Enter staged right: misinformation feeds Britain’s riots

Hi, this is Christy from Back to the Bar. You've probably heard about GLP1 weight loss medications and the side effects that can come with jumping in too fast. That's why I love Noom. Makes getting started easy. Their microdose GLP1 program begins with a smaller dose and gradually scales up based on how your body reacts. The Noom GLP1 microdose program starts at $99 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your microdose GLP1 journey today at noom.com that's n o o m.com Noom micro changes big results average weight loss 8 pounds in first month meds and personalization based on clinical need and not available to all individuals. Medications are not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. Pricing based on first month only hey.

Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile' unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.

The Economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Political campaigning in Japan is in general pretty old school, you know, pamphleting and loudspeakers on cars. But our correspondent found that the recent battle for Tokyo Governor had a very different feel to it. The feeling of an actually exciting, if bonkers race. And I'm told that season two of House of the Dragon concluded last night. What's notable about this latest installment of the Game of Thrones franchise is, well, there's dragons I guess, but also strong echoes of the modern American political landscape. First up though, In Britain, it was a weekend filled with shocking scenes of mob violence. Protests broke out in towns and cities across the country following the killing of three young girls in a knife attack a week ago. But connecting that horrific crime to the current unrest is murky. Thanks to online disinformation campaigns and Britain's crop of influential right wing rabble rousers. Mosques have been attacked, rioters smashed windows and then lit fires outside hotels believed to be housing asylum seekers. There's absolutely nothing to connect the brutal attack of a week ago to immigration policy or to Islam. And plenty of protesters chanted an uncomplicated message. Save our kids.

Save our face.

Save our kids. Save our kids. Others revealed their allegiance to Tommy Robinson, one of Britain's most prominent anti Islam activ. It is, in a word, messy, revealing both the fissures in British society and how they're being exploited. And it's hard to think of a worse way to remember the three little girls murdered last week.

It's been a really shocking weekend to hear from our reporters who've been watching some of these protests, but also to see it on the tv.

Andrew Palmer is our Britain editor.

It feels like a breakdown of social order across English cities that is reminiscent of things that we've seen in the past, but also in some ways more disturbing.

And let's wind back a little bit, Andrew, and go through the chronology of this. This has been sort of an unusual story from the start.

Yeah, it started with an absolutely appalling tragedy in Southport, which is a town in northwest England where a knife attack took place and three very little girls were murdered. Ten other people were seriously inj. That happened at the start of last week. And then on social media, falsehoods started to circulate about who the attacker was, that this was a Muslim who had arrived illegally in the country on a small boat. That led to the organisation of a rally that turned into a riot in Southport itself, and that has spiralled since then into a series of these organized protests that have then almost all descended into violence. And I guess what's been striking this weekend is that the crowd is not necessarily homogenous, that there are definitely troublemakers from the far right, white nationalists who are out to cause violence, but there are also people who are animated by concerns about immigration and are there to protest peacefully. And then there are also large numbers of youngsters who, as violence kicks off, join in gleefully. So it's quite a complex picture, but.

Broadly, despite the diversity of the crowd, there is sort of a single message around which people are convening. And that is this immigration question, right?

Yes, absolutely. So immigration is at the heart of this, but it is also built on a falsehood. So there is a long running question in British politics about the scale and controllability of immigration. But what really kicked this off was an outright lie on social media that the person behind the knife attack was an illegal immigrant and a Muslim. In fact, the person who's been charged with the Attack is someone who was born in Britain. So this is not about illegal immigration at all. But that turned out to be the flame that resulted in some of the disorder we've seen. I think what it does show is that there is enough in the way of prejudice in this country that it doesn't take very much for people to come out onto the streets, and that can then turn into violent disorder.

What are the ways, given the situation we've got now, to start addressing that.

Do you think there are some deeper issues that one needs to think about and that have been illuminated by the events of the past week? So one is the nature of disinformation. The fact that lies can zing around the Internet and game currency is something that has been known for a while, but it does require different responses from the authorities. So in particular, the police are used to responding rather slowly to this kind of thing. We had an example of this last year as well. There was a woman who disappeared called Nicola Bulley, and social media sleuths came up with speculation about what had caused her disappearance, and that interfered with the police investigation, and it took them, in that instance, a very long time to respond. So it fragility on the part of the police is one issue when misinformation is taking place.

But hang on. That misinformation, disinformation was cleared up fairly early in this process late last week. As a matter of fact, the real violence of this weekend came when pretty much everybody knows that that initial lie was a lie.

Yes, that's true. And what's interesting is that the sort of ground shifts so people will say, yes, okay, that's true, but we still have a problem with large numbers of immigrants, that there's an issue with cultural assimilation and integration.

And what about immigration policy itself, how to address the concerns that people do have in these communities?

