The widespread misinformation about the identity of a child killer sparked violent riots across the UK, but experts say the kindling had been building up for years.

And they told The New Daily the violence could easily be replicated in Australia if the country continues to go down the cultural and economic path UK has already trodden.

Days of rioting in parts of England and Northern Ireland were marked by an attempt to set on fire a hotel full of asylum seekers, petrol bombs thrown at police officers, and damage to mosques, shops, cars and homes.

Almost 400 people were arrested as of Tuesday (AEST).

Muslims and asylum seekers were the main targets of the anger, following false reports that the perpetrator of a stabbing in Southport that left three children dead and more injured was a Muslim asylum seeker only recently arrived to Britain.

Although the attacker has since been identified as a 17-year-old born and raised in the UK, with no known links to Islam, the violence continued.

Australians in the UK have been warned to avoid areas where protests and riots are occurring, while countries such as Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia have also issued travel alerts for the UK.

Deakin University terrorism and violent extremism expert Greg Barton said many of the people rioting in the UK were likely looking for any excuse to commit criminal acts.

But he said some of the violence, particularly the attempt to burn down a hotel full of asylum seekers, could be forms of terrorism.

A group of #protesters stormed a hotel in #Rotherham, England, believed to be housing migrants.

The protesters broke through police cordons and entered the Holiday Inn, where migrants are being accommodated by the British government.

Protesters have set fire to Holiday Inn… pic.twitter.com/KfN7sxEVsA

— CarraDeShaukeen (@CarraDeShaukeen) August 4, 2024

The potential terrorist activity in the UK came as Australia’s terror threat level was raised to ‘probable’ this week due to the growth of a “diverse range of extreme ideologies” and “spikes in political polarisation”.

How the UK reached boiling point

With the UK facing increasing cost-of-living pressures over recent years, far-right activists pointed the finger at Muslims and migrants, independent researcher into far-right conspiracies and neo-Nazis Kaz Ross told The New Daily.

“The great replacement theory – the idea that white English people are being replaced in their own country by immigrants – is one that’s really taken hold in the last few years,” Ross said.

“We have a massive right-wing push, which is ‘all foreigners out’ … It doesn’t matter that this kid was born in the UK … because straight away it just goes to, ‘Black and brown people, they’re immigrants, they shouldn’t be here. They’re all Muslims, get them out’.

“The whole issue is, you provoke young Muslim men to retaliate, or young African men to retaliate, and then you’ve got your justification.”

The angry mutterings increased in volume recently as the UK government paid hotels to house asylum seekers while their claims were being processed, in a time when an increasing number of UK citizens are facing homelessness.

MPs have been told over and over again not to publicly name asylum seeker accommodation because it is dangerous. This hotel was set on fire tonight. They are your constituents too. You doxxed them in the Houses of Parliament. https://t.co/U30ZnmcSDx

— Minnie Rahman (@minnierahman) August 4, 2024

Ross said residents of small towns were particularly frustrated as they argued they did not have the resources, from health care to education, to take in hundreds of extra people.

“People are angry about the economics. They’re angry about collapsing infrastructure, public transport, the state of the roads, even the state of the water system,” Ross said.

“There was recently the election in the UK, where people resoundingly rejected the Conservative Party and their approach, but the UK suffered 40 years of Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal economic agenda and the place is pretty depressed.

“As a result, they’re easily agitated and motivated in to looking for people to blame.”

Prominent politicians such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have been criticised for further inflaming community tensions, while social media platforms have been accused of not doing enough to regulate harmful content.

“The whole social media ecosystem relies on people being engaged, and the people that are engaged are those that are angry, indignant, frightened,” Ross said.

The UK government is also investigating whether recent riots were influenced by online bot activity from foreign state actors.

Parallels to Australia

Barton said while there were economic and social parallels with Australia, the UK was “further down the road”.

“Hopefully we never get as far down as they’ve got, but … the last decade’s been pretty brutal for people [in the UK] economically,” Barton said.

“Certainly the previous government was strong on blaming asylum seekers, migrants – politics of fear.

“We have echoes of that in Australia … We don’t quite have that level of build up in volatile material … but the UK is a warning of years of economic hardship and divisive language that erupted.”

Australia has experienced violence at the hands of far-right extremists, most notably the 2005 Cronulla riots, and the 2019 Christchurch shooting. The latter occurred in New Zealand but was committed by an Australian.

Far-right extremists, particularly neo-Nazis, have had a more bold public presence across the country in the past few years.

Australians should not panic, but also should not underestimate the probability and scale of future right-wing violence, Barton said.

There have been several recent brushes with domestic terrorism in Australia this year, including a teenager’s plan to behead a Labor politician in Newcastle, and a man setting off home-made chemical explosives in a Sydney shopping centre.

Barton said the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had indicated it was good at detecting and disrupting large-scale, sophisticated terrorist plots, but struggled more with lone actors and mob violence.

“Given that our particular vulnerability is lone actor attacks … it would be a lower probability of something like [Christchurch] happening at that scale, but it’s not zero probability,” he said.

“It could happen.”

Ross said it would likely take an act of violence against children to spark riots in Australia similar to what is happening in the UK.

“There’s a lot of inflammatory language about being a ‘warrior’, ‘Fight, stand up, save the children’,” she said.

“They’re small numbers, but to commit a terror act, you don’t need a big number … you just need one person.”