By Mohamed Harees –

Lukman Harees

The impact of the far-right riots seen across the UK could be felt for “months and years to come”, as the UK’s Justice Secretary warned. Far-right violence broke out in towns and cities across the UK in the wake of a stabbing attack that left three girls dead in Southport on Monday 29 July. False rumours were circulated online claiming the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat. This was found to be an outright lie ,which 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. Instead, the culprit was a British-born teenager Axel Rudakubana of Rwandan heritage and was since charged with murder and attempted murder. It was the Muslims, Britain’s largest religious minority who were singled out for attack by nativist rioters. This was evidenced by the decision to immediately target mosques. The British government took action to quell the riots and to bring key culprits to book, although belated. But the damage was done.

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. 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. Far right outfit EDL’s co-founder and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) 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. 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. Fellow agitator Laurence Fox also tweeted saying “it’s war” and “for decades British girls have been raped by immigrant barbarians.” That one’s been viewed more than 3 million times.

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.

Following the Southport riot, Reform UK MP Nigel Farage put out a video where he claimed the violence was a reaction to “fear, discomfort, to unease … I am worried, not just about the events in Southport, but about societal decline that is happening in our country … this prime minister does not have a clue … we need to start getting tough … Because what you’ve seen on the streets of Hartlepool, of London, of Southport, is nothing to what could happen over the next few weeks.” In his video, Farage hints to the far-right trope of Western decline – an offshoot of the Great Replacement theory. He argues that the government is failing to protect its people. More importantly, he suggests that if the government fails to get “a clue”, it will get worse. The violence, fear and disorder will increase. This is part of the modern far right’s strategy: if the state cannot protect us from inevitable violence, it says, the far-right strongman can. The desired outcome of this violence is to create insecurity, fear and anxiety in the general population, which in turn leads to a collapse in faith in democracy and society.

Ironically, in 2021, an infamous government-backed report, the Sewell Commission, claimed that the UK was “a model for other White-majority countries” on issues of race equality. Much to the consternation of many anti-racists, the report found that there was scant evidence of institutional racism in the UK. Only three years later, the credibility of this Report has been called into  question ,with the “model” country gaining international attention as far-right thugs began intimidating, harassing and attacking people of colour. The UK today is anything but a beacon of equality, with the scapegoating of migrants and people seeking asylum gaining full sponsorship by mainstream political elites and the media ,which pursued hostile environment immigration policies over decades to distract from economic and political failings.

Views on immigration and asylum also influenced many of the rioters, who, according to the Hope not Hate advocacy group, at times used the slogan “stop the boats” — which was adopted by the former Conservative government as it attempted to thwart small boat migration crossings in the Channel. However, angry, Islamophobic resentment that had long brewed across the U.K. came to the surface. According to U.K. government data from 2023, no religious group has faced more hate crimes linked to faith than Britain’s Muslims. In the year ending March 2023, more than 4 in 10 of all recorded religious hate crime offenses were targeted against Muslims. Today, Muslims and immigrants, particularly asylum seekers from the Middle East, are two sides of the same problem for the British far right. But this conflation of the two groups has not occurred in a vacuum. Much of the far-right rhetoric about Muslims and migrants has been replicated by at least some mainstream politicians. Just look at the similarities between the language used in the ongoing riots and the rhetoric used by politicians.

In this context, media coverage of the race riots in the UK in its usual double standards approach, need to be criticised for focusing on the actions of ‘protestors’ and ‘demonstrators’ in British towns and cities rather than labelling them as rioters. The violence on the streets were misrepresented by some sections of the biased Media as representing legitimate frustrations about the “dumping of millions of migrants from alien cultures” and “uncontrolled, mass immigration”. In fact in one of the talk shows Good Morning Britain, when Zarah Sultana MP, a Muslim politician went on  to talk about the Islamaphobic nature of these riots, she was treatment by presenters shabbily and was widely criticised as patronising, and belittling. It was disgusting that amid much profound anxiety, tension and pain faced by the communities of colour, every effort was being made by certain political and media elites to diminish, and sometimes demonise their concerns.

Politicians have shied away from calling it Islamophobia, instead describing the violence as “far-right thuggery” and “anti-immigration protests”. Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment have been par for the course for the British far right since the turn of the century. In his response to the unrest, Keir Starmer told Muslims: “I will take every step possible to keep you safe.” He continued: “Whatever the apparent motivation … we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities.” Surely, the “apparent motivation” is Islamophobia?

