Filmed at about 10.30pm on Monday night on a Belfast street, bystanders captured the moment when a man, believed to be a Sudanese asylum seeker, wielded a knife over another man he had pinned to the ground.
By Tuesday, the clip had become the latest transnational “trigger event” – in the mould of the Southport killings and the case of the murdered 18-year-old student Henry Nowak – as far-right activists from Britain and beyond seized on it.
Those playing a pivotal role in the spread of the footage on Elon Musk’s X included the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, fresh from a meeting this week at a sumptuous Moscow hotel with the billionaire’s father.
X eventually placed age-related restrictions and a warning on the video shared by Robinson, but by Tuesday afternoon it had more than 52,000 views, while full and uncensored versions were still easy to find across the platform.
Robinson posted details of planned demonstrations across Britain and Northern Ireland on the platform, which Elon Musk shared to his 240 million followers.
As police and political leaders in Belfast pleaded for calm and cautioned against the public getting taken in by rumours before the full facts are established, the incident has once again underlined the challenges social media poses to law enforcement, and the opportunities for extremists seeking to sow division.
“It fits into the current trend of trigger events where something horrifying happens and is then attached to an existing narrative being pushed by the far right, with mass migration being promoted as the reason,” said Joe Mulhall, the director of research at Hope Not Hate.
“We saw this in Southport, Southampton with the Henry Nowak case as well as in Epping, with the anti asylum seeker protests there. The even bigger danger is when you have a number of such events in quick succession.”
Some rightwing commentators have attempted to do just that by suggesting, without foundation, that a stabbing in Manchester was also somehow related to immigration.
There has also been a proliferation of AI-generated images promoting protests. Telegram was at one point the favoured platform for the organisation of such actions, but activists are now openly discussing plans on X.
“Active Clubs” – far-right collectives masquerading as a sports clubs – have also been using the Belfast events to promote their message that young white men need to be “ready to fight”.
It didn’t take long for the international far right to seize on the apparent opportunity too. Dominik Tarczyński, a Polish MEP who was one of the people banned by the British government from coming to the UK earlier this year to attend a rally organised by Robinson, sought to link the attack in Belfast and the death of Nowak.
“Europe 2026 in two pictures. Mass deportations NOW!” tweeted Tarczyński, sharing an image of the knife attack in Northern Ireland and one of Nowak handcuffed.
Sid Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst and editorial manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international thinktank focused on extremism, polarisation and disinformation, said: “It is entirely unsurprising that we’re seeing transnational far-right actors leaping in to exploit the attack, just as we saw with previous tragedies such as the murder of Henry Nowak and the Southport stabbings.
“Boosting these signals across platforms ranging from X to Telegram helps international accounts support compatriots abroad. It also provides grist for the mill among their own supporters.”
Right-wing MPs such as Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe have also not held back either. Sharing a partly blurred image of the Belfast attacker, Farage reiterated a message that he and his party have deployed before, insisting that the public “are entitled to the truth”.
As ever these days, whatever position was taken by Farage was outflanked by Lowe, his rival on the right.
“Reform politicians let this monster into our country,” tweeted the Restore Britain leader, in an apparent reference to two of Farage’s recruits, the former Tory ministers Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick.