August 5, 2024 - 11:55am
How is it that a seemingly non-ideological, non-terrorist-related atrocity in Southport, a traditionally peaceful English seaside town, has ignited the worst race riots this country has experienced in decades?
The character of the riots nationwide — the false claims that the killer was Muslim, vandalising mosques while chanting “No Surrender!”, attempting to torch hotels containing asylum seekers, mobs assaulting non-white passers-by — shows that the attack in Southport has been interpreted through the prism of race and ancestry. It wasn’t simply regarded as a horrible crime against particular individuals in a particular place, but instead as an attack on the white English community as a whole. According to this interpretation, “our” (white English) children have been slaughtered by an “outsider” (a British-born black man of Rwandan heritage).
In this sense, there are similarities with the riots in Dublin last year, which were ignited by the stabbings of three schoolchildren by an Algerian migrant. Like in Southport and elsewhere across England, the shock and outrage over that initial crime mutated into a wider animus against mass immigration, undergirded by a white majoritarian ethnonationalism portraying migration as an active threat to the integrity and safety of the nation.
This kind of racialisation is very much in tune with identity politics and, in part, stems from contemporary identitarianism as a social phenomenon. To accommodate a more ethnically diverse population, Britain evolved its self-definition from a white, Anglo-Protestant nation to a multicultural one. But, as a matter of policy and administration, multiculturalism became less an integrated cosmopolitanism. Instead, it became what the philosopher Amartya Sen called “plural monoculturalism”, in which society is imagined as a collection of discrete and internally homogeneous ethnic “communities” whose relations must be carefully managed by the state.
It was always unsustainable to imagine Britain as a “community of communities” where each ethnic “group” would receive recognition for its unique identity and culture. It has been made more unsustainable by the striking gap in the multicultural recognition framework for the ethnic group that constitutes the majority of the country.
It was impossible for identity politics among ethnic minorities to proliferate and be validated by the establishment without risking a self-conscious white English majoritarian reaction. White Britons have become a group with their own exclusive identity and particular “interests”, just like other ethnic groups. This helps reformulate white racism, as the author Kenan Malik has noted in Not So Black and White, away from biological racism, as it was in the 19th and early-20th centuries, that “began as reactionary claims about a racial hierarchy” before being “re-grasped by the reactionary Right in the name of cultural difference”.
So, in the imagination of the identitarian Right, white Britons form a beleaguered ethnic majority whose identity, culture and “way of life” must be shielded from mass immigration and the subsequent ethnic diversification of England. Riots like these don’t occur in a vacuum. There are clearly swathes of the country that feel rootless, and whose inhabitants carry a profound sense of disenchantment which has been simmering under the surface for years.
In a society so atomised and bereft of a wider vision, identitarianism seemingly becomes the only form of collective action imaginable. Thus the political powerlessness that many feel is refracted through a sense of cultural loss, which must in turn be regained.
If this process isn’t arrested, we risk seeing more of this kind of unrest in the future. Then, social cohesion and solidarity will only unravel even more.
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.
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SubscribePerhaps if atomisation of culture and subversion of traditional values had been addressed earlier the unrest may not have built up until it boiled over?
Labelling the events of the past week race riots might well capture what has been seen on the street, but may only partially capture the resentments going on among the people who aren’t protesting (yet) but who have reached the point where frustration turns into despair, hopelessness, or outright anger.
There are racial elements of course, but also (justified) concerns about the pernicious effects of Islamism, a loss of trust in the political establishment, that democracy isn’t delivering because no matter how you vote, you don’t get listened to.
Since this has been building up for a long time, the problem won’t go away overnight. Trust can only be rebuilt slowly, and only if all the issues that are contributing to this discontent are honestly and civilly addressed – which will demand a lot of self-control and a huge dollop of empathy and goodwill on the part of both politicians and citizens.
Limiting the discussion to race alone just won’t cut the mustard. If sustainable stability is to be achieved again, there needs to be a whole new settlement. And to even have a chance at that, there can be no more dodging of uncomfortable questions, no more handling of certain groups with kid gloves when they behave appallingly because there are fears of “community tensions”, no more of this “all Muslims are rubbish” guff, and no more kneejerk labelling of people who – without becoming violent – object to mass immigration as “far right” because that’s the narrative you’ve been lazily trotting out for 20 years.
