Two British nationals arrested but that's only been confirmed after 12 hours of wanton racist speculation about it being from "small boat people", all from the usual suspects on the usual websites. Even now it's been confirmed that the two attackers were British nationals, Tommy Robinson is sharing content that suggests he "refuses to believe the lies".
All last night you had blue-ticked right-wing accounts on Twitter, screaming in capital letters that the stabbing had been "confirmed as a terrorist incident" and that "the attackers were shouting Allahu Akbar". Now it turns out there was no terrorist element (within legal definitions) and that the attackers aren't asylum seekers from small boats.
We are living in dangerous, dangerous times. It was the same after the Southport attack, when a fake Asian/Muslim name was leaked to the press by a website in Pakistan, and nobody knows who did it - only the website it came from. A nationwide riot in the UK, all caused by somebody making a stupid online comment 3,000 miles away.
Social media is a cancer. The police and authorities need to be allowed to do their jobs, but we have online vigilantes flooding the zone with speculation and misinformation about ongoing, developing incidents. If they name the attacker quickly, it's a conspiracy to harm whites; if they don't name the attacker quickly, it's a conspiracy to protect Asians.
And there will be people on the left reveling in the fact that it's a British national, too. It's one thing to feel relieved that it's not an asylum seeker - for fear of more mass violence on our streets and more angry protests at hotels - but it's another thing to point and laugh and tease at the other side. All of it is in bad faith and it's getting us nowhere.