The Southport Attack and the Growth of Radicalisation: What Comes Next?

By Edden El-Hashahar

On 23 January 2025, Axel Rudakubana, perpetrator of the horrific Southport attack, was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years. Following the attack, a flurry of misinformation incorrectly identifying Rudakubana as a Muslim and asylum seeker led to far-right anti-immigration riots. But the attack also prompted a troubling question. How could an individual referred three times to the anti-extremism scheme ‘Prevent’ still be in a position to carry out an attack?

Thankfully, the Home Secretary announced a public inquiry to "get to the truth about what happened and what needs to change". Yet there is one conclusion clear to anyone informed on the attack, which requires no inquiry – social media is playing an alarming role in promoting violence and extremism, particularly to young men.

Investigations into the safeguarding failures have suggested that what prevented Rudakubana’s behaviours from being appropriately addressed was an emphasis on requiring a clear ideology to qualify for intervention from the specialist Channel program. The framework for qualifying UK terror threats has been far too prescriptive, and as such, has failed to respond to the trend of referrals concerning those with mixed, unstable, unclear views, which have outnumbered those with Islamist ideologies.

This trend, and Rudakubana’s specific case can be clearly tied to the dangerous influence of online content. Rudakubana spent hours researching genocide and watching graphic videos of murder.

"As the rights of women and minorities advance, young men who are unsatisfied with their lives point to a social change as a reason for their lack of fulfilment"

The Prime Minister did make a statement recognising what this attack represented, commenting that “terrorism has changed”, with "acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online,". Starmer’s recognition of this trend is a relief, but it comes fatefully late.

Alongside the trends in Prevent referrals, there have been other indicators of this threat that have gone ignored. In 2014, three women were stabbed to death by an 18-year-old ‘incel’ in Portsmouth. The 2021 Plymouth mass shooting, was carried out by a 22-year-old man who also engaged with misogynistic online content.

This trend is further confirmed by similar attacks abroad. In 2014, Elliot Rogers infamously killed six people and murdered 14 others in Isla Vista, California, and was recognised by US Secret Services as being motivated by misogynistic extremism. In 2020, a 17-year-old male killed one woman and injured two people in an act of incel terrorism in Toronto. In 2018, six women in Tallahassee, Florida were shot by a gunman motivated by extreme misogyny.

The trend is not difficult to understand. Young men in Western countries are frustrated with a perceived loss of social power. As the rights of women and minorities advance, young men who are unsatisfied with their lives point to social change as a reason for their lack of fulfilment.

The resentment felt by these young men has been channelled by online content within the ‘manosphere’ – the collection of online content which, to varying degrees and with varying subtlety, promotes anti-feminist narratives and a resurgence of ‘traditional masculinity,’ often alongside racist beliefs. The manosphere has been shown to hold real political power; Trump’s election victory was made possible due to the votes of young men, effectively harnessed through interaction through the manosphere itself, with the backing of podcaster Joe Rogan, and of course, the alliance with Elon Musk.

Whilst not all social media content targeted towards and enjoyed by young men is misogynistic, content algorithms promote radicalisation through pipelines to increasingly extremist content, making many young men susceptible.

Reportedly, Rudakubana spent hours researching genocide and murder, watching graphic videos. While the killer deleted his search history, his chilling final search on X remained. Rudakubana had viewed a video of the attempted murder of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.

This detail is more than simply disturbing. Australia’s internet regulator sought to have the footage taken down, and X refused to remove it, merely geo-blocking it in Australia, keeping it available elsewhere. This raises the concern of moderating these communities without the collaboration of social media platforms. The ownership of X by Elon Musk forms a grave backdrop for curbing violent online communities, as a self-proclaimed "free-speech absolutist". 

It is imperative that these online communities who spew hatred and incite violence are finally recognised and treated as the safety threat that they are, particularly to protect women and girls. Given Musk's refusal to play a role in making online spaces safer, we can only hope for the public inquiry to bring about rapid reforms to address this issue and prevent a repeat of the tragedy of the Southport attack.

Image: Wikimedia Commons