Sorry Keir, you’re fired. This lady gets the job.
Haha thanks, but no – I’d make a terrible politician as I’m not that great with people. Which has a lot to do with being quite good at observing and analysing a situation/system and then having the temerity (or sheer lack of social skills) to just come right out with what I see.
It’s lost me a few friends and cost me at least one job.
Oh yes, and getting involved in politics would cost me my relationship: The Other Half was active in politics for a while and was so disgusted by it, he won’t even talk about the subject anymore.
Now that the Lord Protector is creating his New Model Army you should be more reassured.
We have much in common
I know the feeling having been shut out of a FB group for starting a debate about how brits of the anglo-saxon culture feel about different cultures being shipped into the country with no intention to “integrate” with us.
I think this is way closer to the truth. People feel alienated and ignored by a political class that no longer represents their interests. The housing crisis, open borders, the lack of meaningful employment, the energy crisis, Covid policies that tended to punish the poor – all of these have contributed to a sense of hopelessness, powerlessness and anger. The working class feel alienated and ignored by a political class that has not responded to their interests.
Mix into this the type of immigration that has impacted all of Europe and Britain. We have open borders in Canada too, but we are so far away from Africa, Asia and the Middle East that only the relatively wealthy can afford to come here. By sheer luck, we don’t get the poorest segment of the Muslim population, the segment that tends to be more radicalized. The Muslims and immigrants that tend to come here are looking to build a better life, rather than escape the craphole where they currently live. This seems like a superficial difference, but it has massive sociopolitical impact..
You don’t see grooming gangs in Canada, acts of terrorism dating back decades. You don’t see minority crime fueled by religious zealots. While our political leadership has been just as unrepresentative and ineffective over the last 10 years, it’s only been a decade. Europe and Britain are in the verge of becoming failed states IMO and the race riots are another reflection of that.
To add insult to injury, there is zero sense of things improving politically in Europe and Britain. You have just elected a PM in a loveless landslide, who is expected to make things even worse than the clowns you just voted out. Mainstream political parties in Europe have not even attempted to absorb the populist sentiment. They have actively worked to crush that sentiment. In Canada and the US, the Conservatives and Republicans have leaders who at least pretend to be responsive to the needs of the working class. That’s not happening in Britain and Europe.
Although race plays an element in the riots, it goes way beyond that.
“You don’t see grooming gangs in Canada, acts of terrorism dating back decades. You don’t see minority crime fueled by religious zealots.”
YET.
Never say never of course. Trudeau has decided to bring in a bunch of refugees from Palestine. Egypt won’t take them. Jorden won’t take them. Yet here we are. Ten more years of Trudeau could complexly change things, but he’s dead man walking now. And unlike Britain, we do have an actual alternative to vote for.
“Europe and Britain are on the verge of becoming failed states IMO and the race riots are another reflection of that.”
If that is true, and it may be, the responsibility lies entirely with the European/British political class.
It was their stupidity and arrogance rather than conscious malevolence, but that’s scant consolation for the working-class people who will bear the consequences.
Don’t worry about the politicians, however. They’ll find themselves a nice little sinecure abroad, as such types always do.
I think it’s fair to blame voters as well. Europe and Britain have consistently elected leaders who have gutted the industrial base and made energy prices five times higher than China and twice as high as North America. Now that they have gutted the industrial sector, we are seeing anti- tourist protests across Europe. WTF are they doing? You basically have one industry left and you want to destroy that as well.
I think it’s fair to blame voters as well.
Well, not really. For twenty years voters have demanded policies that the political class simply refused to deliver and the electoral system provides no redress when that happens.
Hard to blame them when tourism makes your home unlivable. In any case, I just can’t see tourism at that scale as a long term economic foundation, it depends far too much on cheap travel which is not a sure thing.
Now that they have gutted the industrial sector they should kiss tourists’ asses because, as you said, they have one industry left.
.
The only question is who gutted the industrial sector?
