Anti-Muslim activism in The Potteries

Two “migrant hunters” and former friends have been engaged in a bitter row, with an accusation emerging of a plan to leave pigs’ heads outside mosques in the Stoke-on-Trent area.

Far-right infighting is nothing new. In fact, it’s so regular an occurrence that it generally passes without comment, unless it’s particularly acrimonious or useful (often the two are not mutually exclusive).

For several weeks, an online feud has been raging between two Stoke-on-Trent based “migrant hunters”, Joe Gough (AKA “Joe Vloggs”) and Christopher Matthews (AKA “ST Audits”). 

Both men started their channels as “auditors”, before transitioning into “migrant hunting”, causing them to join forces on their excursions. For those who have managed to avoid its awfulness: “migrant hunting” is a pernicious form of far-right activism which involves filming at temporary migrant accommodation sites, and attempting to bait security, other staff and the residents themselves into a confrontation for increased social media engagement and YouTube revenue.

Where once the future seemed bright for these two fearless harassers of the vulnerable and the oppressed, lately this friendship has soured considerably, with Matthews seemingly deleting his account amidst a volley of claims and counterclaims. Whilst many of these, of course, are far too niche and tedious to mention here, one claim was particularly intriguing.

Under a post on the “Joe Vloggs” Facebook page on which Gough was promoting his then most recent video, a comment appeared with a screenshot of an interaction between Matthews and a supporter. This screenshot suggested that Matthews had claimed Gough ‘was planning to put pig heads outsides [sic] random mosques lol’.

Recognising that such an act would constitute a hate crime, Gough was quick to distance himself from any such plan. In part of a longer post on his Facebook page, he wrote:

‘Apparently, I have been saying that I was going to leave pigs [sic] heads outside mosques.

Let me get one thing straight. As much as I disagree with Islam, and you all know my feelings, I would never EVER do something so damn right [sic] disrespectful, and is literally going out of my way to commit a hate crime.

The thought has never entered my head, and once again ST audits is trying to spread lies and cause trouble for the Joe Vloggs channel.’

– Joe Gough, via Facebook

Now, whilst there is no way of confirming or denying whether this plot was set to take place, reading this post did immediately cause us to raise something of an eyebrow.

Over recent weeks, both Gough and Matthews had begun incorporating specifically anti-Muslim content, as well as overtly Islamophobic memes and graphics, into their output. Indeed, Matthews had explicitly framed his more recent videos as investigating ‘the Islamification of Stoke-on-Trent’.

Not to be outdone, on his days off from his job at Morrisons, Gough has made videos in Stoke-on-Trent about two supposed new mosques, as well as one about a new school which he claimed was due to teach children “sharia law”. He arrived at this conclusion after reading a banner strung up on a fence outside which appeared to have no clear connection to the building itself.

Having framed the video in a manner that was sure to rile-up his supporters, one particularly enraged follower piled in, stating: ‘Few p i g s [sic] heads dotted about [and] they will soon retreat!!’, indicating that local people ought to begin a campaign of harassment against Muslims in Stoke-on-Trent in order to force them to leave the area.

The majority of decent people in Britain would be disgusted by such a comment. And the majority of people administering a Facebook page would remove such a comment and potentially even block the individual in question. 

Joe Gough, however, the man who would later go on to claim that the thought of leaving pigs’ heads outside mosques had ‘never entered [his] head’ and that he ‘would never EVER do something so damn right disrespectful’, was happy to lend his support to this proposal. Whilst we will never know for sure whether this was a plan genuinely being considered by Gough and subsequently outed by Matthews, what we can say for certain is that when such a scheme was put to him, he did not appear as opposed to it as he later claimed.

Considering the level of anti-Muslim vitriol spewed out by Gough recently, this whole episode should be of concern to the people of Stoke-on-Trent: Gough is a nefarious actor peddling hate and division on his YouTube channel for his own ends.

Finally, this is not the first time that Gough has been incriminated by his former partner. Earlier in the summer, Matthews released a shocking and previously-unseen clip from one of their migrant hunting trips, in which Gough questioned whether it was racist to call a black security guard “a monkey”.