So I guess there's a difficult rhetorical and policy path here for the government, which is that in the short term, as they are doing, it's really important to be unequivocal in condemning the violence and ensuring that people are brought to justice. But at the same time, they have to find a way to peel away people who are beyond redemption. The white nationalists, the far right from those who are worried about immigration and are open to participating in politics as normal. So that's the path that they have to tread. And the way to do that is firstly not to make gimmicky promises to stop all immigration or to stop the boats, which is what we've seen from previous administrations and from Reform uk, which is an insurgent right wing party here, recognition that immigration is an issue, a willingness to talk that through with local communities, and a lot of this will be done on very localised issues, such as the housing of asylum seekers in hotels, for example. That is long term difficult and grinding policy work. It is not the kind of thing where you snap your fingers and problems are solved, but it is also necessary. There is a danger here that if one demonises everyone who is anti immigration, that you open the door to populist parties such as Reform uk, and also in driving them into the arms of even more extreme organizations such as the far right.

So that's the long term plan, the difficult set of policy prescriptions and so on. But what about the short term? In your view, how do you see the current unrest playing out?

Well, we don't know exactly what is planned or going to happen over the next few days. The government is convening emergency meeting today to work out its response to the disorder. It is likely to involve accelerating the workings of the criminal justice system and that the deterrence of sentencing is brought to bear. The hope is that if you show very quickly that violence results in prison terms, for example, that that will deter people from coming out. The problem, of course, is that the state's capacity to cope with large numbers of criminals, court backlogs, lack of places in prisons, all of that militates against a very rapid and efficient processing of lots of new cases. So that is the balance that will need to be struck in the next few days. I suspect that the really important days to watch will be next weekend. People are off work, probably more hot weather. Will people come out again? That will be the test of whether this is a phenomenon that lasts for weeks rather than days.

Andrew, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

Psst. Psst. Hey, over here, behind the velvet rope. You should come in. We've got a whole world of weekend long listens, limited run series on meaty topics and of course, our slate of weekly podcasts like Drum Tower tomorrow on the role of fast food in China, or Babbage on Wednesday on the mathematics of sport. Tap into the richest vein of audio journalism by signing up to Economist podcasts. Plus for just a few bucks or pounds or euros a month. Come on. Political campaigning in Japan has a reputation for being on the dull side. But last month's race for a new governor of Tokyo was anything but. 56 candidates traded barbs, not all of them polite. An election poster featured porn. There was a candidate dressed as the joker From Batman spouting nonsense on tv. And another just took off her clothes while she was outlining her policies. In the end, the incumbent, Kuike Yuriko, bagged herself a third term. But it was the runner up who stole the headlines, an outspoken but little known former banker.

For a long time, Japan has enjoyed a reputation for being free from social media led populism that has affected a lot of other rich democratic countries.

Moeka Iida writes about Japan for the Economist.

But the results of the Tokyo's governor's race, and especially the rise of a small town mayor called Ishimaru Shinji, suggest that Japan might be following a similar trajectory.

It sounds completely anachronistic, right? A race without social media. But tell me a bit more about how it played out.

So first of all, this election is just one region in Japan, but in the country it's a very high stakes election. Tokyo has a population of around 14 million people. So in terms of the number of people you're governing and the amount of financial resources that you have control over, being the governor of Tokyo is a very powerful position. And governors in Japan are directly elected by the people. The assumption in advance was that this election would be a head to head competition between two high profile veteran politicians. So one is Koike Yuriko, who's the incumbent governor, and she's a former national politician for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. People thought her main opponent would be Saito Rengho, who's another famous politician from the CDP or the main liberal opposition. And in contrast, Ishimaru was a relatively obscure candidate for most people in Tokyo. He basically emerged out of nowhere. He graduated from a top university in Japan and followed a leap career track of working at a big bank. And then he had a brief political career as a mayor of a very small town in Hiroshima called Akitakata. His candidacy for the Tokyo governor's race was not backed by any political party.

So then how did he end up doing so well?

So campaigning in Japan is very old fashioned. Politicians are usually reliant on things like handing out pamphlets and also riding around in a car with a loudspeaker. But in contrast, Ishimaru used social media very effectively and especially YouTube and TikTok. So just to give you a sense of his reach on social media, by the time the election ended, ishimata had around 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, whereas Koike, the incumbent had around 3,000 and Rangho had 10,000.

Well, 300,000 subscribers though doesn't actually sound like that many when it comes to YouTube channels.

Yes, of course. But there were also other external accounts that would share his video, edit and crop his video, and make it go viral. When I talk to young voters who don't watch mainstream TV or read newspapers, and they spend a lot of time on YouTube or TikTok, they were overwhelming, seemingly exposed to content by Ishimaru.

Okay, and what kind of content are we talking about here?

So one example is a viral video of him berating an old council member who was dozing off during a council meeting. In this video, he's shouting, shame on you. Shame on you. In general, Ishimaru struck an anti establishment tone. So he positioned himself as this. This good, earnest young man who's fighting against the old corrupt establishment. And apart from pitting himself against old politicians, he also spent a lot of time bashing the mainstream media or mocking journalists. In post election appearances on television, Ishimaru was seen berating the interviewer for asking stupid questions.

So you said that Ishimaru has a lot of young supporters, but what is it they like about him? Who are they?

