A violent attack. A short video. A name, ideally. A few big accounts willing to post before they know anything. Then thousands more people repeating it as if the facts are already settled. That’s how fear pollutes our politics.
We’ve seen it in real-time after the horrific knife attack in Belfast. A man was seriously injured and he deserves justice, and the police investigation needs to establish exactly what happened. But almost immediately, the attack became something else online.
Graphic footage spread. Claims moved faster than confirmed information. Nigel Farage and other far-right figures used the case to push a wider story about migrants, Muslims and minority communities before the facts were clear.
Rather than waiting for the facts to emerge, they used the case to advance a wider political narrative.
The far-right knows it doesn’t need to prove everything it says. It only needs to create an atmosphere of suspicion and anger, where whole communities can be blamed before the truth has caught up.
And the damage does not stay online. In the aftermath, homes were attacked. Vehicles were set alight. Families were left frightened in their own communities. People who had nothing to do with the original attack were made targets because far-right agitators had decided this was their moment.
As political agitation intensified and violence spread, disinformation flourished online – causing further distress to the victim’s family and forcing them to call for it to stop. It was a reminder of how quickly disinformation can fill the space where reliable, verified reporting is absent.
Local journalism has been hollowed out. In too many places, the first version of a local story no longer comes from a reporter who has checked it. It comes from Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats, Telegram channels, and faceless X accounts, where the loudest claim often travels furthest.
Recent research shows that false and misleading claims are more common in areas with little or no recognised local journalism. Immigration, Islamophobia, and community tensions are exactly the kinds of issues being exploited.
Disinformation is a democratic problem because democracy cannot work when every serious incident is instantly turned into a culture war, and lies spread faster than the truth.
The Belfast attack should be treated with seriousness and care. The victim deserves justice, facts must be established, and rule of law must do its work.
But the way this case has been exploited should alarm us too, because when far-right figures turn a violent incident into a weapon against whole communities, the consequences are immense. Homes get burned, families threatened, and communities made to live in fear.
Every false claim, rumour and act of disinformation pushes us further away from a shared reality. And it’s that shared reality that our democracy needs to survive.
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