Before the fires spread along the streets of Belfast, rumours and rage spread across social media. Footage of a horrific knife attack in north Belfast first began to circulate on Monday evening (8 June). Platforms like TikTok and X were flooded with comments about the identity of the alleged perpetrator, a Sudanese man who, the Home Office said, had been granted leave to remain in the United Kingdom. Far-right activists such as Tommy Robinson were quick to leverage the attack to further their anti-migrant agendas. He urged supporters to protest in the streets against this “invader attack”, providing a list of locations across the UK where protests were due to take place on Tuesday night. His X post was amplified by tech billionaire Elon Musk, who urged citizens to protest “repeatedly and loudly” to change government policies on immigration. Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe went as far as pledging that his party would support mass deportations and reintroduction of the death penalty to prevent further atrocities committed by “barbarians”. Meanwhile, WhatsApp messages from anonymous accounts began to circulate throughout the day, calling for men aged 18 and over in Northern Ireland to “be prepared to fight or be arrested”.
Dozens of young men answered the call. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chief constable Jon Boutcher urged members of the public not to be “duped” into violent disorder by people online inciting such behaviour. But the news that the suspect had been charged with attempted murder did little to quell tensions in parts of Belfast on Tuesday night. The PSNI reported that there were sporadic street protests across the region, with several vehicles set on fire in east and north Belfast. Later on Tuesday evening there were several reported incidents of racist violence in towns including Ballyclare and Portadown, with arson attacks on homes and businesses. More police officers were deployed across Belfast last night ahead of further protests and unrest.
We have seen this playbook before. In the past two years, far-right actors have used online platforms to weaponise horrific incidents as part of their anti-immigration campaigns. Most notably, far-right groups used online platforms to stoke agitation during the Southport riots in August 2024, with online hate speech and misinformation becoming characteristic of this unrest. And Northern Ireland has seen previous examples of racist violence fuelled by anti-immigration protests, as in Ballymena last June after two Romanian teenagers were charged with the attempted rape of a schoolgirl. (They later had their charges dropped.) Businesses and homes were attacked in violence the PSNI said were being treated as “race-motivated”, with people from minority ethnic backgrounds displaying union flags on their doors to avoid them being targeted by rioters.
As with Southport there was much debate over the extent that online platforms had fuelled the violence. Numerous false claims about immigrants, including a rumour they were being given priority access to GP services ahead of local people, circulated on public Facebook pages run by loyalist groups. Many of these could be traced back to far-right agitators peddling racist conspiracy theories such as the “Great Replacement” to mobilise support for their protests. And there is mounting evidence that extremist groups are purposefully targeting loyalist communities with online messaging that frames immigrants as a threat to women and children, as well as their way of life. There have even been signs of an emerging cross-border infrastructure for anti-migrant mobilisation on the island of Ireland, with loyalists in the north and nationalist activists in the south promoting each other’s anti-migrant protests online and offline. Both appear to be united by a perception that they have been “left behind” while immigrants have been prioritised by their respective governments, even if there is little to no corroborative evidence.
Politicians and public figures need to do much more than say “not in our name”. They must take some of the blame for creating a toxic discourse around immigration that others asylum seekers and migrants. Mis- and disinformation about immigration take root in certain communities because they are told by politicians and commentators that asylum seekers are being given priority access to underfunded public services. One refrain among politicians is that these are legitimate concerns, even when there is often very little evidence to support many of these claims. This mainstreaming of far-right views on immigration is reinforced by media coverage that frequently fails to fact-check false claims about issues such as the benefits asylum seekers are entitled to claim. In this context it is perhaps unsurprising that immigration features so prominently in the issues that are of most concern to citizens.
Attention will turn now to how politicians should respond to the Belfast attack and the violence seen in recent days. While online platforms could do better on regulating inflammatory content, we need our public figures to be more active in fixing the problem. What we need is a sober narrative on immigration that avoids hyperbole and stops blaming asylum seekers and refugees for social ills. If this fails to materialise, we have already seen this week how the debate will be conducted.
[Further reading: Belfast’s violence, Britain’s rage]
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Subscribe here to commentVery interesting and some good points.
However, it’s lazy to use the outrageous and disgusting rioters as an alibi for the Establishment’s failure to control immigration, or (separately) the deliberate enthronement of “diversity” targets which do, factually, discriminate against white people.
If in 2008 there had been riots against the banking system which created the financial crisis, it would be a red herring for the Times and the Daily Telegraph to use the violence as an alibi for the system.
As so often in this polarised debate, there is a refusal to acknowledge that the pro-immigration side (a politically ill-matched combination of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak prior to July 2024, and the ‘woke’ left over decades) has actually created the modern development of extremist right (irrespective of its historical BUF/NF/BNP precursors). It goes all the way back to Tony Blair refusing to implement the seven-year brake on mass immigration into Britain from Eastern European EU Accession countries in 2005, allowed by EU rules, which a number of other western European EU countries did impose. This allowed Blair to triangulate by appealing to both the woke and to employers who wanted cheap labour, neatly driving a wedge between Tory politicians and their natural supporters in the business community – all part of the ‘New Labour’ spiel, while working class voters were assumed to have nowhere to go but continuing to vote for the Labour party. How foolish was that? Then the Tories 2010-2024 allowed massive immigration, contravening their manifesto commitments. Meanwhile progressives labelled anyone who mentioned the social and economic effects of mass immigration as a “racist”.
Fault on both sides, I suggest, but polarisation drives online clicks, including on the left. It’s ironic to see my side, the left, having been the bullying aggressor in this debate for so many years, now clutching its pearls and positioning itself as the conservative defender of the status quo – while, ironically, large-scale immigration continues (disguised by an outflux of predominantly white people to Australia, NZ and Dubai, which reduces the headline level of ‘Net Migration’ and reduces the impact on housing need, but does not alter by one whit the scale of the incoming migration).
Agreed, the English working class has always voted conservative in large numbers – even in the good old days! The working class is always the first to feel the effects of immigration. As the son of Irish immigrants to the UK in the 1950s my parents had the ‘luck’ of plenty of jobs but there were more than enough to go round. The following wave of commomwealth migration did not have the benefit of pale skin but there were still plenty of jobs and houses up to 1982. Now the decent paid jobs and houses have dried up. When jobs and houses are limited the working class fight amongst themselves led on by crafty right wing politicians. It’s a nasty business.
Progressives cannot admit they are responsible for the growing tensions in our society. Of course, they are not only to blame. But they are primarily responsible.