Trump supporters before breaching the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Credit: Flickr/Brett Davis (CC BY-NC 2.0)
On July 29, a tragic mass-stabbing event that killed three young girls in Southport, England sparked shock and distress across the United Kingdom. While Southport residents mourned the passing of six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar at a vigil the following evening, conspiracy theories regarding the alleged identity of the attacker were already circulating in right-wing internet channels.
Southport community members claim their grief was “hijacked” by far-right forces, who immediately clobbered together a false narrative that the attacker was a Syrian Muslim asylum seeker who recently entered the country. Outrage and rioting ensued among a small but galvanized group of so-called “anti-immigrant protestors” in Southport who met up on July 30 to attack a local mosque. Hoping to quell the violence, a judge took the unusual approach of revealing that the attacker was actually a 17-year-old British national born in Cardiff, Wales to Christian parents who had moved to the United Kingdom from Rwanda.
This reveal did not stop the riots.
Though British and American media have referred to the perpetrators of these riots as “pro-British protestors,” their actions have so far been more akin to domestic terrorism: They have thrown bricks through mosque windows, yelled anti-Islamic chants, lit cars on fire, attacked both local residents and police officers, and attempted to destroy the homes of asylum seekers. One viral video showed a modern lynch mob randomly attack a Black man on the street in broad daylight. Right-wing internet groups have compiled a list of over 30 “target” sites associated with the British migration system, and many rioters even attempted to set fire to a local hotel that was housing immigrants seeking asylum.
Keir Starmer, the U.K.’s new prime minister, spoke out after several days to dismiss the rioters as “right-wing thugs” and usher in a special police force to try to keep the peace. The “protests” have also dwindled in size, as antiracist groups, churches, and entire communities have been mobilizing early to protest sites, often ensuring that the riots cannot materialize. But in the absence of a forceful resopnse from the state, the rioters had another 40 actions planned for Aug. 10. Still no evidence has surfaced that the original attacker had any connections to Islam or the British immigration system.
Several British politicians and media outlets have tried to pin the blame on social media companies, arguing that such rioting is merely a “negative externality of social media.” Starmer took the podium once again on Friday, Aug. 9 to call for a deeper look into the country’s social media platforms and their role in spreading misinformation and hateful content. Though it is a true and fair criticism that social media executives put the profit generated by inflammatory content over public safety — as demonstrated by the X algorithm recommending the false identity of the attacker to its users — a growing far-right sentiment in Western society is primarily responsible for this chaos.
When Starmer’s victory returned parliamentary power back to the Labour Party in the 2024 election, many liberal news outlets heralded his win as a triumph over fascism, seeing as the Conservative Party lost nearly 20% of the vote share it had back in 2019. But what many polls and pundits neglect to mention is that Reform U.K., the far-right British nationalist party, won a 12.3% share increase in the same time period, now accounting for 14.3% of total votes.
Parallels in far-right violence
This rightward turn mirrors the political landscape in the United States. In many ways, the growing influence of Reform U.K. reflects the same shift in conservative voters that caused formerly “moderate” Republicans to coalesce around Donald Trump and his open racism. But the racist sentiments of these rioters — like those in Southport, like those who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and like those in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 — are not widely popular. They are simply loud. And the perpetration of such racist ideas is, in part, due to the failure of mainstream liberal pundits, organizations, and media to recognize this distinction.
Take, for example, Kamala Harris: As the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has proudly embraced President Joe Biden’s southern U.S. border policy on the campaign trail, which was a blatant continuation of the far-right policy Trump originally put into place. She is now the leading face of the same party that campaigned on “no more kids in cages” at the border in 2020 as a way to position herself morally against Trump. Yet, the administration she presides over has only continued the policy, now calling the cages “Migrant Facilities for Children.” At a recent campaign stop in Atlanta, Harris even tried to outflank Trump from the right on immigration, claiming, “Donald Trump has been talking a big game about the border. But he does not walk the walk.”
The failure of liberal or so-called “progressive” parties to seriously contend with far-right violence has only led to its normalization. Rioters arrested and charged in Southport had the same reaction as those who were arrested at the Capitol building on Jan. 6: genuine confusion. The rioters’ lack of propriety — filming themselves committing crimes, destroying property with uncovered faces, etc. — speak to a certain level of comfortability they feel in their expressions of racism. People who attacked police officers for being “traitors” on Jan. 6 were called “very fine people” by Trump for exhibiting the same behavior a few years prior in Charlottesville. Normally, in the absence of a high-profile situation, they can get away with this type of violence. Right-wing violence is highly acceptable among the U.S. ruling class.
In contrast, Harris did not waste a moment before referring to a July 24 Washington, D.C. protest against Netanyahu’s visit to Congress “despicable” and “antisemitic.” Israel’s genocide in Gaza is recognized across the world as one of the most horrific, brutal and intentional humanitarian crises in global history, yet the figurehead of the Democratic Party has doled out harsher words towards protestors than she has towards genocidaires. Meanwhile, a wave of anti-Arab violence is sweeping the U.S. as a direct result of the Biden-Harris administration’s policy of unconditionally backing Israel.
The same dynamic has unfolded in regards to mass migration in both the U.S. and U.K. According to politicians and the media, the moral onus and condemnation lies with the millions of migrants fleeing their countries out of economic desperation, and not a word is uttered condemning the politicians and corporate hawks who manufactured that desperation in the first place.
This moral contradiction lays bare the nature of politics under capitalism: liberal, even “progressive,” parties will always capitulate to the desires and framing of the right wing because they cannot provide real solutions. A real, progressive solution would strike at the heart of the issue: stop imperialism abroad that creates the conditions for migration. In tandem, investing in communities at home and ensuring everyone’s needs are met through a socialist system would begin to dissolve the tensions that lead to racist violence on the false premise that resources are scarce. The U.S. and the U.K. are two of the wealthiest countries on the planet, and they both have more than enough resources to adequately absorb an influx of economic migrants.
But when real solutions are swapped for hateful or empty rhetoric, it shows that the ruling classes of both the U.S. and U.K. are loyal to profit over all else. Under capitalism’s logic, wealthy politicians and their corporate lobbyists have shown time and time again that they will gladly accept race riots, burning mosques, desperate migrants, and a whole other host of societal problems so long as their profits go undisturbed. When liberal or left-wing parties refuse to take a fighting stance in favor of a real solution, they are essentially saying, “There is no other way forward except fascism.”
The real issue: Capitalism and imperialism
The rise in far-right violence, especially against migrants, will undoubtedly continue its growth in countries like the U.S. and U.K. until a mass movement develops that is capable of fighting back against the true source of their hardship: capitalism and imperialism. The ruling class’s refusal to address climate change, poverty, racism, imperialism, and many other societal ills underscores the truth that they are committed to maintaining their personal wealth over societal order. But real solutions to these problems do exist.
While we can perhaps commend Starmer for the relatively harsh words he had for Southport rioters — only in contrast to other politicians in both the U.S. and U.K. — the people of the U.K. know that those are empty words until he brings down an iron fist on the far right. The majority of U.K. residents have made clear through counter protests that the far-right’s hatred is not what they stand for. And by way of their sheer numbers, these counter protestors have been able to shut down racist riots before they even begin with minimal or no violence.
This all goes to show that both ruling-class parties, whether liberal or conservative, will allow a spiral into fascism for as long as it keeps their profits untouched, and that it is the duty of ordinary working people to build a movement to create another path forward.