I do not completely agree that mainstream political parties have not attempted to integrate the populist sentiments. I think an important reason why the Tories were in power for so long is precisely because they used anti-migration rhetoric. Of course they didn’t deliver. However, the Overton window in Western politics has changed.
Canada had a point system for immigration so that generally only the more highly educated and those with qualifications that were in demand were allowed to immigrate to Canada.
Unfortunately since 2015 (PM Trudeau) the percentage of immigrants entering Canada under those qualifications has been drastically lowered.
We get a lot of family reunification in Canada and students. Most of this is in Toronto. I live in a small community in rural Alberta, way way off the beaten track. The immigrants we get are mostly Indian and Filipino. They are extremely hard workers and contribute much to the community. They are anything but radical. They are also relatively wealthy compared to their people at home because they need about $10,000 in the bank to come here.
Republicans and the conservatives in the US are the same party. They do not represent working class. Pretending doesnt bring action. THEY’RE AGAINST unions, social svcs, wage increases, unions, free health care, affordable housing, clean air and water, maternity leaves, public education and taxing the rich. Come visit!
Well said Katharine. What Ralph Lenoard ignores is that the those objecting to being culturally overcome are concerned about Islam not some benign and benevolent cuddley immigrant bringing us marmalade!
And “without risking a selfconscious white English majoritarianism reaction” blocking my pathway to enlightenment, may I point out that it isn’t a risk, it’s a fact that this country is still majority white. We hope not just to save our white selves from the likes of the infiltration of salafi jihadism but to also protect our fellow black and brown folk who hofullyare not living in the 7th centrury.
In other words: we seek to protect the SETTLED community which consists of people of all hues. Stability should be every politician’s purpose.
Very succinct and spot on.
A more long winded version worth a watch if you have time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvA9odna5dw
The problem is, unless these minority ‘communities’ start to examine their own racism and supremacist, and then start a campaign of anti-racism within their midst like white people have done, then nothing is going to change. In other words, nothing is going to change because they can’t even admit they can be racist, let alone tackle it.
White racial consciousness is really the only solution to their hate and racism.
Wise words, but no signs of any attempts to rebuild trust and address difficult questions openly and honestly. Rather the opposite.
Labeling them as ‘race riots’ enables the politicians to dumb it down to the ‘bad’ people vs ‘good’ people. This enables them to carry on with the narrative as only ‘bad’ people are protesting/rioting and they are the ones they must restrict/control. The last thing they want is nuance and reasoned debate.
It seems though, as though the masses have had enough and really don’t care that they are now considered’bad’.
“Democracy isn’t delivering because no matter how you vote, you don’t get listened to.”
The problem in a nutshell.
In a dictatorship, no one cares whether you live or die, but looking on what’s going on Britain is close to a dictatorship
Dead on
The author is over-philosophising, probably in an attempt to conceptualise (as per the middle class libertarian norm) something they haven’t really grasped.
It’s rather more simple than identitarianism. Examples of two-tier policing; preferential treatment meted out to new arrivals over working class communities with regard to accommodation; access to services and resulting pressures upon them without ever having contributed to their financing… i could go on.
However, the one thing that’s causing the greatest unrest is the ignoring of “in broad daylight” criminality by ethno-religious minorities. Examples include grooming gangs, drug dealing, the taking over (by threats) of businesses from the hands of family entrepreneurs by criminal cartels (e.g. restaurants, takeaways); the ignoring of traffic regulations – including routine ignoring of red lights – in high-powered vehicles by young males of a predominantly and specific ethno-religious background.
Keir Starmer either hasn’t a clue, or doesn’t care. His actions and words are adding to the sense of ignoring the impact of the above on mainly working class communities.
He’ll regret it.
https://x.com/DVATW/status/1819803537657770287
If you or I did this we would be wearing a ball and chain before you could say anything of note.
One would assume all those wielding knives (i.e. “carrying”) are identifiable and will be subject to the “full force of the law”.
Just as well i’m not intending to hold my breath.
The police politely asked a group of armed Muslims to pur their weapons back inside the mosque. Was anyone arrested for carrying a machete? Of course not
If you did it would be a very interesting shade of blue.
