FOLLOWING Monday's disgraceful scenes in Southport where far-right racists attempted to take advantage of the recent tragic murders of three young girls in order to attack a mosque and foment a race riot, former first minister Humza Yousaf has called on the Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to proscribe the English Defence League (EDL), the organisation believed to be behind the riot, as a terrorist organisation.

Ever since the tragic events in Southport on Monday, when a 17-year-old armed with a bladed weapon allegedly attacked a dance class for young children, leading to the deaths of three youngsters and the hospitalisation of several more, where five remain in a critical condition, far-right activists and agitators have taken to the toxic cesspit that Twitter has descended into since being taken over by Elon Musk, spreading lies and misinformation in an attempt to link the attack to asylum seekers and the Muslim community.

In fact, the alleged attacker is a 17-year-old youth who was reportedly born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents. Rwanda is an overwhelmingly Christian country with a Muslim population of just 2%, a smaller percentage than the UK, meaning that the alleged attacker, who is not an asylum seeker, and did not cross the Channel in a small boat, is most likely to have come from a Christian family background.

READ MORE: Humza Yousaf calls for English Defence League to be made terrorist organisation

None of this prevented Twitter accounts associated with the far-right circulating a fake Muslim-sounding name as that of the alleged assailant and blaming the attack on asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats.

The far right in the USA is currently engaged in a similar dangerous game, attempting to stir up fear of "a migrant crime wave" in an attempt to secure the election of Donald Trump and his far-right Christian nationalist running mate JD Vance. In fact, crime statistics in the USA show that migrants are less likely to be involved in crime than the native-born population and that crime rates are falling.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has attempted to make similar claims about migrants and asylum seekers in the UK.

Last year, The Oxford Migration Observatory, an academic institute that gathers data on the movement of people, said it was not aware of any recent academic or official statistics examining criminality among refugees who had recently arrived in the UK, and said: "There is little evidence that migrants are any more or less likely to commit crimes than any other members of the population."

None of this prevents the far-right trying to whip up hysteria over so-called “migrant crime” and focusing its ire in particular on the Muslim community. There was not a shred of evidence to connect any member of the Muslim community to Monday's horrific attacks, but that did not prevent a gang of EDL thugs from gathering outside a Southport mosque, chanting Islamophobic slogans, throwing bricks, starting fires and attacking police officers attempting to protect the mosque.

In doing so, the racist thugs of the EDL merely added to the distress of a community already reeling from the events of Monday and disgustingly attempted to weaponise the tragedy to foment more hatred.

The anti-immigrant far-right wing has been enabled and normalised by the media in the UK, for example in the constant platforming of Nigel Farage and his anti-immigration fearmongering Reform UK party by the BBC, which BBC Scotland shamefully indulged in last week with a puff piece for Farage's party during an episode of Reporting Scotland.

There is of course no suggestion that Farage or his party were involved in the disgraceful scenes in Southport, but Farage is up to his neck in not so thinly veiled racist dog whistles which stir up hatred against Muslims and migrants.

READ MORE: Almost 40 officers injured following riot in Southport after deaths of three girls

He and the EDL's Stephen Yaxley-Lennon occupy differing parts of the same English nationalist racist spectrum.

Humza Yousaf said on Twitter: "Violence targeting police officers, the public, and mosques, all to drive forward the far-right's hateful ideology. Rhetoric is not enough. We need to take action against the far-right. I have asked the Home Secretary to use her powers to proscribe the English Defence League."

He pointed out that this is not the first time that the EDL has been involved in public disorder, adding that the group had a "long history of violence and bigotry" and claiming they fitted the criteria set out in the Terrorism Act 2000.

The Act states that terrorism is the use or threat of action which: involves serious violence against a person; involves serious damage to property; endangers a person's life (other than that of the person committing the act); creates a serious risk to the health and safety of the public or section of the public or is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously disrupt an electronic system."

The former first minister added: "There can be no doubt the EDL meet these criteria. They have, on several occasions, orchestrated serious violence to both intimidate the public and attempt to influence government, while being driven by a racist, white supremacist ideology.

"Home Secretary, Britain has a far-right problem. We need to acknowledge it, confront it and deal with it."

This is the ugly face of extremist Anglo-British nationalism, and it needs to be called out for what it is, but the Labour and Conservative parties are too wedded to their comfort blanket of denial that British nationalism is nationalist at all. They and the British media have created this monster.

It's long past time for hand wringing, it's time for action. The BBC could start by stopping its disproportionate platforming of the hard British nationalist right.