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Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY Elon Musk's X platform continues to be a breeding ground for violent anti-Muslim & anti-migrant hate, according to a new report from counter-hate researchers. Analysis by the the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) - an organisation despised by far-right billionaire Musk - found that in the aftermath of the Southport murders last July, high-profile hate figures on social media platforms like Elon Musk's X "falsely linked the attack to Muslims and migrants, leading to widespread disorder and violent riots across the UK." Now one year on from the 2024 riots following the Southport stabbings, new CCDH research finds that little has changed. Research from the monitoring group found that "hateful influencers" garnered millions of views per day on X, with the platform "utterly failed to moderate this explosion of dangerous, violent content." CCDH's findings led the UK's online safety regulator Ofcom to conclude that there was a "clear connection" between posts on social media and the eruption of the 2024 riots. Worryingly, the group finds that the "same forms of violent and murderous rhetoric that precipitated and inflamed the 2024 riots" are still widely circulating, with scant moderation by the platform. The findings are likely to add further pressure on the Labour Government to act, and to review its heavy use of X. EXCLUSIVE Reform's Darren Grimes Accused of Lying After Police Deny Telling Him Not to Hold Council Surgeries for 'Security' Reasons EXCLUSIVE: Local police have rejected the Reform UK deputy council leader's claim that they advised him not to meet his constituents Josiah Mortimer The research shows how posts from six far-right or extremist influencers - Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Andrew Tate, Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson - are the initial "parent" posts in an "intensely violent" series of replies from platform users. Reply posts "encourage extreme acts of violence against Muslims and migrants: to shoot, to maim, and to kill." And X then amplifies and monetises the influencers - and the engagement they generate on the platform - despite "continued breaches" of platform rules. During the summer riots in England last year, X emerged as a "crucial vector of false information and hate," CCDH finds. "Rather than taking steps to mitigate harmful and illegal content, Elon Musk, owner of X, personally amplified conspiracy theories, warning of an impending "civil war" in Britain to his hundreds of millions of followers," the authors write. "Hate preachers" who had been banned from Twitter before being reinstated by Musk are still receiving millions of views per day. Of the six prominent accounts identified by CCDH in the wake of the riots (Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Laurence Fox, Andrew Tate, and Calvin Robinson), CCDH found that each remains active on X. All are 'verified' Blue Tick users, meaning their posts are actively promoted by the X algorithm. They are highly likely to generate income from X through their posts, through the platform's Creator Revenue Sharing programme, which channels ad revenue to high-engagement users. Generating large numbers of replies boosts posts' engagement, and hate-filled content appears particularly likely now to generate high-engagement. Keir Starmer's Government Says Elon Musk's X AI Chatbot Endorsing Hitler Is a 'Matter for the Company' The Prime Minister's spokesman dismisses calls to leave the social media platform, despite its official 'Grok' bot posting a series of antisemitic comments Adam Bienkov Three of the six accounts analysed (Fox, Robinson and Tate) are also allowed to offer paid subscriptions to their content on the platform, enabling them to profit further from their content. The report finds: "Today, [these influencers'] posts are still routinely followed by streams of rep...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY Labour MP Dawn Butler has told the Byline Festival that she is thinking about running for Mayor of London, as she declared that figures within her party need to start understanding that socialism "isn't a dirty word". Speaking at the festival at Keele University, on Saturday, Butler was asked by Byline Times founding editor Peter Jukes whether she would consider running to succeed Sadiq Khan as London Mayor, and replied "yes, I would." Sadiq Khan has yet to declare whether he will run for a fourth time to be London Mayor at the next scheduled elections in 2028. However, it has long been rumoured that he is preparing to step aside, with Butler's name repeatedly mooted by senior figures inside City Hall as a potential anointed successor. Butler was a former minister in Gordon Brown's Government and served in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, but was not reappointed by Keir Starmer when he became leader. Keir Starmer's Government Says Elon Musk's X AI Chatbot Endorsing Hitler Is a 'Matter for the Company' The Prime Minister's spokesman dismisses calls to leave the social media platform, despite its official 'Grok' bot posting a series of antisemitic comments Adam Bienkov Asked about what she thought of the Government's performance so far, she replied that while she'd "rather be in Government than in opposition" she had been dismayed by its recent difficulties. "I think government is difficult, but it doesn't have to be this hard" she told a panel discussion on women in politics. In an apparent criticism of the current leadership, she added that, "I think there are too many people at the moment in the Labour Party that don't understand the Labour Party. "They don't understand that we were born from the trade union movement. They don't understand that we are a Socialist Party, and that's not a dirty word, and they don't f***ing understand." Butler was among 47 Labour MPs to vote against the Government's revised welfare plans last week, after Starmer was forced to abandon previous plans to make a series of cuts to disability benefits. An outspoken figure on the left of the Labour party, Butler was famously thrown out of the House of Commons chamber in 2021 for refusing to retract her comments accusing Boris Johnson of being a liar. Johnson was later suspended from the Commons for 90 days for deliberately lying to Parliament. The 2028 London mayoral elections are set to be held again under the more proportional supplementary vote electoral system, following an announcement this week that Starmer's Government will reverse changes made by the last Conservative Government to change the system to first past the post. ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH MORE OPTIONS We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY Nigel Farage has been making headlines recently by calling for the two-child benefits cap to be scrapped. The limit, introduced by the Conservative Government under David Cameron in 2017, restricts support in Universal Credit and tax credits to two children in a family. Once families grow above this level, they get no additional support. It effectively penalises children for coming from larger families, and has been blamed for pushing hundreds of thousands of them into poverty. PM Keir Starmer is under major pressure from his own MPs to ditch the limit. But Cameron's policy didn't emerge in a vacuum. In 2015, one party demanded benefits be limited to two children. It proposed "supporting a lower cap on benefits" and more specifically: "Limiting child benefit to two children for new claimants." The party was the UK Independence Party, led by one Nigel Farage. EXCLUSIVE Reform's Darren Grimes Accused of Lying After Police Deny Telling Him Not to Hold Council Surgeries for 'Security' Reasons EXCLUSIVE: Local police have rejected the Reform UK deputy council leader's claim that they advised him not to meet his constituents Josiah Mortimer The idea had been promoted in 2014 by the right-wing Policy Exchange think tank, which called for a stop to extra benefits at four children, and boasted at the time: "Many proposals by Policy Exchange, founded by a group including ministers Michael Gove, Francis Maude and Nick Boles, have found their way into Conservative manifestos in the past." The electoral pressure of UKIP on David Cameron (as well as the deep blue roots of Policy Exchange) was, for all the hug-a-hoodie rhetoric, very significant. UKIP were polling around 12%, enough to block Conservative chances in dozens of seats. Don't miss a story SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES Cameron also, in that same election, adopted the UKIP policy of pledging a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. As my colleague Adam Bienkov has noted, it was barely picked up on at the time, but led to the most profound and likely-permanent change to Britain's constitution in half a century. That 2015 Conservative manifesto pledged to "work to eliminate child poverty" while also cutting or freezing certain benefits. The two aims were contradictory, and by the end of Cameron's term, in 2019, the Child Poverty Action Group found that in the space of two years, "an estimated 160,000 families have been affected by the two-child limit to date…the majority are working families and the majority have just three children." ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account. PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH MORE OPTIONS We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe. Reform's leader, now an MP trying to dig the boot into a Labour Government, says he wants to make it easier for people to have children, having seemingly had a change of heart on what is - effectively - his own policy. But Farage's arguably pivotal backing for a two-child limit in 2015 is now mostly forgotten in political coverage (though Farage did tell Sky News that what's changed his mind on the policy since 2014 is the 'cost of living' and the need for more 'British-born babies', and not, as the interviewer suggested, mere 'shameless opportunism'). Paul Nowak, TUC General Secretary, told Byline Times the about-turn was "yet more proof Nigel Farage is a political fraud." "Farage cosplays as a champion of the working class, but was the architect of a policy that pushed hundreds of thousands of children into poverty." The union confederation chief ...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY "We were beautiful and as such we should be remembered." Her green eyes beam. Tea Tupajić looks at the man sitting next to her and her face is aglow. She is a Bosnian theatre director, who experienced the siege of Sarajevo as a child. His name is Olaf Nijeboer, and he is the chairman of the assocation Dutchbat III. Back in 1995, he was 19 when he joined the Dutch batallion of blue helmets, who were supposed to protect Srebrenica. Before being sent off, he was trained to stay strictly neutral and to avoid any personal contact with the local population. Their major warned the young conscripts, a random sample of boys and girls from all over the country who were looking for adventure, a decent paycheck or to make the world a better place, that the Bosnian Muslims were "pure scum". Two days before the thirtieth commemoration of the genocide when Serb troops killed 8372 Bosniaks, mostly boys and men, we gather in an Amsterdam theatre. Olaf is here because he participated in a performance directed by Tea, in which eight Dutchbat veterans spoke about their experiences of guilt, indifference and shame. The occasion: the publication of her book Black Summer. Tea has transformed the Dutchbat stories into a composition of poetic, chilling effect. As the host of this talk, I witness the trust that they have established among each other, and how they agree that nobody who survived Srebrenica emerged as a complete human being. From Srebrenica to Gaza: Genocide Denial and the Long Struggle for Justice On the 30th anniversary of the largest mass killing in Europe since 1945, Martin Shaw compares it with how the West is now treating the ongoing genocide in