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A CAR RAMMING in Liverpool left dozens injured yesterday evening, and was quickly followed by misinformation, speculation, and conspiracy theories about the suspect.
The city’s mayor has said that four people are still “very, very ill in hospital” after the car ploughed into a crowd yesterday during the parade celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League title win.
Police quickly arrested a 53-year-old man after the incident and identified him as a white man from the Liverpool area, but that didn’t stop speculation about the incident from spreading rapidly online.
Initially, some claims focused on whether the ramming was an intentional terror attack, a claim the police have dismissed.
However, even after the suspect’s ethnicity and local background was revealed, there was baseless speculation that the police had arrested the wrong person, or had purposely released misleading information, or were engaging in a cover-up.
The suspect remains in custody where he is being interviewed on suspicion of attempted murder among other charges.
The suspect was arrested by police after the incident in Water Street in Liverpool city centre, and four children were among around 50 who were injured – including one child who was seriously hurt.
Merseyside Police said the suspect was the driver of the car, a white, British man from the Liverpool area, and added that the incident was not being treated as terrorism.
Witnesses at the scene disagreed on whether the ramming, videos of which were shared widely on social media, appeared deliberate or accidental.
However, many online commentators noted the incident appeared to follow in the pattern of previous attacks, such as the 2016 truck ramming in Nice that killed 86 people and left hundreds of others injured.
That and some similar attacks which involved the use of vehicles were carried out in the name of Islamist groups, often Islamic State.
“No information has been released about the terrorist in the Liverpool car attack,” one X account said, encapsulating a widespread false assumption. “So you can be sure it’s a Muslim”.
Police quickly worked to dispel these rumours, but many online commentators, especially those whose accounts show histories of anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim posts, began disputing the news that the suspect was, in fact, a white British man.
“PHOTO and VIDEO of the driver from the Liverpool attack,” the beginning of one post on X said.
“The initial reports said he was 53 years old and white. Those reports appear to be wrong. This is the driver,” the post says, next to a series of blurry images. “Young, and definitely not white. Cover up already running.”
Two of the photos included with the post show a man in a vehicle similar to that involved in the incident. They are screenshots taken from a video and are so blurry that no features can be identified.
The third photo clearly shows a young man with tanned skin, dark hair and a beard — unlike what the post says, the man in the photo could be “white”. In either case, the photo of the young man is from a completely different video — which shows he was walking on James Street, about 200 metres from the street the ramming occurred on.
There is no indication that that video or the man seen in it has any relation to the ramming incident.
The post saying that the suspect was “definitely not white” has been viewed more than 1,100,000 times. In a follow-up post, the person admits that the photo was “inaccurate” and that other videos indicate the driver was clean-shaven. That correction was viewed only 130,000 times.
Other posts using the same images made similar claims.
“MEDIA CAUGHT LYING: Liverpool attacker initially reported as a 53-year-old white male… Turns out? Young. Not white. And definitely not what they wanted you to see,” another post reads.
“Same script every time: Rush the false narrative. Delay the truth. Blame you when you notice.”
That post has been seen more than 958,900 times. The author has not yet corrected his post.
Other claims have been more sophisticated.
In another post, a video appears to show the police taking the suspect into custody. However, the footage does not feature a clear shot of what is happening, as police and crowds trying to break through them block the view.
One post with more than 1,900,000 views claims that a person being tackled by the police “looks to be a 53-year-old man”, and implies that this person – who had tried to break through the police line – is the person described as being arrested
“The ‘White 53-year-old’ who was arrested in Liverpool was actually arrested for something else,” one such post parroting this claim reads.
All the posts mentioned that shared these claims were from accounts that had a blue tick.
Previous to Elon Musk’s takeover, these ticks signified that the account belonged to a public figure or organisation, often politicians, recognised authorities or journalists. While X still refers to these accounts as being “verified”, these ticks now indicate that the account has paid for a subscription, and scam accounts regularly have these “verification” ticks.
Paid subscribers are also eligible for X’s Creator Revenue Sharing programme, where accounts get paid for getting high engagement with their posts.
At the time of writing, none of these posts have a Community Note indicating that they are inaccurate.
Other commentators accepted that the police were unlikely to be deliberately misleading the public in such a high-profile case, yet complained about what they saw as a double standard.
“It’s INSANE that the media are RELENTLESSLY spouting the fact the Liverpool attacker is White within ONE HOUR,” one post on X read.
“But when it’s a Muslim attacker, police wait DAYS. Britain is full of Islamic apologists. TAKE YOUR COUNTRY BACK, BRITS!”
The post, on the verified account of an American conservative commentator, was viewed more than 563,700 times.
“Why are they never this quick to disclose the identity and the background, and the heritage of terrorists when they’re from a Muslim background?” asked Paul Golding, the leader of the far-right political party Britain First, in a video viewed more than 3,700,000 times.
“Just look at Southport. They left us waiting weeks and months. They covered it up. They said it was a quiet Welsh choirboy of Christian background. Turns out, it was an Islamist radicalised by Al Qaeda. Why the different approach?”
The Southport attacker, a seventeen-year-old boy who stabbed three children to death last July, was born in Wales to a Christian family who were originally from Rwanda.
The suspect was found to have possessed an al Qaeda PDF, however evidence has not supported claims that terrorism was the motive for his attack.
Misinformation about the Southport attacker, including that he was an asylum seeker, spurred riots across England and Northern Ireland, often targeting Muslims and asylum seekers.
A former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent said it was “unprecedented” that the police “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect in the Liverpool incident.
Dal Babu told BBC Radio 5 Live: “It was Merseyside Police who didn’t give that information with the Southport horrific murders of those three girls, and the rumours were that it was an asylum seeker who arrived on a boat and it was a Muslim extremist and that wasn’t the case.
“I’ve never known a case like this before where they’ve given the ethnicity and the race of the individual who was involved in it, so I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”
Babu said that yesterday’s incident showed the Merseyside Police had learned the lessons from what happened after Southport. He said: “They have to balance that against the potential of public disorder and we had massive public disorder after the far-right extremists had spread these rumours.”
He remains in custody where he is being interviewed.
Ever wondered how disinformation spreads so rapidly – or who is behind it? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.
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