportation of “traitors” who protected mosques alongside Muslim communities following far-right violence disorder and violence after disinformation about the suspect went viral. Days earlier, he posted, “Today was a terror attack by a Muslim…heads must roll.”
The court heard that a further post urged the “people of Southport” to “get out on the street,” generating almost two million impressions as he celebrated the burning of a car in Sunderland with the caption: “Sunderland, go on lads”.
Further examples included inflammatory language, such as “Starmer has basically said it is against them. Hold the line.” And “give them hell lads”, the BBC and other media outlets reported.
Wayne O’Rourke posted a dehumanising meme, inverting a crescent moon and star to spell “c****,” and compared Muslims to an “infestation” in early August. Tell MAMA has long continued to document in our research how racialised, dehumanising content uses animalistic or mechanistic forms of dehumanisation.
He also told the court that he made £1,400 monthly on X and boasted over 98,000 followers.
During his sentencing, Judge Catarina Sjolin Knight told O’Rourke: “You were not caught up in what others were doing, you were instigating it,” adding: “The flames fanned by keyboard warriors like you.”
The judge rejected his claims of using “dark humour” and, after pleading guilty to a charge of stirring up racial hatred, sentenced O’Rourke to three years in prison as the trial at Lincoln Crown Court concluded last Friday.