Bad actors stoking hate again (Southport Stabbings)

If anything, 2016 was a big step backwards.

If you ask me most of the damage has been done in just the last two years. The tories brazen anit-immigrant grandstanding on the Rwanda policy in particular have normalised anti-immigrant sentiment. Combine that with social decay due to austerity and post-covid cost of living increases and you have a powder keg just waiting to go off.

This an opportunity to hammer Farage

But how.
If the US Trump situation has shown anything, it’s that these people can capitalise on situations we thought would result in negativity.

Money often seems to be the driving force of a lot of the vitriol I see and hear – from refugees getting free hotel rooms/cars/houses at UK taxpayer’s expense, to not being able to get a dentist appointment, all because there’s not enough money for people ‘who belong here’.
If the same people waste their disposable income on grifters like Farage, then when it all goes wrong they’ll be demanding his head on a platter. Money is their obsession, plainly not spending it on ‘others’.

Not standing up and denouncing it by the Tories and Reform is taken as encouragement and support to the arseholes. This is deliberate by both Tories and Reform.

What shocks me is how social media and the terrible state of political discourse has emboldened people to think that populist, far-right, racist tropes are just an acceptable conversation point everywhere, like the weather or the football. We are seeing the sharp end of normalised bigotry, and it feels like we’re starting from a 1970s square one to deal with it.

Baroness Warsi (who I still struggle to see remaining a Tory) puts it well. She says that racism and islamaphobia in particular now passes ‘the dinner party test’, where people at polite middle-class gatherings now feel free to be openly racist

If you ask me most of the damage has been done in just the last two years. The tories brazen anit-immigrant grandstanding on the Rwanda policy in particular have normalised anti-immigrant sentiment.

Another element here is that, in the main,  this has been at its most vitriolic when coming out of the mouths of second-generation immigrants – Patel, Braverman, Cleverly, Badanoch and Sunak, the former PM himself – rather than the usual Tommy Robinson types.

Its lent the blatant demonising of others an air of legitimacy in certain peoples eyes

Pull that ladder up behind yourself

So people are rioting because they think the perpetrator is an illegal immigrant? But he was born here? So he’s neither illegal, or an immigrant?

Rrriiiight……

I see ANOTHER mental health client who slipped through the cracks and was lost to follow up or not followed up at all. I see reports of bags of meds taken from his home, largely untouched. Sad that people aren’t rioting for reforms and increased budgets for mental health trusts across the country.

So people are rioting because they think the perpetrator is an illegal immigrant?

Don’t think they’re rioting about that one specific incident any more. It’s now just a generic uprising of white supremacist anger. Essentially a bunch of insecure macho white men who see this as their opportunity to get some ‘payback’. I reckon it’ll all die down in the next couple of days when they see fellow rioters being given multi-year sentences for throwing bricks or fighting with cops.

Far right letting  of steam in riot temperatures  at the start of a Labour Govt.Kind of reverse 2011 riots. Police helicopter overhead dealing with them here.

Compared to the Gaza Hate Marches™, these riots are quite mild, understandable even.

If you ask me most of the damage has been done in just the last two years. The tories brazen anit-immigrant grandstanding on the Rwanda policy in particular have normalised anti-immigrant sentiment

Part of the problem is that they’ve done that alongside record immigration. The fact that it’s been non-EU migration, largely enabled by brexit doesn’t help when lots of very thick people voted for brexit in the belief it would reduce it.

Looks like the nobheads in Rotherham have taken it to the next level and are trying to burn people alive

The scenes in Rotherham aren’t a protest, they aren’t even a far right riot, they are an ongoing attempt to murder the men, women & children inside by burning them alive.

The stench of these days will hang around those who incited and justified it for the rest of their lives. pic.twitter.com/gRDx07rnIB

— Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) August 4, 2024

Compared to the Gaza Hate Marches™, these riots are quite mild, understandable even.

I see what you did there, ;)

2016 has normalised all this, and the genie isn’t going back in the bottle anytime soon.

2016 saw a xenophobic (certainly) and racist (mostly) campaign win a vote. Of course it emboldened people to be more open about their prejudice. A day or two after the referendum the ‘Polish Vermin go home’ notices started appearing – I think in Boston, but I may be mistaken. The vote to Leave was the single biggest step change in ‘acceptability’ of xenophobic/racist views in decades in the UK.