He won’t regret it. His voter “coallition” no longer relies on the white, working class voter in the way that previous Labour governments have. He won a stonking majority that (barring a catastrophe like a war) will see him confirmed in power for a minimum of 10 years.
Events, dear boy… events.
I thought the majority was built on Labour recovering the “Red Wall” and other seats in the Midlands and Scotland which are largely white, working class constituencies. I think it would only take a 5% swing to the Tories to wipe out the majority. I think he needs to be pretty careful.
Loveless landslide
See yesterday’s defenestration of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. Sheikh Starmer is already nervous. Just like the police in Rotherham with their backs to the wall of the hotel so he is trapped against his own failed ideology.
It was an anyone but Tory vote rather than a pro-Labour one
What evidence do we have that the insanely unprecendented horrific murder of young children was ‘non-ideological’? No information is forthcoming so perhaps Bayes theorem is helpful (much discussed in the recent Letby case). This ignores the profile of the killer and simply asks, what is the probability that this was terror related, given the horrific nature of the crime.
The likelihood of radical motivation given a unprecedented horrific murder of 3 young children outside of a family relationship is arguably quite high. The statistical population for this crime is extremely small, this is not a ‘inner london knife crime’ and the circumstances are so rare that it makes it very difficult to estimate. Mental health atrocities, like the one in Nottingham last year also occur. Calocane had know Paranoid scizophrenia, did the Southport killer?
Anyway, using Bayes, even if we leave the likelihood neutral at 0.5 then the calculation tells us that the the relative prevalence of ‘radical motivation’ versus the prevalence of ‘3 young girls being stabbed to death randomly’ dictates the Bayes probability of terror / radical motivations, given the events last week in Southport. Given neutral likelihood of terrorism or mental health as a cause (Pr (B|A)) then the cause of this atrocity depends on how much more prevalent radical terrorists are to ‘horrific muders of children’. Both are very rare of course but if radicals with terror motivations are more prevalent than the event itself and the prior likelihood of terror or mental are equal, then the probability of this event having radical links is above 0.5.
In short, the statement ‘seemingly non-ideological, non terrorist’ isnt wholly plausible given some very basic assumptions.
X/twitter has posts claiming Axel Rudakubana was suspended from school for calling for genocide, others that he carried a knife and was known to social services. If the police don’t release more (truthful) information, people will fill in the blanks. The efforts by the MSM to make the murder of children look like an innocent school boy aren’t helping either, it just feeds into the conspiracy theories
I didnt know that but i’m afraid it doesnt suprise me. I know its difficult to follow Bayes but the numbers back up the instinctive reaction of people rioting. Because radicalised people who engage in acts of violence are much more common than the types of murders we have seen, then the probability that this has a radical cause is very high.
If anyone is interested, happy to share the illustrative calculations.
It is a gross simplification to dismiss the unrest as ‘race riots’. Come on, Uherd; we need more penetrating journalism than this!
Not convinced the more recent growth in Identity politics explains this. Notting Hill race riots of 1958 a case example. Several factors at play. Poverty rampant throughout Notting Hill, and the white working-class people living there had to compete with an influx of immigrants after the Second World War. Additionally, exploitative practices by the landlords of Notting Hill led to poor living conditions for its residents. Finally, racist groups like Oswald Moseley’s Union Movement and the White Defence League spurred on existing racial tensions and saw an opportunity. The spark’ albeit some alternative views remain, was a group of white youths attacking a Swedish woman.
There may well be a similar concoction now, but with the added nitrous oxide of social media racing conspiracies and hatred through groups far quicker. I think Author massively underplays this factor.
Might be the 7.5 million people brought into the country over the last 30 years without electoral consent.
I’m sure continuing with the same failed policy will ease tensions, don’t you think?
And in the USA, we’ve had more than double that amount in just 15 years…it’s time to close the borders and work on assimilation for a while.
And also perhaps removal, Cathy?
US stats indicate c2.5m removed/expelled under latest administration. Nonetheless the volumes getting in higher so expulsions not keeping up.
