[alextingle]

The UK riots were nothing to do with the murders that supposedly "triggered" them. That was all about hateful people seeking any excuse to punch down.

The fact that you try to defend those rioters by perpetuating their transparent lies says everything I need to know about you.

[tourmalinetaco]

Toddlers were stabbed to death at a dance recital and somehow the people upset about that are “hateful”. I pray you find God and develop morality.

[benmmurphy]

I don't think its so black and white. There was definitely incorrect information being spread around about the perpetrators migration status.

However, he was a second generation migrant and I suspect some anti-immigration arguments try to make the claim that subsequent generations are also an issue. To these people making the argument that he was second generation so the claims that he was first generation is misinformation would be considered splitting hairs. However, this should not be an excuse for spreading incorrect information and we should always endeavour to accurately communicate the state of the world with other people.

This leads us to some of the other misinformation claims. I've seen it claimed it was misinformation that he was a Muslim. Whether he was a Muslim or not now seems less clear because the police have subsequently revealed he was in possession of a military study of an Al-Qaeda training manual and was also in possession of ricin. Of course it is possible to have such a manual for purely academic purposes or because he wanted to carry out a terrorist style attack but he had no allegiance to Islamic terrorism. But it does lend a small amount of evidence towards him being associated with Islamic terrorism. Also, it's important to note that the people making the claim about him being a Muslim could not have known about this at the time. The strong claims that they made about his religion were certainly not supported by the evidence that they possessed. Of course they may claim they have an oracle they use which involves the behaviour of the police when describing the alleged perpetrator and that allows them to make strong inferences about the background of alleged perpetrator. But I suspect such an oracle will always be weak probabilistically and even you believe it was strong you still have a responsibility to explain that you are using such an oracle when making such claims so other people can properly weigh the evidence themselves.

This information about the training manual and the ricin was also suppressed by the police until October when it was likely to be known in early August. I also consider this a form of misinformation or lying because the police must have known how this information may slightly change how people would evaluate the situation if they were in possession of it but chose not to release it. However, the police may have strong operational reasons for not releasing such information which may have surpassed the value of acting in a truthful manner. Hopefully, there is an investigation into why such information was suppressed because it may have effected the criminal trials of some of the people involved in the riots.