As the police cracked down on the rioters, accusations of ‘two-tier policing’ – the false claim that thugs were being harshly treated because they were white – also began to take hold. In reality, it is ethnic minorities who are subject to racial disparities in the criminal justice system, some are victimised, and due to substantial cuts in legal aid, a number have no assurance of effective redress from authorities. Their playbook is to provoke black and brown communities into violence, which would be captured on film and manipulated as propaganda to falsely suggest that multiculturalism is failing.These images would inevitably make their way onto mainstream TV news, radio discussions, and newspaper columns, twisting the narrative to portray the aggressors as victims.  Elon Musk too himself has fanned the flames by insinuating that the UK is on the verge of civil war.

Is this just the end of the beginning? How can UK end the divisive political rhetoric that fuels intolerance? Is the UK government showing serious concern to address this issue? In this context, as anxieties among Muslim communities grow, it is really sad that the recently elected Labour government too (like its Tory predecessor) shows reluctance to meet with the largest body representing British Muslims and holds credibility among them, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). There appears to be plans afoot to support the creation of a new Muslim group provisionally called the Muslim Leadership Council to act as the primary point of engagement between the government and Muslim communities.  In doing so, the new government is set to repeat the same mistakes as the previous Labour government in creating bodies that fail to truly represent British Muslims, leading to further distrust.

In the context of increasing Islamophobia and threats from the far-right, the Government needs to engage directly with Muslim communities and their representatives rather than creating a friendly vehicle for themselves. Perhaps both the previous Labour and Conservative governments heavily funded, and had close ties to, Quilliam Foundation, which was most distrusted by Muslim communities. In fact, Labour’s position on Gaza not only cost the party major seats to independents and slashed their majority in many constituencies but has highlighted the disconnect between the party and Muslim communities.

The vilification of Muslims and their communities has become normalised by both Labour and Conservative parties, as well as Ukip and Reform UK. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi spoke of Islamophobia having passed the “dinner table test”, where ordinary people would say things about Muslims in company with others that they would never say about other minority communities. This is partly the legacy of the Brexit Leave campaign’s toxic rhetoric on popular views about immigration that continued right up to the recent general election. Over the years, large sections of the public have become receptive to and accepting of Islamophobia (including far-right messages), and of the demonisation of migrants. Politicians of all stripes have enabled this by avoiding explicitly discussing Islamophobia.

In his response to the unrest, PM Starmer told Muslims: “I will take every step possible to keep you safe.” He continued: “Whatever the apparent motivation … we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities.” Surely, the “apparent motivation” is Islamophobia? But, Starmer choosing not to use the “I-word” is far from surprising. Acknowledging that Islamophobia exists would mean having to do something about it. And as we know, this has never happened. The consequences of refusing to address (or even acknowledge) Islamophobia are now playing out in towns and cities across the country. The longer politicians pretend that Islamophobia doesn’t exist, the worse the problem will get, and the more permission the far right will feel they have to get away with violence.

As the HRW says, ‘The new Labour government inherits a country divided, in which the far right is a real and present danger. But to focus solely on the violent disorder is to treat the symptom of a much broader problem. To tackle the threat posed by the far right, the government needs not only to hold to account those spewing dehumanizing rhetoric and address ongoing structural racism and Islamophobia, but also begin to address the many and varied structural issues, including rising inequality and poverty, that are ripe for cynical exploitation to push a xenophobic agenda’.

The ‘mainstreaming’ effect of far-right discourse on key issues such as immigration in global politics, particularly by ‘mainstream’ centre right parties has important implications for the future of liberal democracy in global politics. Centre-right parties may have opened up a ‘Pandora’s box’ and brought the ideology of the far right into the political mainstream. This is a worrying trend that arguably serves to legitimise populist radical right parties by bringing their discourse into the mainstream and therefore making it publicly acceptable amongst voters. Apart from the UK, other recent examples of this ‘mainstreaming effect’ can be found in Hungary, Poland, the US and Brazil where democratic institutions have been eroded.

Violent Far-Right Movements aren’t however just a ‘Western Problem’. The stark rise of far-right violent extremism has correlated with a rise in populist narratives and challenges to pluralist democracies in many states, including the Global South for example India and even Sri Lanka. Histories of tension with minorities and colonial pasts have often been exploited for political gain and parties in power have had to reckon with established religious political parties in order to secure majority rule, thus risking the institutionalization of exclusionary ethno-nationalist religious narratives. It is time for the UN and other international institutions, including those dealing with terrorism and violent extremism, to recognize the global nature of the far-right threat and meaningfully address terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations,” translating that rhetoric so often used in resolutions and meetings into meaningful action.