Think the backlog in processing illegals is c2million now in US with influx from failing States in Central America and now Haiti too. Of course Trump promised a wall, and had two years when he completely controlled Congress as well giving him the means to do it. Didn’t happen though did it. Too much time spent mulling over Twitter each day, and it’ll be same again.
I agree but wonder what is left to assimilate into now that our erstwhile culture has been run through the paper shredder.
But look at the size of the landmass of the USA compared to that of the UK.
Why’d you say without consent? When folks are asked in Polls explicitly about migration into areas of labour shortage – e.g agriculture, hospitals, social care etc, they are generally supportive. They may also wish we did more to train and develop our own but they also ‘get’ that’s not instantaneous and we need these services now.
As regards the Boats – newer phenomenon but probably 99% of population and Politicians want it to stop. But it’s a v difficult problem and going to take a bit more than performative slogans.
Remember it’s the Right that had 14yrs, and the supposed benefit of Brexit too, to reduce the net numbers. Not so easy was it.
“Remember it’s the Right that had 14yrs, and the supposed benefit of Brexit too, to reduce the net numbers. Not so easy was it.”
The government of the UK 2010-2024 was not Rightwing. If it had been Rightwing, we’d have a healthy economy, quite apart from anything relating to immigration.
And the rulers of USSR weren’t really Communist said the old Marxist. Come on it’s oldest cop out in town.
There has never at any point in history been a Communist state that was not also totalitarian, immiserating and brutal. It is therefore quite legitimate to reject the views of stupid old Marxists who still haven’t worked out that this is what Communism in practice always is.
Right wing governments, conversely, do have enough of a track record of successful economic management to claim that there is such a thing as right-wing government that works well. So it is quite legitimate to look at the government between 2010 and 2024 and decide whether or not its priorities were actually right-wing. And it is entirely obvious, from the fiscal incontinence, the persistent refusal to use supply-side reform, the constant fear of identitarianism etc, that it was a left wing government.
If you cannot understand that it is fair to judge a government by what it does instead of what it claims to be, I don’t know what else can be done for you.
‘Conservative’ in name only: socialist in practice except for thec continued privatisation of public services – albeit the Liberal Vince Cable privatised the Royal Mail.
Exactly the point I was going to make
Don’t know how many times I’ve tried to explain to you how this particularly brutal episode of class war that we’re living through works – but still you peddle this self-congratulatory race-baiting fiction. I’ve begun to think you are genuinely malicious, not just a bit of a numptie.
Particularly brutal? You’ve obvious led a v sheltered life HB.
You appear to misunderstand the article. Nowhere is it stated or implied that identitarianism is always a precondition for social unrest. The novel claim made here – and plausibly so – is that in a society that has had its institutions and cultural norms gradually undermined over the course of years by identity politics, those same identity politics become the basis of a grievance for those who have lost out because of the process. That is, after all, what identity politics is designed to do: provide a usually-specious basis for grievance.
Are you surprised, now, that a weapon designed to be useful for one kind of victim appears to have been picked up and deployed by others?
Don’t agree with the premise JR that institutions have been undermined by identity politics. Too much of a stretch IMO. Where Institutions may have been weakened there are many other forces at work.
That said, and so you know, no fan of identity politics myself whether on the Right or Left.
It’s disingenuous and misleading to describe what is happening as ‘race riots’. They are much more a protest at the incompetence and venality of the governing class and its police forces.
We submit with protest to lockdowns and passively go along with American foreign policy even when that has dire economic consequences for the UK.
We are sick of our ruling class treating us an passive drones. This is why the nationalist Right has become a conduit for the anger that has risen since 2020.
3 children were brutally murdered and no one is asking ‘why?’. Every sane person should be but we are just talking about immigration as though that was the only important feature of the murders.
For clarity, the most important feature of the murders is motivation. If they were due to mental health, we need to know. If there is evidence of radicalisation, we need to know.
I am dumfounded by the narrative control.
Plenty of high-minded words being spoken – but they amount to ‘Nothing to see here, move on’. But we have ‘moved on’ over and over and there is little room left.
