Dear All,

The UK is shaken by the recent incidents of far-right mob violence and looting across several cities. These incidents in cities of England and Northern Ireland produced disturbing scenes reminiscent of the National Front marches of the 1970s and ’80s. The mobs set buildings and bins on fire, smashed and looted shops and attacked the police with sticks, stones and abuse.

But it is not just these images that are shocking. How these disturbances were orchestrated and how far right thugs can be mobilised so quickly is deeply disturbing. Media – especially social media – must take much of the blame for this as must the public figures, who have been its instigators.

These calls to violence were made in the name of ‘protest.’ The initial protest was said to be linked to a horrible incident in Southport when a man stormed a children’s dance class and stabbed as many people as he could. Three young children, little girls, were killed. Some of the mainstream media had implied that the attacker was a Muslim, possibly a migrant. Far-right instigators had then decided that this was a good opportunity for some ‘protest.’ The attacker was subsequently identified as a Christian teenager, born and bred in Britain, whose parents happened to be from Rwanda. A mob of rabid ‘protestors’ still arrived in Southport and attacked a mosque. They also vandalised public and private property, arming themselves with wooden planks broken from people’s garden fences and bricks from their walls. They appropriated wheelie bins and set them on fire and threw bricks and anything else they could at the police who were trying to contain them.

The same pattern of arson, destruction, thuggery and looting followed quickly in some other cities. In Liverpool, a public library was burnt down; in Hull, and elsewhere, shops were attacked and phones, trainers, cosmetics and food was looted. Gangs of thugs attacked any person of colour they could in a manner reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan. Most disturbingly, in Rotherham a hotel said to be housing asylum seekers was stormed by a mob who tried to set it on fire.

The people at these ‘protests’ were chanting racist slogans abusing ‘Pakis’ and telling them to ‘go home’ and saying they ‘wanted their country back.’ The narrative was openly racist and generally anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant.

In addition to rabble rousers from other places, some local people also joined in. On the videos, they all seemed to be enjoying the looting, attacking police and so on. Some had even brought their children along.

But the people making up the mob are mere foot soldiers. The instigators, the leaders, are the ones the Starmer government claims they will now go after. So, who are they? Well, there are the individuals and then there are the social media platforms. Twitter aka X and Facebook are key culprits because for years they have been used as tools to propagate lies and fear-mongering. They have helped build communities of far-right thugs who can be mobilised at a moment’s notice, often additionally through Telegram groups. Now the owner of X, Elon Musk, has taken on the role of an active instigator, declaring on that platform that ‘civil war is inevitable.’ He is a Trump supporter and one of the several individuals stoking the flames of hatred and violence in the UK.

Other key players include Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. Farage, the far-right politician, has pedalled a xenophobic narrative for years and was a key figure in Brexit. He conducts himself in the style of Trump and recently managed to get elected to the British parliament – on his eighth attempt. He is the leader of the Reform Party which is basically the latest version of his UK Independence Party or UKIP. In between, it also became the Brexit party.

Tommy Robinson aka Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon is a white supremacist campaigner in the tradition of the National Front and Mosley’s Fascists. He was a member of the British Nationalist Party and the British Freedom Party. He is a co-founder of the English Defence League and has links with far-right groups across the world. He is an anti-Islam campaigner and consistently spews a narrative demonising British Muslims. Robinson is said to have played a key role in instigating the recent riots but instead of joining them he is on holiday in Cyprus. Although he claims to be an English nationalist, he holds an Irish passport and is a resident in Spain.

One very interesting thing about Robinson is his links to Israel. It seems to be a solid working relationship. His EDL co-founder Paul Ray was an Israeli intelligence officer. The group was registered by Roberta Moore, a former Israeli Defence Forces soldier. The EDL used to partner with the Zionist Federation in demonstrations and Israeli Embassy events. Robinson’s legal fees of $60,000 were paid by the Middle East Forum, a US based ‘think-tank,’ reportedly a ‘cutout for Mossad.’ He has visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories several times, posing gleefully with the army and their tanks. So, it seems that Robinson is a useful asset, an ally who heads a racist Islamophobe street movement in England and whose EDL seems to be, effectively, an arm of the Jewish Defence League. He is also linked to a number of right-wing/ fascist American and Canadian groups and has received funds from the right-wing tech billionaire Robert Mercer’s Mercer Family Foundation. Mercer is one of Trump’s top donors.

This is an interesting nexus and quite plausible if you recall that in 2007 BNP leader Nick Griffin claimed that he had been approached by the US and had been offered money to do two things: focus on Islam, and refrain from talking about the international banking system. Griffin’s credibility is not great but even if a fraction of this claim is true it’s very interesting.

So, will the instigators be held accountable? Or will they be allowed to pursue their various agendas with impunity? It’s a tangled web – and a sinister environment.

Best wishes.

Umber Khairi