As far-right, racist, and Islamophobic race riots broke out across the UK, corporate media and politicians were making sure we all knew about them – but just not exactly what they were. Because there was a concerted effort by all involved to obscure the fact that these were indeed far-right, racist, and Islamophobic riots, pogroms, and attempted lynchings.
Lawless Labour Britain – or just ‘Britain’?
We all know what went on over the first weekend of August in most of the UK. Far-right racists, Islamophobes, and neo-Nazis went on a violent rampage in towns and cities – hunting down Black and brown people.
They did this while claiming to be ‘taking their country back’ – by looting independently-owned shops, attacking NHS workers, destroying libraries, and ransacking Citizens Advice Bureaus. The far-right also torched a police station. We’re not quite so concerned about that one, if we’re honest – nor the trashing of corporate shops like Greggs.
Anti-fascists also came out across the UK to resist the far right. They were not having the fact that the far right were claiming to be ‘protecting children’ in the wake of Axel Rudakubana’s alleged murder of three little girls – unless you believe everything in the above paragraph does actually protect kids.
So, to most reasonable people (we’ll get onto exactly how many people in the UK that could be later) – racists were enacting pogroms and lootings across large parts of the country. But NO. Not if you’re the BBC – because ‘both sides’, right?
BBC: ‘so, we’re calling neo-Nazi race riots ‘protests’ now, yes?’
Apparently, these were just “rival protests”:
Police separate rival protests, with pockets of disorder in several cities in England
Follow live: https://t.co/E72lxAfjmb
Then, it was some “disorder” at “protests”:
UK's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says "thuggery has no place on Britain's streets" after disorder at protests in several UK cities
Follow live https://t.co/L83c2RXP82
By Sunday morning, it was “arrests at protests organised by far-right”:
More than 90 arrests after violence at several protests organised by far-righthttps://t.co/fy119OpZY0
Sunday teatime, the BBC was at ‘pro-British marches’:
BBC describe them as a "Pro-British March."
This is not journalism.
pic.twitter.com/CwKVd1p53G
And by the time BBC News at Ten came around, we’ve swerved to “anti-immigration protesters”:
It was "anti-immigration protesters" who tried to burn a hotel down with asylum seekers in it in Rotherham apparently says this pathetic excuse for a journalist on BBC News #Rotherham pic.twitter.com/thHVP1tnV0
Of course, ten years ago the BBC was promoting Nigel Farage as some sort of reasonable character who just happened to attract far-right lunatics:
Storm in a teacup & outbreaks of common sense - Nigel Farage has the UKIP weather forecast http://t.co/O1NrWEx60C pic.twitter.com/uaZCXv8ViQ
The gist of this segment (which Andrew Neil has a good old chuckle about at the end) was to show that Farage’s UKIP didn’t have any more political extremists in it than other parties did. That is, the BBC was making him and his party look mainstream:
The BBC has continued with this ever since – to the point where the far-right feel emboldened enough to launch waves of race riots across the UK.
Of course, it wasn’t just our alleged public service broadcaster doing the heavy lifting for racists.
ITV: ‘we heard the fascists were actually just ‘anti-immigration protesters”
Don’t think these are race riots?
https://twitter.com/Hamza_a96/status/1819805875776663609
Not sure if this is a pogrom or not?
A racist lynch mob have set fire to another Holiday Inn Express hotel housing refugees. They are literally trying to burn alive people who have already fled war, torture and persecution.
This is fascism
Tamworth, England https://t.co/UzjHOaxxVN
Unclear about what a lynch mob is?
This is a lynch mob.
A lynch mob enabled and emboldened by MPs of both major parties and every national media outlet stoking fear and mistrust of people in need of asylum for votes and clicks.
The UK is racist to its rotten fucking core.https://t.co/9TVJRPEyfS
Well, you’d be ITV News then. The far-right’s attempted pogrom against asylum seekers in Rotherham – setting fire to a hotel in what would be considered attempted murder in any other circumstance – was “anti-immigration protesters” ‘targetting’ the hotel. Because yeah – it’s ‘stop the hotels’ isn’t it?