The madness of the ‘racist GMP’ protests were stopped overnight with the release of a piece of evidence that showed broader context. So why dont the police release some evidence that helps explain the context of the 3 murders and hence pacify the riots? It worked 2 weeks ago.
What context?? Did one of the white children look at the racist filth in the wrong way?
The context we need is whether there was a history of mental illness and / or whether there was a history of engaging with radical ideologies. The two are not mutually exclusive which does complicate matters but what else causes someone to murder indiscriminately in this manner? It feels to me that these are the only two possible alternatives.
The absence of any information means people are using their prejudices and prior beliefs. However, these prior beliefs may be entirely rational given the prevalence of people with radicalised beliefs in our society (very small) and the prevlance of these types of murders (much smaller). Elsewhere in these comments i have tried to explain how the instinctive reaction to this news may be supported by probability theory on the basis of these two assumptions. If there was a history of mental illness, that would have been made public too, which most people are aware of.
I don’t think anybody cares of he was ‘mentally ill’ or not, whatever that even means. You can argue anyone who carries out such horrific crimes are ‘mentally ill’ by default. It’s meaningless.
Everyone knows the ‘mentally ill’ label is semantics anyway at this point – a way to deflect and downplay the obvious patterns that everyone can now see.
Well, at least they haven’t tried to convince us that he’s Norwegian. That’s progress … of a sort.
Duh – of course. This started with assymetric devolution, passes through the GFC, unsustainable levels of migration, a failure of supply side reforms to promote a bigger pie, and ends with the random and pervasive levels of violence we are seeing which is not dealt with even handedly. None of it a surprise and will continue intermittently until the elites change course. People have genuine grievances. Why is a British teacher still in hiding if th8s is all far right thuggery?
And why weren’t those who surrounded and threatened him brought to book and called racists?
‘According to this interpretation, “our” (white English) children have been slaughtered by an “outsider” (a British-born black man of Rwandan heritage).’
It was Starmer who started the talk of outsiders, by claiming that English people travelling to an English city were ‘outsiders’.
In the runup to the American Civil War, Gen. Winfield Scott said, “We are now in such a state that a dog-fight might cause the gutters of the capital to run with blood.”
What starts the fighting may not have anything to do with the actual problem.
Statistically, it was highly likely the Southport attack would turn out to have been carried out by a Muslim. It’s therefore unfortunate that the Southport attacker is, probably, not Muslim because this gives Starmer, Cooper, Rowley and the rest an opportunity to put their heads back in the sand until the next atrocity.
No doubt the riots will die away and politicians will conveniently forget their obligation to examine the root causes. And then another woman walking her dog will be battered to death by Somali immigrants and the riots will resume, with extra ferocity this time.
I am always surprised that Western nations seem to believe they are the first to try the multicultural experiment. The middle east basically had multiculturalism for ages. When territories over there were forced into Western style nation states, problems similar to what Western countries are experiencing occurred, albeit in more extreme forms. Countries like Libanon very clearly have a form of plural mono-culturalism in the hope to prevent another civil war.
Is that the future of the West? We should hope not. As Fukuyama noted, it very hard to maintain a liberal society that way. It seems that all identity groups become very protectionist and illiberal, always on edge to fight for their interests. In such a society a tiny elite is often able to accumulate all the wealth. The population can no longer unify against this, they are preoccupied with the danger of ‘the other’. Or you get something similar to large parts of Latin America or South Africa, where wealthy elites lock themselves behind gated communities so they don’t have to deal with the problems of the impoverished masses. None of these societies are very pleasant. With inequality surging and tension between populations getting worse – and I would suggest there is a connection there – it is not hard to see that the West might be moving in that direction.
Ralph, do you read the comments? Do you think about them? Or did you just crow like a rooster and then look proudly at the hens?
He’s too busy teaching his grandmother to suck eggs.
Unfortunately if you promote identity politics which the three traditional Lib/Lab/Con parties have to a greater or lesser extent done then you risk outbreaks of identity rioting.
The obvious cure is to cease promoting community identity politics and insist that all will be judged by the same traditional standards and treated equally. Fat chance of this while the the current pseudo-liberal administrative/political class remains in power determined to double down on social engineering seen through an racially identitarian lense.