The campaign for Brexit absolutely kicked this all off, it was sold to the knuckle heads as a way to get rid of foreigners, especially funny foreign looking ones, remember the Farage posters. Brexit made being openly racist OK again amongst certain demographics.

The Torys have absolutely doubled down on hate since Brexit but it was Brexit that started it.

My hope.

The next few days and weeks are going to be unpleasant but I think fast effective action will be taken against rioters, and I hope against the cheerleaders too. They have a legitimate right to protest no matter how odious their cause; this to be clear is not legitimate protest, it’s illegal protest and pure theft and looting.

But it’ll also galvanise the moderate Brits that outnumber the hard right. Including those that aren’t particularly on SM and aren’t so aware of the threat – well it’s now in their high street and on their TV screens. As they’ve been singing as they barrier in front of mosques and refugee hotels “There are many many more of us than you”

Brendan May, no idea how yesterday started, none at all

https://x.com/bmay/status/1819988274300997762

Looks like the nobheads in Rotherham have taken it to the next level and are trying to burn people alive

At this point the current police strategy of dispersing these people and trying to id them for prosecution afterwards needs upgrading. People need to go to prison for a long, long time for this.

Mild, understandable even

True, it’s such low level disorder. Someone trying to burn me and my kids alive is just a normal Sunday afternoon. Why all the fuss?

People need to go to prison for a long, long time for this.

I’d start with Viscount Rothemere and the editors of the Daily Mail, see above Twitter link

Looks like things have ratcheted up a notch in Bolton,

At one point, amid a further cry of “Allahu Akbar”, some began throwing eggs at police officers – before then charging around streets in the town centre.

From the BBC live feed.

Depressing but not unsurprising to find knuckle heads in many communities.

People need to go to prison for a long, long time for this.

Nazir Afzal on X: “A reminder After the Aug 2011 riots, police & my prosecutors examined all the video evidence for MONTHS identifying & bringing offenders to justice – 1000s of them Some didn’t get arrested till a year later! Prison was the usual sentence My boss was someone called Keir Starmer” / X

.

Looks like they’re going to be

An unannounced impromptu statement from Starmer following the Rotheram events suggests he’s beginning to worry. This is going to turn into a big problem for him if he doesn’t get a grip. All the tough words about ‘full force of the law’ ring hollow when you see a dozen riot cops cowering behind shields being attacked by a crowd of rioters who massively outnumber them. Where are all the cops? Funny how they can get thousands of cops in place for a pro-Palestine demo but can’t find any to combat far right racists.

And Bolton looks like it could turn into a full on race war. I don’t think it’s too alarmist to suggest someone’s going to get killed soon.

Reports that protests planned in Derby this afternoon, hope MrsMC and youngest get back and out the railway station in case it turns nasty.

Rotherham is really unpleasant, hopefully some very serious charges can be brought. But Bolton worries me most – if it ends up with hotheads in the minority communities taking to the streets as well,  it’s playing straight into the racists hands.

Funny how they can get thousands of cops in place for a pro-Palestine demo but can’t find any to combat far right racists.

There’s a lot of cops available easily to the Met. Not so many in Rotherham,  especially when  protests may kick off in other places.  Those 20,000 missing coppers due to austerity would come in quite useful this weekend.

Where are all the cops?

This is where the “dispersed disruptions” are much more dangerous than one (or a few) organised large marches will ever be. You can’t draft in police manpower from around the country if the gatherings are spread widely.

An unannounced impromptu statement from Starmer following the Rotheram events suggests he’s beginning to worry.

Thuggary?, I’d call it domestic terrorism

Could we save the Rwanda policy by shipping the Nazis to Kigali? I’d chip in for Thomas Yaxley-Lennon’s one way fare.

A lot of South Yorkshire police were doing overtime in Hull last night.

I’d call it domestic terrorism

Absolutely. Some of what we’ve seen qualifies under S1 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and I hope we get the chance to see some of the perpetrators classified this way. Particularly those involved with the organising or inciting of it online.

Could we save the Rwanda policy by shipping the Nazis to Kigali? I’d chip in for Thomas Yaxley-Lennon’s one way fare.

Rwanda would probably want to renegotiate when they realise that the calibre of deportees is substantially lower than they were expecting under the Conservative policy.

Summer school holidays are an all round shit show in the UK, the same lot who are our rioting this week are usually out nicking stuff, fighting in pubs, driving around like idiots and generally being unpleasant/hanging around in groups intimidating people.

