No one wants to lead these riots

Joe/Jeff Marsh wants to make it clear that he did not, like people keep saying, start the riots in Southport. He wasn’t at the riots. He doesn’t like riots. He’s a white nationalist, fine, but he’s also a busy, self-employed builder from Swansea. And Swansea is nowhere near Southport. All he did was share a picture of a poster about a protest to 2,000 people who subscribe to his channel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app. A few people reposted the poster, shared his share elsewhere, then the protest just… became a riot.

Joe’s trying to explain this on the phone, and I’m getting him up on Google Images while he talks. (Joe is his real name. Jeff is a decoy to give him anonymity.) In the pictures he has a big bald head and wears a camouflage cagoule. ‘A tweet saying that it was my demo has had like 1.9 million views’, he says down the line.