It defies all logic to believe that whatever made Britain prosperous, kind and a great place to live was ever about whiteness. It’s been about civility. Politeness. The Golden Rule. When children are taught to “mind your manners” or “don’t be mean”, or “imagine how you would feel if it were done to you”, then you don’t have to worry about them stabbing each other with knives.
Multiculturalism is like a football game where one team wears helmets and throws forward passes, and the other team uses their feet to kick into a net. It’s chaos. You can’t play under two sets of rules, and you can’t share a community with a group who practice Sharia Law.
It’s not about “defending democracy” either. (That’s just semi-random system for picking a government.) British Society grew from the1215 Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, Parliament and by avoiding the extremes of communism or Nazism. It’s not an accident. It’s a society based on universally applied rules, people governing themselves, loosely following the principles of the New Testament that we owe to God what belongs to God, and to Caesar (the state) what belongs to the state. People are free to act responsibly or irresponsibly, but they then reap their good or bad rewards by the natural law of cause and effect. The New Testament is built on encouraging individuals to improve themselves by growing in wisdom and right behavior, and avoiding harmful behavior, but giving one another a measure of grace. Once you wipe out the NT from moral education, everything else requires government force. That’s what gets you an authoritarian state, which is where we are headed.
Up to a point but then, Tony Blair destroyed what had made this country stable in a one-fell swoop by changing the constitution to favour lawyers instead of individual rights and democracy, as expressed through parliamentary primacy. 14 years of pretend conservatism failed to put this right.
“To accommodate a more ethnically diverse population, Britain evolved its self-definition from a white, Anglo-Protestant nation to a multicultural one.”
No, we did not. It was foisted upon us by the bien pensant. Few had anything to say when it was kept within certain bounds but once it became uncontrolled and the hordes became untouchable because they were victims of white priveledge.
“initial crime mutated into a wider animus against mass immigration”. Untrue.
The animus has been there – and building – for years.
If you are part of a marginalised white working class, who came rather low in Mrs May’s Social Audit of 2017, and didn’t benefit from the risible policy of levelling up and instead saw massive levels on immigration, you might be quite annoyed. You might begin to think that the people in charge who have had difficulty in defining a woman, shouldn’t really be deciding who should be citizens, especially if these are very different foreigners who are making your communities unrecognisable. You might also begin to wonder if the so called liberal concern always to put the rights of the individual over the common good and thus justify immigration, might not also be a theft of your national identity and thus a kind of reverse racism against the white British. You might also wonder if those from Africa and Asia etc claiming to be British are not just ‘ whiting up.’ Well, would that be unreasonable? Indulging in aggro however would be stupid as it would just enable those in charge to dismiss you, once again.
It’s logical consequence of anti-white racism, which is systemic in Britain, and which has now manifested in the killing of 3 white children.
It is depressing to hear so many say that these riots are all by working class people who are feeling impoverished by the immigration and obvious Govt disinterest in them.
Of course that is true but I expect a lot of them and others just hate to see their country being ethnically and culturally wiped out.
I also hope that more of our more settled immigrants (Hindus, Sikhs etc) will join the native Brits (working, middle and upper class) in supporting the protests.
Multiculturalism, diversity – If you’re in a boat with 10 people and all are paddling in different directions you will get nowhere.
Only a fortnight ago the main stream media were condemning police brutality at Manchester airport without all the facts now the police are the heroes holding back the far right thugs!!
My enemy’s enemy is my friend?
If deprivation is the cause of crime, why doesn’t Starmer, Yvette, and Amanda I’ve-Got-My-Own-Flag-Now Head of NHS England start treating these ‘working class’ rioters as its victims and give them understanding and treatment? Isn’t it argued that there are too many mentally ill people in prison?
“If this process isn’t arrested…..” Which process? Mass immigration piled up the tinder, and the Southport atrocity provided the spark. But you don’t seem to be advocating an end to mass immigration, but to the identitarianism which is its inevitable result.
So how is identitarianism to be arrested? It can’t be without halting mass permanent immigration and beginning to dismantle much of the machinery of enforcement which the post-modern state has built, beginning with the Equalities Act of 2010. If that is what you want (as I do) then say so.
