A lot of people are shocked to find out that the United Kingdom's government has a full-fledged PsyOps team embedded in the Home Office whose job it is to convince Britons that migrant crime really isn't all that bad, that Muslims are at least as patriotic as native Brits, and that you really shouldn't be angry about what you see happening.
I'm not. After all, these are the same people who deployed military psychological operations teams to manipulate British citizens to perform like trained seals during the COVID pandemic.
A shadowy government unit set up by former MI6 officer is working to control narratives around racial tensions
— Grifty (@TheGriftReport) June 14, 2026
The Research Information and Communications Unit or RICU is a 22 strong team based in the Home Office and was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr a former MI6…
A shadowy government unit set up by former MI6 officer is working to control narratives around racial tensions
The Research Information and Communications Unit or RICU is a 22 strong team based in the Home Office and was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr a former MI6 officer.
After the June 8 2026 stabbing in Belfast of Stephen Ogilvie allegedly by 30 year old Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid RICU advised police to identify online protesters and portray them as unsympathetic thugs rather than activists.
RICU has also briefed family liaison teams in cases such as the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton and intervened to shape statements from victims families in racially linked incidents.
The unit has used undercover operatives to plant stories in the media and in 2016 funded a boyband to tour Muslim schools singing songs against radicalisation.
A 2023 RICU report was criticised for flagging certain TV shows and authors as potential far Right indicators while applying a higher bar to Islamism according to reviewers.
Home Office sources confirm RICU provides analysis on extremist propaganda and its operations remain part of the counter terrorism system.
The Research Information and Communications Unit swings into action when a migrant commits a heinous crime, swooping down to convince victims to make soothing statements, spread disinformation, and slander anybody who exhibits anger at what is happening around them.
While the streets of Belfast were ablaze with anti-immigration protests last week, behind the scenes a group of spies, spinners and soldiers were deploying the 'dark arts' to try to defuse tensions.
The name of the secretive Government propaganda unit trying to manipulate events makes it sound like an innocuous back-office operation – the Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU.
But the dull moniker is part of the deliberate camouflage of an outfit which uses deception and skulduggery to try to manage the 'challenges' of multiculturalism.
Its techniques range from planting stories in the media, using undercover operatives to lay flowers at the scene of terrorist attacks and even, in one case, sending a pop group to sing anti-extremist songs in Muslim schools.
The 22-strong unit was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, as part of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.
Modelled on the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit established by the Attlee government in 1948 to blacken the names of communists and other political opponents, RICU operates out of the Home Office's Westminster headquarters.
While its original purpose was to monitor and challenge the spread of Al Qaeda propaganda and to vet the language used by public officials when describing terrorism, its tentacles now stretch far across Whitehall – to the extent that critics say it risks strangling free speech.
A Muslim commits a terrorist attack? Spread images of a Muslim woman in a Union Jack hijab. A Sikh stabs a boy to death, and the police let him bleed out? Cajole the father into releasing a soothing statement. An activist leads people in complaining about the two-tier justice system? Smear him as a terrorist.
A source said: 'They are working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland's C3 intelligence unit to identify those posting the online 'calls to protest' in Belfast and other areas, as well as giving strategic messages to the police to ensure that the protesters were portrayed as unsympathetic thugs, rather than activists, and effecting behavioural change.'
The source said that the unit had also been advising the police in Southampton following the horrific murder of Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa – who falsely claimed he had been racially abused and had acted in self-defence – saying: 'RICU made sure that the liaison team dealing with the family were well briefed.'
It has also been claimed that the unit intervenes to write statements by the families of victims of potentially racially linked incidents to stop them from inflaming tensions further with their remarks.
The source said: 'You can see their fingerprints all over the statements released by the families of victims in these volatile situations – they usually have a similar tone.'
It's the sort of thing that works, until it doesn't. You can spin things all you want, but if reality constantly contradicts the Narrative long enough and often enough, people eventually lose their tolerance for being gaslit. It can take years for that to happen, since people really don't want to believe that their society is falling apart, and that their government is making that happen, but people do wake up.
And when they wake up, they are angrier than they would have been, because they were victimized by the perpetrators and by the people who are supposed to protect them.
The unit also claimed that the prevalence of sexual grooming gangs in Pakistani communities was being exploited by the far-Right to stir up hatred against Muslim communities.
It has a long history of 'covertly engineering', in the words of one expert, 'the thoughts of people' at times of crisis, being quick to spring into action after terrorist incidents such as the London Bridge attacks in 2017. Eight people died when a van was driven into pedestrians on London Bridge and the three occupants ran to a nearby market and began stabbing people.
In the immediate aftermath of the atrocity, RICU's undercover operatives handed out flowers in the area, with the aim of perpetuating an atmosphere of 'grief' rather than anti-Muslim 'anger'.
A team in an unmarked van is also understood to have toured the area plastering the walls with posters bearing hashtags such as #TurnToLove, #ForLondon and #LoveWillWin.
Similarly, after the British aid worker Alan Henning was decapitated by Islamic State in Syria in 2014, RICU used a specially created 'front operation' to plant an image of a woman in a Union Jack hijab in the media.
And in one particularly bizarre case, the unit secretly funded a boyband in 2016 to tour Muslim areas of Britain to sing songs with anti-radicalisation themes. The British-American pop trio, known as Mr Meanor, visited schools in Sheffield, Manchester and Runcorn.
The UK government worked mightily to demonize Tommy Robinson for years, and the effort was initially successful. But over the years, his warnings have proven prescient, and now a large fraction of the British populace trusts him more than the government.
What's striking to me is how long the narrative control works on people, and my assumption is that this is because Western governments have a pretty deep well of trust built up over the years from which they can draw.
But the reserves are dwindling. Eventually, people realize they are being conned, and when they do, their anger is even greater than it would have been. That's what we are seeing right now.
RICU does try to work its magic on Muslim extremists, but it clearly doesn't see them as nearly the threat to social order as ordinary British citizens. More often than not, it is the foreigners who are seen as the ultimate clients of this work, protecting them from the natural anger people feel when some atrocity happens.
It's not inherently wrong for the government to do its best to prevent civil unrest. That's part of its job, after all. But when the public is seen as the problem and the criminals attacking them are treated with kid gloves, it's impossible to convince people in the long run that their fears and anger are not justified.
Effectively, the government becomes an advocate for the bad guys, downplaying their crimes to tamp down anger. When the anger eventually explodes, it's not just the criminals who become targets of rage.
The Henry Nowak case exemplified the problem perfectly. The authorities are so afraid of fostering anti-migrant hate that they treat them, even when they commit horrific acts, with kid gloves. Henry Nowak's killer, Vikrum Digwa, was known to the police, and members of the Sikh community had themselves warned the authorities that he was dangerous.
But rather than deal with the problem, they pretended it didn't exist. And here we are. Nowak is dead, and ordinary people are rightly furious.
The fact that the UK government uses psyops against its own citizens shows the massive gulf between them and the people they are supposed to represent and protect.
After far too many years, that reality is laid bare for all to see, and the result is riots.
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