Gaza Martin Shaw Last year, the United Nations designated 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. These days, an exhibition at the headquarters in New York shows 200 portraits of those killed, alongside their personal belongings that were found in the forests surrounding the town. Down the road from Srebrenica, newly found human remains will be buried at the sprawling cemetery in Potocari, facing the former battery factory that served as the Dutchbat compound. During those sweltering days of the black summer, thirty years ago, this was where the men were separated from the women, children and elderly, never to be heard from again. Today, it is the home of the Memorial Centre. Dutchbat has long gone. On the walls of the compound, it left behind graffiti, now carefully preserved, like: No teeth…? A mustache…? Smel like shit…? Bosnian girl! For over thirty years now, Srebrenica has been a story of insult, neglect and denial. Both within Bosnia and Herzegovina, and between the country of the 8372 and the country of Dutchbat. It is a story of trauma passed on across generations, of deprecation and desperate warnings not to look the other way. A blueprint for what awaits new generations of genocide survivors. Sitting on the other side of Tea Tupajić, in the Amsterdam theatre, is another Dutchbat veteran: Alice Schutte. Today, she is a cheerful public transport consultant with a blonde cowlick. Back then, she took pictures of Srebrenica citizens crawling, almost swimming through the garbage heap outside the UN compound. The Eaters, is what she used to call those people. "There is a photo of me. I am just twenty years old, but my eyes are empty and ice cold. I frighten myself. I was there and what I did was take pictures." The first time she recounted this memory, Tea gazed at her in shock. "Those people could have been my family,' she said. 'We were not animals. We were beautiful." EXCLUSIVE British Doctor Bombed in Gaza by Israeli Planes Fitted with UK-Made Weaponry Speaks out for First Time The attack occurred in a building that the Israel Defense Forces knew contained medics ...

Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features SUBSCRIBE TODAY The past week has been a big one for disability-blaming. Forget migrants (for a moment), disabilities are now apparently the reason our economy and public services aren't working. 'Benefits Pay More Than Being In Work', said Thursday's Telegraph front page, furious that the sickest, or most disabled Brits, may receive more from the state than if they worked a minimum wage job. The paper did not mention that being disabled can cost more than minimum wage. Nor did they speak to a single disabled person. But they were in good company. The Daily Mail front page declared: 'Proof Work Doesn't Pay Under Labour'. Worth Reduced to Work: A Disabled Person's Experience of the Welfare Cuts Debacle Penny Pepper explores the impact of the watered-down Welfare Bill and questions the very notion of 'work' as a marker of human value Penny Pepper Despite these alarming declarations, in the UK and US, welfare is taking a beating, and the primary targets are those in need of health welfare. Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' slashed MedicAid for 12-16 million Americans, while the UK moved to save billions on health-related benefits. Labour promised its Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment (PIP) Bill would "promote work and address perverse incentives". But it was forecast to push 250,000 people into poverty. Not jobs. Brits are often told welfare is the biggest burden on our budget, yet we are rarely informed that we spend less on benefits than almost every other European nation. Comparing welfare spending as a share of GDP, the UK is right at the bottom of the pile, ranking 25th out of 28 European countries. We spend half what France, Scandinavia, Italy, Austria, Germany and Belgium do, falling just below Croatia, Romania and Hungary in the listings. Both our front pages and frontbenchers are telling us a story. A narrative that comforts the well-off by casting benefit-claimants as freeloaders, letting privileged people off the hook. But let's assess the evidence. Because like most powerful lies, it has some grounding in reality. The rationale is rooted in legitimate questions arising from a steady uptick in both health-related benefit spending and health-related non-employment. Non-Disabled People's Delusions That Disability 'Is Nothing To Do With Them' Only Harm Disabled People As Government cuts to disabled people's benefits lead to more dehumanising rhetoric, Penny Pepper reminds us that disability is an embedded reality of human experience as much as it always has been Penny Pepper Labour is targeting sickness and disability benefits because both have ballooned in recent years, largely due to a post-COVID spike in mostly mental health and obesity-related claims. But instead of reigning in spending by addressing the issues driving demand, Labour plans simply to tighten the purse strings. That's more likely to push people onto the streets than into work. The evidence is in experience. Many disabled people will tell you the PIP benefit has been vital to enabling work. 'Personal Independent Payments' are designed to cover some of the day-to-day costs incurred by disability or chronic illness. Lianna, a lawyer we spoke to, uses hers to afford accessible commuter routes. Rather than de-incentivising her labour, PIP enables it. In many cases the disincentive isn't benefits, it's discrimination. Negative stereotypes fuel this and become self-fulfilling. Ellen Jones, an accessibility strategist with lived experience, explained: "People with mobility disabilities will be considered as demanding 'special treatment' for having a ramp to get into their office. It's something I see over and over again. Peers think that a disabled person's getting special treatment, it causes conflict and makes leadership reluctant to hire disabled workers." EXCLUSIVE Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives ...