'Mind control': The secret UK government blueprints shaping post-terror planning

After the 2017 London Bridge attack, local officials were told: 'We're sending you a hundred imams.' How hashtags, vigils and flowers are used to steer the public towards grief instead of anger

The British government has prepared for terrorist incidents by pre-planning social media campaigns that are designed to appear to be a spontaneous public response to attacks, Middle East Eye has learned.

Hashtags are carefully tested before attacks happen, Instagram images selected, and “impromptu” street posters are printed.

In operations that contingency planners term “controlled spontaneity”, politicians’ statements, vigils and inter-faith events are also negotiated and planned in readiness for any terrorist attack.

The campaigns have been deployed during every terrorist incident in recent years including the 2017 London Bridge attack and the Finsbury Park mosque attack.
:
One senior figure involved in that contingency planning says that the riots had “absolutely terrified” the British government, and that Theresa May, who was then home secretary and is now prime minister, had been particularly shaken.
:
“This job has changed significantly from planning for organic, people responses to tragedy, to being told: ‘We would like the people to do that, how do you get them there?’”

“A lot of the public’s responses are spontaneous, of course. But a lot are shaped. The [British] government doesn’t want spontaneity: it wants controlled spontaneity.”
:
Examples of “controlled spontaneity” within the UK that MEE has identified include:

a media campaign that was swiftly deployed after a number of British and American aid workers were beheaded by Islamic State militants in 2014.

the use of hashtags, posters and vigils after the London Bridge attacks of June 2017 in which eight people were murdered and almost 50 injured.

a Twitter, Facebook and mainstream media campaign that was employed later that month, shortly after a man drove his van into a group of people outside a mosque in north London, killing one person and injuring 10 others.