Riot Season Starts Early
Riot season has started early this year. In Ballymena, a far-right mob linked to drug gangs and paramilitaries attacked immigrants and drove them out of their homes. A week later, they burned effigies of asylum seekers on 12th July bonfires — a chilling endorsement of lynching immigrants.
Let’s be clear: what happened in Ballymena was ethnic cleansing. Paramilitary mobs driving out non-white populations. Strangely, those furious about unfounded accusations against immigrants remain indifferent to the history of grooming within the loyalist community — including the horrific Kincora Boys’ Home scandal and the recent arrest of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, DUP leader, who faces trial for child sex abuse.
Last week, another far-right mob attacked police in Epping. Again, the excuse was “protecting children” — but the reality was clear: coked-up thugs trying to drive immigrants out of town, with police in their way.
It looks like another summer where the police will have to battle thugs determined to unleash racist violence. The riots last year were widely condemned. This time, there is open support from politicians, online, and in sections of the media.
How did we get here?
Online Radicalisation: From Loneliness to Hate
People are spending more time alone and online, replacing real-world communities with toxic digital ones. When I try to engage with Reform voters or the new authoritarian right, I don’t find an ideology or coherent ideas. I find loneliness, isolation, and a painful need to belong.
Close-knit communities have disappeared. Kids move away and never come back. Online communities fill the void.
Many of these people are convinced Britain is being “overrun” by immigrants, but they don’t know any immigrants themselves. The State of Us, a report from British Future, found that a third of adults rarely or never have opportunities to meet people from different backgrounds.
It’s easier to have your views confirmed by online echo chambers than to engage with real human beings who might challenge your beliefs.
Social media platforms amplify and monetise divisive, racist content. A relentless stream of inflammatory, button-pushing propaganda is designed to manipulate and misinform. Somehow, online lies feel more “real” than the dull truths of everyday life.
When I checked on X/Twitter to find information about the Epping violence these are the accounts that were recommended to me:
When Nigel Farage is confronted with uncomfortable facts, he sneers and shouts “boring.” He’s right in a way — facts are boring. Reality is boring. Lies, on the other hand, are exciting and viral.
An old school friend, now deeply embedded in the far-right online ecosystem, endlessly reposts clickbait to a pitiful number of likes. As the attention dries up, the content he shares gets ever more extreme.
White Nationalism Goes Mainstream
This movement doesn’t just exist online. The right-wing press that once championed the Conservatives now does the same for Reform UK. Often parroting social media narratives, they throw their weight behind white nationalist rhetoric.
The Mail and the Telegraph regularly publish misleading claims that white Britons will “become a minority within 40 years.” The unspoken answer? Remove non-white people from the UK.
Douglas Carswell, writing in the Telegraph, hoes further calling for a “detailed plan to take foreign nationals off the benefit system and remove them from the country.” GB News takes a similar line.
You might expect right-wing politicians to defend law and order. Instead, they hesitate to condemn mobs braying at the police. Reform may be a retirement home for failed Tory MPs, but unlike true conservatives, they’re not interested in protecting democracy from mob rule.
The authoritarian right — politicians, social media influencers, media bosses, and their wealthy backers — see the mob as a tool to seize power and advance their agenda.
“Send Them Back”: The Ultimate Goal
For years, stopping the boats was the far right’s rallying cry. The sight of small boats and their occupants being housed in hotels created fury towards the Labour government — despite the fact the crisis was inherited from their Conservative predecessors.
But as small boat arrivals decline and hotels empty out, agitators need something new to be angry about. Their ultimate demand? Ethnic cleansing.
This was never about small boats, protecting children, or hotel costs. It’s about white supremacy — keeping large areas of Britain white-only, deporting people if necessary. The same people who rage about child abuse allegations against asylum seekers are still loyal fans of notorious racist and paedophile Enoch Powell.
Once, expelling non-white Brits was the fantasy of the National Front. Now it lurks at the fringes of Reform and Tory policy. Their online and media outriders are openly pushing the idea, backed with threats of violence.
