Brick wall
Riots, clashes, two-tier policing, communinnies, violence, fires, cops.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said violent protesters who had targeted Muslim communities would swiftly face the “full force of the law” as he sought to quell days of anti-immigration rioting.
The stabbing to death of three young girls in the northwest English town of Southport last week has been seized on by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, with disinformation spread online and amplified by high-profile far-right figures to spark disorder in towns and cities.
“Whatever the apparent motivation, this is not protest, it is pure violence and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” Starmer said on Monday after an emergency meeting with police and prison chiefs. “The full force of law will be visited on all those who are identified as having taken part.”
The violence erupted last Tuesday after social media posts said the suspected attacker in Southport was a radical Islamist who had just arrived in Britain and was known to intelligence services.
It’s a mess.
The trouble is, there is such a thing as radical Islam, and it is bad. There is also such a thing as racism, and there’s such a thing as xenophobia, and they too are bad. Islam itself, radical or not, has content, including a lot of contempt for and hatred of women.
On the one hand stabbing little girls dancing, on the other hand setting fire to a hotel where immigrants are housed.
It’s a mess.
For what it’s worth, the suspect is Christian, not Muslim. (Which is not to say that radical Islam isn’t bad; just not a motivation in this case.)
The big three are rivals but they join hands when it’s time to hate on women.
I wondered about that when I read that the murderer was apparently Rwandan. I don’t suppose the rioters know or care about that, but Rwanda is an overwhelmingly Christian country, about 2% Muslim.
There were rumours on social media that the suspect was a muslim asylum seeker and had crossed the channel on a small boat. A judge ruled that due to the rioting it was in the public interest to release his identity – he is in fact Cardiff born and not a muslim, but the fact that he’s black and has a non Anglo name doesn’t seem likely to reduce the level of racist anger in the country.
Also of course, lots of people get all their information from social media rumours, so who’s to say what they think the current situation is?
No religious motive is being suggested from the murders of the little girls. I believe the working supposition is that it’s a mental health issue.
Nick Cohen, in Writing from London, has a piece about Elon Musk doing his best to stir things up.
The title is:
Elon Musk’s global far right targets the UK: The alliance between plutocracy and mobocracy
It is a mess. There is horrible racism on open display here and yet two-tier policing is a reality. Now, I admit, I don’t know what that reality is, not being a working-class Brit, and if I were a typical left/progressive I would probably dismiss it as a dog-whistle. But everyone here knows the British police are not exactly even-handed when dealing with “sensitive” issues. And the Rotherham atrocity starkly demonstrates that it’s not just trans people who are accorded protected status.
Many years ago, someone here I think, posted a link to a right wing British police blog network. I read a lot of that with horror and fascination. It was not that these cops weren’t bigoted but they were equal opportunity bigots. If someone was poor they were inherently criminal and that criminality had to be made manifest by constant harassment until they decided it simply wasn’t worth it to stay on the right side of the law. At which point the police had a client for life. (As an aside it was pretty clear who were the true believers and who were cynically manipulating them for power, prestige, and increased police budgets.)
Of course, these cops were racist but racism didn’t seem like a motivating factor. They had a burning contempt for the underclass just like any American racist but here the underclass was defined economically. Class versus race – sometimes the stereotypes are true.
And it easy to see how the members of the bien pensant middle class overly influenced by peculiarly American concerns and ignoring their own prejudices could end up seeing the problem as just one of racism and end up imposing entirely the wrong sort of controls. The police themselves, or at least whatever subset is the problem, probably didn’t care – they were still left with plenty of poor white people as lifetime clients and they probably preferred it that way.
As you say a mess.