Middle class and upper class white people demonize poor white people to assuage their “guilt.” It requires nothing of them. They then accommodate and lift up anyone who isn’t white, creating more resentment and hardship in poor whites, and demonize them more.
Then these smug, safe in their tidy homes, judgmental white people act shocked and horrified when the poor white people explode in rage and despair.
The pernicious mantra of EDI is at the heart of most of these recent societal problems. It’s specifically designed and enforced to penalise white people, especially the underclasses who are less able to shield themselves from its worst effects. What’s more, all politicians, bar a few notable exceptions (i.e , Mrs Badenoch), fall over themselves to genuflect before its inane dictats. As senseless and destructive as this ideology is, all our corporations and institutions must be seen to promote it, for no obvious or evidence-based reason. A recent EU report found that the UK was the lest racist country in Europe. Nonetheless, EDI’s march through the institutions has been relentless and brutal, akin to a 20th-centry Communist purge. All this sends a clear signal to the white, British working classes: you’re not liked or wanted; you’re scum and a scourge on the society ‘we’ want to build. Is it little wonder they’re beginning to fight back in the only way they know how?
“But, as a matter of policy and administration, multiculturalism became less an integrated cosmopolitanism. Instead, it became what the philosopher Amartya Sen called “plural monoculturalism”, in which society is imagined as a collection of discrete and internally homogeneous ethnic “communities” whose relations must be carefully managed by the state.”
I’ve been laughed at in the past for making the same observation. Perhaps it’s because I concluded from it that this wasn’t an accidental failure of a policy founded upon honest and open intentions, but was in fact the real point of it all along: a 21st century version of divide-and-rule that possessed the happy additional characteristic that it provided another layer of bureaucracy that would employ the otherwise-unemployable graduates from the second-rate academic establishments in possession of third-rate qualifications.
An avowed aim of the internationalist Left for decades has been to destroy the natural majorities that occur in nation-state democracies. Those majorities, founded upon the shared cultural norms that make the nation-state possible in the first place, are the principle obstacle to the Left’s ambitions, which is why Leftists hate the nation-state and why they pay a lip-service to democracy that fools no-one.
So anyway, in a certain sense there’s nothing new about identity politics because it’s simply the latest means by which the Left seeks to achieve the same old ambitions, and typically of course cares nothing for the amount of damage that gets done in the course of trying.
The double standards displayed in the current situation are breathtaking. Riots of any sort are terrible, but when a government cracks down on “right wing thugs” and cheerfully allows and excuses left wing, anti-Semite and anti-capitalist thugs something is desperately wrong.
Melanie Phillips wrote something today that grabbed my attention as it summed up the appalling hypocrisy of our mainstream political classes: ‘Starmer’s strictures against “right-wing thugs” are in stark contrast to the solidarity he expressed with the Black Lives Matter anti-police, anti-west, anti-white rioters in 2020 who destroyed poor neighbourhoods in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere — and to whom he actually “took the knee” and proudly tweeted the picture.’
‘“outsider” (a British-born black man of Rwandan heritage)”. But we don’t know if he had been radicalised to Islamism online. Coming on top of the frenzied stabbing of Lt Col Mark Teeton little over a month ago, and the Ariana Grande murders of twenty two children in 2017, it’s not unreasonable to think that killing defenceless little girls was an Islamic atrocity. That’s what they do.
“…the attack in Southport has been interpreted through the prism of race and ancestry.”
Certainly unfair to jump to such a conclusion, but how can anyone ignore the obscenely repetitive deadly Islamic terrorist events over the last many decades and conclude that the unfairness was not also understandable. How many tens of thousands of innocent people have died in subway bombings, airline bombings, concert attacks, restaurant explosions, attacks on journalists, attacks on schoolteachers, planes flown into the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, and untold random attacks over and over and over again. How ridiculous to assert that Islamic terrorism would not be at the top of the list of immediate suspects, a distinction they have well earned.
Spot on. Except for one glaring misnomer : Britain didn’t evolve its self-identification. This was a deliberate and sinister movement from WEF.