The slide into a bizarre world of believing conspiracy theories and voicing openly toxic and bigoted views took place slowly over the last decade whilst many of us were not able to fathom how quickly and extensively social media had taken charge of our lives. As the Founder and previous Director of Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, the world that I know of today, as someone reaching his fifties, is virtually unrecognisable to the one in which I worked just a decade ago and where there was real hope that levels of racism, prejudice and intolerance were finally on a downward slope.

Today’s world is also a far cry from that in which I grew up. As a refugee from Amin’s Uganda in 1972, and having fled a second time from Africa in 1983 because of military instability in Kenya, I suffered at first hand the openly racist abuse meted out to Asians and African-Caribbean communities in Kent where I was schooled. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, that open racism existed, flourished and led to the murder of young black men such as Stephen Lawrence. Such open hatred impacted on many young men and women from BME communities, though the economic boom of that period helped to also temper some of the racist anger and bigotry. Anti-racism work, equality marches and work-based equal opportunity schemes seem to have turned the tide against division that many of us assumed would mean a country more at ease with its diversity.

Whilst the UK is in a far better place than the ’80s, the reality is that, as a country, we have slid backwards towards openly aggressive far-right marches rallying thousands of people, national political instability and a rising sense of mistrust which is acutely felt between BME communities and the two main parties. This, mixed with a recent economic crisis, has created the perfect storm for social insecurity and it is this insecurity that some have played upon in fomenting divisive and openly hostile views toward groups of people in our society. It is also within this environment of insecurity that people have sought comfort within narratives of division that blame others and which provide a sense of meaning to them, however twisted that may be.

For such individuals, conspiracy theories become reality since the world around them is unstable and frightening. Grasping onto something almost tangible, that explains the complexity of life in a simplistic fashion, fills the void that many of us currently feel in an increasingly frightening world. This is why, for example, conspiracy merchants who peddle views of an ‘Islamic takeover’ or of hordes of Muslims outbreeding other communities, manage to find a receptive audience. With less money in people’s pockets, communities aggressively vying for resources in austerity, and a sense of confusion as to where we are heading as a nation, you can see how easy it is for people to believe that there are hidden factors at play. The culprits, in their opinion, are more than likely Muslims, Jews or migrants.

Both Muslims and Jews have felt a sharp rise in hostility towards them and hate crime figures show such a rise over the last five years. Much of this is due to hate online and, furthermore, since 2012, when I founded Tell MAMA, it was clear to me that social media companies would not remove hateful and criminal material, nor would they take down far-right, neo-Nazi or Islamist extremist accounts. Their business model was based on getting traction for their technological revolutions through more accounts opening up. In doing so, they helped create the fog and smoke of disinformation and gave an amplified voice to extremist groups masquerading as ‘free speech’ martyrs. These companies, whilst levelling the playing field for more voices to be heard, also exposed people to views and opinions that would have been marginalised for a reason. Yet their platforms also legitimised toxic views by placing those views into a worldwide market of ideas where extremist groups were better equipped to promote them.

Let me explain. Marginalised, divisive and racist groups by their very nature had to be far more energetic and driven to try to win supporters. Before the advent of social media these people had to host events, print leaflets and remain active at a street level. That all took time and money and, to make it worse, they also looked pretty scary. However, such groups were always driven; they had to be to survive.

Now post their divisive messages on social media with a ‘friendly face’, remove the racist insignia and blame migrants, Muslims and foreigners, and strangely there was a more receptive audience as people’s fears and insecurities rose over the last decade. Additionally, as many of us played catch-up to try to challenge extremist and divisive views, these individuals and groups already had a head start since they were naturally driven and could see the power of the new platforms. It was a toxic, heady mix that was to have a severe impact on our society, as we are now seeing today.

This is why we must mobilise and defend the social values we enjoy in our country, and which are under threat. It is not just those, as this paper has highlighted, who try and divide local communities, who we must challenge; it is also those beyond our shores, who support extremist groups and seek to destabilise our democracy by fomenting instability, whom we must remain vigilant against. If we take our eye off the ball in these crucial years, it is not only our values which may change – it could be our very understanding of reality. Now that truly is frightening.

