Why did the British government label Charlie Kirk supporters ‘extremists’?
One year ago, Charlie Kirk was shot dead; the British government immediately got to work. Following Kirk’s murder, the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), a UK government counter-extremism and anti-terrorism unit, began monitoring thousands of social media channels, gauging the reaction of what they describe as “Extreme Right-Wing” (ERW) activists. RICU has stirred controversy over its role in coordinating ‘controlled spontaneity’ campaigns in the aftermath of terrorist attacks Published here for the first time, a memo written by RICU reveals that officials assessed that “Extreme Right-Wing” activists, including Tommy Robinson, would use Kirk’s assassination to “push pro-free speech narratives.
