(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Understanding the UK’s far-right race riots [1] [] Date: 2024-08 Every Saturday night throughout summer, young people gather in Bristol’s historic Castle Park to sit on blankets under the cherry blossom trees, eating ice cream and drinking from cans as reggae, dub and drum n bass rattle through tinny speakers. The music competes with the squawks of the city’s seagulls, the roar of traffic leaving the Galleries mall, and the strumming of a guitar. Teenagers try out circus skills, while bikes whizz along the river towards the bars and clubs of Old Market. This weekend, the scene was very different. Gangs of far-right race rioters stormed the park, passing its commemorative plaque to the city’s anti-fascists who fought in Spain in the 1930s. They were joined by those pulled into the far right via a toxic mix of anti-vaxx, anti-LGBTQ, QAnon conspiracy theories. Punches were thrown at a Black passer-by. Counter-protesters insisted that fascists and racists were not welcome here, before moving south to the river to form a human barrier around a hotel housing migrant people, which the mob attempted to attack. The scenes in Bristol were repeated across the country. In Rotherham and Tamworth, people who had fled violence and persecution in their own countries hid in hotel rooms as the buildings were set on fire. Asian men were dragged from their cabs to shouts of “kill him”, while Syrian shopkeepers, determined to build a new life away from dictatorship and civil war, watched in despair as their businesses were trashed. By Sunday night, more than 90 people had been arrested, but the violence did not stop, spreading to city after city, to Liverpool and Belfast and Plymouth and London and beyond. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now The inciting incident was ostensibly the tragic killings of three girls, and the stabbing of other women and girls, at a Taylor Swift themed dance class in Southport. British-born teenager Axel Rudakubana has been charged with murder and attempted murder. The horrific deaths of the three children had nothing to do with the terrorising of asylum-seeking people and children in hotels, the destruction of Black and Brown people’s businesses, or the attacks on mosques. The street violence that has gripped much of England and Northern Ireland since 30 July instead tells a story of who the modern far right are, how they organise, what they believe, and the coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators and influencers who have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear. Who is the modern far right? The early days of the violence were met with suggestions from the new Labour government that the English Defence League (EDL) could be designated as a “proscribed group” – one that is forbidden under UK law due to terrorist connections. But the suggestion fails to understand two crucial issues. The first, is that the EDL does not really exist. Its co-founder and most famous member, far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) left in 2013, claiming he had concerns over the "dangers of far-right extremism", after which the group’s membership dwindled until it ultimately became defunct a few years later. The second is that the modern far right is no longer made up of organisations with clear hierarchical structures. Instead, it is an international and online-networked movement. It organises around a shared ideology spread by a core of theorists, leaders and influencers who use their power to put out statements designed to trigger others to commit violence. In this, the influencers commit what is known as “stochastic” or “random violence”, while of course making sure they are not the ones throwing the punches and smashing the glass themselves, and can claim plausible deniability when it comes to incitement. The movement breaks out into the real world with violent, racist outbursts and attacks. That violence is filmed and live-streamed across its network, with each action used to tell a story that will inspire new followers and, crucially, influence non-members by creating an atmosphere of insecurity and fear. Following the killings in Southport, an online conspiracy claimed the killer was a Muslim man who had arrived into the UK illegally on a small boat last year. The lie brought together the two tropes driving the modern far right: Islamophobic claims that Muslim men pose a threat to women and girls and manufactured outrage over “fighting age men” arriving in the UK on small boats to live off the taxpayer. While the false claims about the Southport killings were specific to that incident, the disinformation being shared was built on years of far-right influencers engaged in rhetorical violence against primarily Muslim migrant people. Numerous posts from Robinson’s Telegram channel, for example, discuss how migrant men who “inevitably go on to rape and murder” are “invading” the UK and “taken in and housed in hotels at taxpayer expense”. Governments and NGOS are even accused by him of “using little girls to encourage fighting age men to come to the UK who see nothing wrong in diddling kids.” These messages have gathered pace over the past four years as the former Conservative government ramped up messaging to “stop the boats” and accused migrant people of abusing the system while being “child rapists" and "threats to national security”. In the same time period, growing anti-immigrant rhetoric and a failing policy to house asylum-seeking people in hotels has repeatedly triggered real-life violence and intimidation, mainly outside the hotels housing families. “Citizen journalists” who made their names as “migrant hunters” such as Amanda Smith (who uses the social media avatar Yorkshire Rose) and Alan Leggett (Active Patriot), as well as groups including Britain First and Patriotic Alternative, have increasingly targeted hotels, live streaming their “visits” in footage that shows activists intimidating residents. Smith wrote how “women and girls are frightened to walk around the area of the [Rotherham] hotel at night”, pushing the message that migrant men are a threat to white women. Even children are positioned as a threat: one Britain First post said that a child in a hotel waving at their cameras was mocking them. When it was revealed that the individual charged with the Southport murders was a British born teenager, the far-right narrative shifted to maintain its Islamophobic focus. Robinson and others shared disinformation about Muslim men stabbing people in Stoke-on-Trent, giving a new inciting reason for the riots, despite Staffordshire Police confirming there have been no such stabbings. Footage of the so-called “Muslim Defence League” portrayed British towns as under attack. The claim that white Britain is under attack by Muslim men is then used to incite the far-right’s ultimate goal: a genocidal civil war, otherwise known as Day X. 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