This is not just an attempt to destabilise an elected government; it’s about normalising white nationalist policies. Inspired by Trump’s gulags and mass deportations, they want the same here.
They don’t have ICE — Trump’s private deportation army — but they can unleash street violence. Figures like Tommy Robinson are waiting to mobilise organised thuggery.
Reform, and some in the authoritarian wing of the Tories, want a British version of ICE: thugs operating outside the law, rounding up and deporting non-white people. And they already have a workforce in mind — the coked-up rioters currently fighting the real police.
If you want these mobs deciding who can live in your street, vote Reform. If not, start thinking now about how to keep them as far from power as possible.
Fantasy vs. Reality
They want fewer immigrants, but they don’t want to do the jobs immigrants do, like working in care homes.
They want lower taxes, but also world-class public services — and rage when told it’s a trade-off.
They want Britain to be respected internationally, but shake their fists at foreigners who don’t care.
They want young people to look up to them, their beer bellies to shrink, baldness to be sexy, people to laugh at their jokes, and racism to be “cool.” They want fry-ups not to make them fat, cigarettes not to cause cancer, drink-driving to be legal, and sexual harassment to be funny.
And politicians will promise them all of that.
But when you give up on the distinction between truth and lies, you hand yourself over to tyranny.
When there’s no difference between reality and fantasy, all that’s left is power and spectacle. And when truth no longer matters, there’s no difference between right and wrong — or good and evil.
Why would people enraged by the death of their close-knit community (after the employer that sustained it closed down) come to the conclusion that the solution was to throw non-whites out of the country?
It wasn’t their fault the employer closed down after all…
Negative solidarity. Close knit communities where everyone looked out for one another became communities that sees outsiders as a threat
And I suppose communities where a high fraction of the inhabitants are in some way dependent on state largesse (pensioners, disabled people, single mothers) will especially hostile to potential competitors for said largesse (asylum seekers).
Another thought: could the issue with Red Wall fascism be that those economically redundant communities have nothing in the present that they can take pride in, so instead they look for pride in what their ancestors did: dug the coal, built the ships or whatever. I suspect that once people’s sense of pride is based on ancestors rather than the community as it presently exists, they’re already halfway down the road to racism.
I’m reminded of the phenomenon of “pobedobesie” in Russia, whose rulers (since Brezhnev really, but especially Putin) have also legitimized themselves using the victory over the Nazis in the “Great Patriotic War” of 1941-1945. We arguably also have that here in Britain (in a weaker form) which contributed to the Brexit vote.
Absolutely. They see the economy as a zero sum game. If someone else is getting money, from whatever source, that is less for them. And they have a very strong sense of entitlement
“WE WILL NEVER EXCEPT THE GREAT REPLACEMENT”
I wonder if this was an honest error, or a deliberate misuse of “except” (instead of the correct “accept”) to weed out educated readers, much as (AIUI) is commonplace in email scams?
It never occurred to me that it could be a “stupid filter”, I just assumed it was either autocorrect or someone who isn’t that good at English
Thank you for reminding me of the phrase “stupid filter”!
When you say “someone who isn’t that good at English” are you suggesting someone who is very poorly educated in general, or are you suggesting someone whose native language isn’t English (which in the case of memes like the ones here, likely implies a troll paid by Russia or some other enemy country)?
Do you have some more information about this?
Information about “stupid filters”?
Not off-hand — in fact Google doesn’t seem to turn up much decent either because the phrase seems to be used more to mean “filters that are stupid” (as opposed to what we’re meaning, which is “filters for stupidity”).
And re’ people who aren’t good at English I mean both
“Close-knit communities have disappeared. Kids move away and never come back. Online communities fill the void.”
Won’t local government austerity and (even more so) Covid lockdowns have also helped boost cyberspace communities at the expense of meatspace ones?
I don’t know about austerity, but covid had a huge impact. When my gran and grandad were alive they did loads of local stuff – whist drive, bridge club, church, gardening, etc. All of those clubs and societies are gone now
Weren’t such opportunities for socializing already in serious decline well before Covid hit?
Yes, I think I phrased that last reply badly – the whist drive was long gone before Covid. Covid just speeded the process up