Just to get in on the act, Channel 4 News’s Alex Thomson thought Brown people protecting themselves and their communities from violent racists were a “mob”. Then, after over an hour, he realised he was a massive cunt and deleted it:
Well, we say “realised”:
https://twitter.com/alextomo/status/1820159165530341754
‘We condemn the riots in the weakest possible terms’
Of course, the corporate media and politicians couldn’t possibly call it out for what it is. Because if they did, it would expose the ridiculousness of stunts like this – due to another ‘protest’, apparently:
It would also expose that broadcasters like the BBC merely parrot the line that the colonialist British state tells them too. Because in 2011 they were of course “riots” – when Black people were doing them:
BBC in 2011: RIOTS
BBC in 2024: PROTESTS pic.twitter.com/TCyjdVB7jO
But it would also mean the narratives around Muslim people, Black and brown people, and anyone else who isn’t ‘Anglo Saxon’ would start to fall apart. So, no – much easier to call them “protests” or “thuggery” – isn’t it, Cooper?
Criminal violence and thuggery on our streets will not be tolerated.
Police forces have my full support in ensuring that those who engage in criminal disorder face the strongest possible penalties. pic.twitter.com/ZqoOHVXnVR
It’s also much easier to not mention racism or Islamophobia once in nine minutes – isn’t it, Woodcock?
Lord Walney, the so called govt adviser on political violence, was interviewed for 9mins on the far right violence & he didn't use the words racist or Islamophobia once. He did mention Russians & Iranians pretending to be far right & far left in order to create disinformation pic.twitter.com/XF5NvBZPiO
It’s also much easier to call it “far-right thuggery” – isn’t it, Starmer?
I utterly condemn the far-right thuggery we have seen this weekend.
Be in no doubt: those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law. pic.twitter.com/uNeJtD8pCQ
And it’s even easier to play into far-right, racist rhetoric – isn’t it, Edwards?
Here’s the Labour MP for Tamworth talking about how residents of Tamworth ‘want their hotel back’ a few days ago.
Today, Nazis and fascists attacked the Holiday Inn in Tamworth.
Pandering to the far-right has consequences, @SarahEdwardsTam. https://t.co/zYIm857XvV
Fear not, though – because the cops were doing it too; probably because half of their racist asses would have been out rioting WITH the far-right if they hadn’t had to have worked. It’s probably why BBC Midlands deleted this tweet:
But what, we here you ask, are all these charmless and soulless cretins in the media and Westminster trying to protect? Well, it’s probably several things.
Riots = political agendas
Allowing Black and brown people to be demonised over here helps with the West’s global agenda of making them subhuman. How else do you think Israel could get away with killing 40,000 Palestinians without the UN sending in peacekeepers or the US invading?
Also, right-wing corporate politics is better for the slowly rotting capitalist system we live under. If that means Black and brown people’s lives are put at risk in the UK, that’s a small price to pay for the very rich.
Ultimately, though, and the media and politicians are also trying to obscure the fact that Britain is a racist cesspit, and always has been.
Yes, there are plenty of people who aren’t racist or Islamophobic. However, there are at least four million people who are – because we know what Farage-shaped party they voted for at the general election. There’s a few million more racists who will have voted for other parties, too.
‘I’m not racist, but…’ say millions of Nigels and Karens
Julia Hartley-Brewer is the prime example of this ‘I’m not racist, but…’ type of racist. She posted on X that, in respect of the “millions of people” she says aren’t “far-right”:
they DO care about their country, their communities and their nation’s culture. They DO care when the political elites import millions of people from very different cultures who fail to integrate and assimilate, or even learn the… language.
Yes, Julia, we feel sorry for Spain, too – where 42% of the 300,000-odd British “ex-pats” (NOT ‘immigrants’, because that’s what Black and brown people are) don’t or won’t speak Spanish.
Oh sorry – you were talking about the UK – where, for example, around 79,000 Afghan nationals live; a quarter of the number of fat, tattooed, beer-drinking, white British immigrants living in Spain. Oddly, the same number of UK immigrants overall don’t speak English (142,000 – 1% of the total) as UK immigrants in Spain don’t speak Spanish – except there, that’s 42% of them.
Racist Hartley-Brewer continued her mindless sermon:
And they DO care when they are told they’re racist for stating incontrovertible facts about that mass immigration such as the impact it has had on access to housing, public services, school places, GP appointments and, yes, their own wages.
No, Julia – blaming Black and brown people for the intentional failures of politicians IS racist. It’s call scapegoating – and it leads to racists trying to burn alive asylum seekers in hotels. And saying human beings have been ‘imported’ is also racist: see note above about dehumanisation.
Little fucking Britain
This is the racist language of millions of white, British people – built off the back of an institutionally racist state and a colonial past and present.
With media and politicians’ talk of “thuggery” and “anti-immigration protests”, it was this fact that ultimately they were trying to obscure.
Britain is a bitter little racist island, filled with bitter little racist people. Some of them – like the neo-Nazis and fash that were out over the weekend – are just a bit more racist than the rest of us.
Featured image via the Canary