India’s Supreme Court ordered police on Wednesday to put five prominent rights campaigners suspected of links to Maoist guerrillas under house arrest as outrage grew over their detention.

Critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government have dismissed the allegations against the activists, who were detained a day earlier, and said the crackdown was part of ongoing attempts to stifle all dissent.

Police detained the campaigners, seized their laptops and mobile phones, in raids on their homes in different cities, triggering protests and a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the action.

Sudha Bharadwaj, who has been fighting for the rights of workers in parts of India such as Chhattisgarh where left-wing guerrilla groups operate, said the action against her was part of a broader crackdown on opponents of the government.

“The effort is whatever is the opposition to this regime, whether it is workers rights, tribal rights, everybody who in the opposition is being rounded up,” she told reporters outside her home in Faridabad, a short distance from New Delhi.

The arrests follow months of tensions between right wing nationalist groups and advocates of free speech that has played out in college campuses and spilled over into the streets.

Critics also say several top journalists have been forced out of their jobs for their critical reporting of the government.

The others detained on Tuesday included were Varavara Rao, a prominent poet from the southern city of Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira from Mumbai and civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha from New Delhi.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has faced mounting criticism from activists and academics, who accuse it of undermining the secular and pluralistic principles of India’s constitution.

The BJP denies these allegations but says it is opposed to appeasement of any community and has long advocated tough action to protect national security.

“These five are no threat to anyone,” said Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer for a group of leading academics that has petitioned the Supreme Court to release the activists.

“The charges against them on the face of it appear indiscriminate, unwarranted, part of a malicious campaign to threaten human rights defenders, independent journalists, writers and thinkers in the country from critiquing the government and its policies, and an attempt to muzzle dissent,” the petition said.

INTELLECTUAL FORCE

Police have also accused the five of inflammatory speeches at a rally in western India last year which led to violent clashes between Dalits, the lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy, and right wing organisations.

A police officer said the main case relates to speeches made during a rally held in the city of Pune on Dec. 31, 2017 commemorating the valour of Dalits. The following day, violent clashes broke out between members of the lower caste and hardline Hindu groups.

The police officer, who could not be named because he was not authorised to speak to reporters, said police had seized documents relating to the long-running Maoist insurgency afflicting parts of the country.

The guerrillas are fighting for the rights of the landless in parts of eastern and southern India, dubbed “the Red Corridor”.

The police officer said the five activists gave intellectual force to an insurgency in which thousands of people have been killed over the years.

Modi faces an election next year and opposition parties are trying to forge an alliance to stop his Hindu nationalists from coming back to power.

The Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice Dipak Misra said it would hear the petition challenging the arrests of the activists next week and until then they would be placed under house arrest, and not police custody.

Judge D.Y. Chandrachud, one of the judges on the bench, said the right to criticise was a crucial for democracy.

“Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If dissent is disallowed, then the pressure cooker may burst,” he said.

The European Commission on Tuesday stepped up its latest legal case against Poland, where the ruling nationalists stand accused of bulldozing the independence of courts and judges, thereby undercutting democracy.

Governed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, the EU’s largest ex-communist state has most recently enacted laws forcing into early retirement many Supreme Court judges. The bloc, rights groups and domestic political opposition decry that as going against the rule of law.

These moves came after the PiS had already exchanged many judges at the Polish Constitutional Tribunal and heads of many regular courts, while also tightening its grip on public media and controls over non-government groups since coming to power in late 2015.

Now, the head of the Polish Supreme Court has been defying the new law and the situation risks paralysing the court, which validates election results in the country of 38 million people.

“The Commission maintains that the Polish law is incompatible with EU law as it undermines the principle of judicial independence, including the irremovability of judges,” said the EU’s executive on Tuesday as it took to a second level a formal infringement procedure against Warsaw.

Poland now has a month to make amends or the Commission will file a lawsuit at the bloc’s top European Court of Justice.

But the PiS remains defiant and enjoys broad public support – largely thanks to generous social spending – despite its many bitter feuds with the EU.