So according to one exit poll, he managed to secure 42% of votes from people aged 18 to 29, compared to 27 for Koike and 15% for Rengo. I also conducted exit polls on election day myself, and talking to voters, I was surprised how a lot of young people voted for Ishima. And again, when I ask them about why they voted for him, it's usually not about specific policies or specific ideas. But people say he looks different or a lot of mainstream politicians are old, and Ishimaru might be able to change something in Japanese politics.

I'm interested to know whether you think there was a gender component to all this.

I do think gender did play a role in this election. So when I hear people talk about the top two candidates, I do hear a lot of misogynistic comments, like they're too aggressive or they're too strong. Whereas when I look at Ishimaru, I find him very aggressive and hostile in the way he talks. But I do think rather than the division along gender lines, the generational divide was more important in this election.

So what do you reckon? Do you think this new style of aggressive campaigning that seemingly appeals to young people is going to change Japanese politics, or at least Japanese campaigning?

I think the main takeaway from this Tokyo gubernatorial election is that Japanese voters are actually very hungry for change. Though voter turnout, especially among young people, has been seen as a big issue. But the fact that a lot of young people turn out for this candidate, who was not backed by an established political party was indicative of how there probably is an appetite for change and that social media can actually provide a path for such outsiders. But I don't think the results of the governor's election means that we're going to see a wave of populists rising across the country or in national politics. In Japan, in order to enter national politics, a lot of candidates have to run from rural areas where the demographic is much older. So doing well on TikTok might help you get a lot of votes in Tokyo, but you won't get that far in greying rural towns. I think what's interesting is partly why Japan has a reputation of being free from populism is because of the lack of immigration. So in Western countries, immigration is a big source of division in society and in politics. But in Japan we don't have the same problem, but we do have a government that's dominated by a very homogeneous group by older men, and I think this election is an indicator that people are very frustrated with that.

Moeka, thanks so much for your time.

Thank you very much for having me. Foreign.

Hi, this is Christy from Back to the Bar. You've probably heard about GLP1 weight loss medications and the side effects that can come with jumping in too fast. That's why I love Noom makes getting started easy. Their microdose GLP1 program begins with a smaller dose and gradually scales up based on how your body reacts. The Noom GLP1 microdose program starts at $90 and it's delivered to your door in seven days. Start your microdose GLP1 journey today at noom.com that's n o o m.com Noom micro changes big results average weight loss 8 pounds in first month meds and personalization based on clinical need and not available to all individuals. Medications are not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. Pricing based on first month only.

When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.

Strangely, one of the most accurate portrayals of how modern power politics works is a show with dragons and magic.

Robert Guest is a deputy editor at the Economist.

The HBO House of the Dragon and the Game of Thrones franchise that it's part of have a disturbingly modern portrayal of the way politicians try to grab power, hold onto it, and exercise it.

They can live in my new world or they can die in their old one.

The players are almost all breathtakingly cynical.

Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder.

They scrabble for more power when they already have plenty they take every opportunity to enlarge their territory simply because they think they can. They pay no heed at all to the suffering of what they call the small folk. It's a world that Vladimir Putin would understand. Its morals are pretty much the same as those of the warlords currently turning Sudan and Yemen to ash and rubble. And the way that Westerosi victors humiliate the vanquished, it brings to mind the way China's Communist Party humbles anyone who even hints at challenging Xi Jinping. On all sides, leaders seek weapons of mass destruction, which in Westeros doesn't mean nuclear weapons. It means dragons.

When dragons flew to war, everything burned.

Several politicians in Westeros had have a modern flair for populist gestures. Ordinary people hate crime, so the leaders make a show of brutalizing criminals.

Who are they?

Radcatcher in one episode, Daemon Targaryen dresses his men in flamboyant gold cloaks before leading them out for a night of noisily murdering alleged murderers, cutting the hands off alleged thieves, and violating rumored rapists.

Beginning tonight, King's Landing will learn to.

Fear the color gold.

His tactics differ only in degree from those of Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador who has rounded up tens of thousands of suspected gangsters, locked them up indefinitely, and shared videos of them stacked like semi naked Lego bricks in overcrowded jails. Both leaders, the fictional one and the real one, want to look tough on crime. Neither fusses about due process. You can see in the most recent season of House of the Dragon echoes of the modern American political landscape.

Aegon the Magnanimous second of his name.

The Magnanimous this time on the throne we have a narcissist with improbable hair who knows nothing about governance and says whatever he thinks will please the audience in front of him. Him when grown up officials offer sage advice, he grimaces with boredom. When devious courtiers want to sway him, they flatter his preposterous ego. Now, this is King Aegon Targaryen. But I don't know, maybe that reminds you of someone else. Yes, politics is a dangerous game in Westeros. So many of those in power are stabbed, poisoned or consumed by dragonfire that the viewer loses count, and the real world is only somewhat safer. In democracies, especially America, rulers face a real risk of assassination, as Donald Trump recently discovered, and in dictatorships, it's much rougher. Over the past half century or so, of the despots who've lost power, two thirds ended up dead in prison or in exile in politics, it's a good rule to trust no one and watch your back.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow, Sam.