As soon as the summer heat and no school hits they get bored and fired up and use any excuse to look for trouble.

This has clearly been building up for a while a til a suitable excuse was found to create some carnage and 90% are just the aforementioned idiots tagging along for something to do.

People would be very shocked if they ever realised how few police are actually on duty in their town at any particular time and how far they are from a police officer.  If there’s 170000 officers in total then there will only be about 35000 on duty at any time across the whole UK.   Many of those can’t be deployed to public disorder.

Rotherham is really unpleasant, hopefully some very serious charges can be brought. But Bolton worries me most – if it ends up with hotheads in the minority communities taking to the streets as well,  it’s playing straight into the racists hands.

They’re already out there and I’d hope they’re all dealt with equally harshly. We can’t have groups of armed thugs wandering the streets without consequences. That doesn’t appear to be the case though and different groups appear to be getting a very different response through the fear of disturbances spreading.

Summer school holidays are an all round shit show in the UK

Sorry, have to point this out, not the UK, just England and Northern Ireland. While we have knuckle draggers up here, who predominantly wish they were English, and bare remarkable similarities to the trouble makers in NI, we simply don’t have anything like what’s happened over the past few days in England

This an opportunity to hammer Farage

But how.

By politicians constantly publicly criticising him and demanding that he explains the misinformation he spouted and the rhetoric which did so much to fuel the violence and riots?

Why should he get away with it by quietly slipping into the shadows? The spotlight should be shone on the attention-seeking arsehole so that no one forgets his role in sowing division and whipping up hatred.

Farage will eventually be seeking the limelight again when things quieten down, he always does, but why wait until then? Why allow him to set the agenda?

The idiots actually torched a library last night in Liverpool because they couldn’t get to the mosque they were trying to attack.

Literally burning books, though I’m pretty sure they’re all  too thick to get the direct reference to 1930’s Germany

The damage inside Spellow Hub in Walton, Liverpool after last night's protests. A community hub with a library, employment services, business start-up advice and so much more. Shame on the people responsible for this mindless action against all our communities. pic.twitter.com/pYmgIcesCk

— Councillor Nick Small‏ ?? (@CllrNickSmall) August 4, 2024

By politicians and the Press constantly publicly criticising him and demanding that he explains the misinformation he spouted and the rhetoric which did so much to fuel the violence and riots?

And not just him, of course, other purveyors of dangerous political misinformation are available

I haven’t got much of take that makes sense on all of this but suffice to say hasn’t rioting and hooliganism/racism always been a factor of the UK and flares up every now and again in different forms? How do you guage overall escalation?

How would you measure if this was worse than the football stuff back in the day?

2nd) Successive governments underfunding stuff leaves us exposed when the tipping point is reached.

A la NHS, Pandemic – when are going to learn?

3rd) Right wingers making excuses for their team by saying ‘they’re bored lads.’

Stick a JSO T-shirt on them and they’re public enemy number 1.

I really can’t see a good solution to any of this stuff now.  Society is too hard wired to hate all the wrong things.

The UK really has sunk to become a dregs of society country. The state of these so called “protestors”… fat, covered in sh*t tattoos, cheap sports gear, horrific teeth…. they look like fat ugly cavepeople. I’m ashamed to be British right now, what are people viewing this across the world and in Europe thinking!.. The police/GCHQ need to ensure the people in the filming of that Rotherham hotel fire get prosecuted for attempted murder/arson.

Been arguing with various quarter wits on Reddit. What’s become apparently clear is they have no idea what’s actually going on with regards to immigration numbers

They think asylum seekers numbers are significantly higher than they are, by like a factor of 10+

They have no idea about work visas or student visas

They think people are just rocking up to the country with no visas and we’re letting them in

They have no idea how essential immigrants are to our economy (14% of NHS staff were born overseas for example)

They have no idea how our immigration levels compare to other similar countries (it’s almost always lower here)

When I’ve shared official, credible, respectable links to evidence all this, I’ve been accused of cherry picking stats. Apparently this isn’t the kind of research they like when it comes to doing your own research

Amidst the horrific scenes shown on Twitter there are some lighter moments, such as finding members of the far right who were giving nazi salutes whilst draped in the St George flag getting the absolute literal 10 tonnes of shit kicked out of them, this I approve of.

Literally burning books, though I’m pretty sure they’re all too thick to get the direct reference to 1930’s Germany

Those parallels need drawing very clearly and very publicly