Racist Attacks in UK Could Spill Over to the U.S. Soon
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Given the news cycle of the past few weeks, you couldn’t be blamed if you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on in the United Kingdom. In fact, you probably haven’t kept up to what’s happening across the pond since Queen Elizabeth passed away. But believe me, there’s something you might take some interest in right now.
According to reports, right wing rioters have been targeting people of color, particularly Blacks and Muslim Middle Easterners. The violence has been a result of misinformation that spawned from a stabbing that left three children dead in the northern U.K. town of Southport, about an hour flight from London.
In that July 29 incident — the girls, aged 6, 7, and 9, each of them white — were fatally attacked while attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, police said. A 17-year-old boy identified as Axel Rudakubana was charged with their deaths. The suspect was born in Wales to Rwandan immigrant parents.
This set off a deluge of misinformation spread by right-wing instigators who have become more prevalent in European politics over the past decade. They spread rumors that the suspect was a political asylum-seeker or Muslim immigrant. The information was not true, but as you know, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its Air Jordans on.
Inciting them more is the recent election in the UK that the Labour Party won, which is basically like a socialist-lite version of the Democrats winning in the U.S. The total result has been agitators setting fire to hotels where they believe asylum seekers were staying, staging anti-immigrant marches in which they clash with police, and attacks on mosques. And in a now viral video, a Black man was attacked by a mob of white rioters in Manchester. Several arrests have been made in that case.
So what’s that got to do with Black people here?
Well we’ve had our own problems with the far-right here in the States. The most memorable in recent years is that little party they had Jan 6, 2021 when hundreds burst into the U.S. Capitol demanding the necks of Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Mike Pence. Five people died in that incident, which was triggered by the god of all U.S. fascist extremists, former President Donald Trump.
You may not have heard about this, but Trump just happens to be running against the current Vice President Kamala Harris to regain the Oval Office. If he wins, a lot of people — from conservative billionaires who traffic in misinformation, to confederate battle flag-wielding yokels — will be satisfied. But if he loses, their penchant for political violence makes you wonder how they will act. The Jan 6 insurrection was a reaction to President Joe Biden winning the election, with the rioters echoing the false claim that Trump had won instead.
So what will happen in the event of a Harris win? Will there be random attacks? Mass demonstrations? Mass social media misinformation campaigns? These same people will easily claim that Black Lives Matter organized hundreds of thousands of people to burn down cities in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Nobody can defend the damage done, but data shows that the demonstrations were mostly peaceful, and criminal opportunists were mainly responsible for the violence, not BLM.
But like the case of Jan. 6, there are other incidents that may raise eyebrows. These include an Alabama man being arrested for making violent threats to the Maricopa County, Ariz., election office; a Virginia man being arrested for making threats against Harris; and right-wing media perpetuating a propaganda campaign claiming that migrants are increasing the crime rate, just as it made bogus claims against DEI initiatives.
There is no telling what will take place after the November election and inauguration of a new president in January. Most extremist plots are conjured, discovered and ended before we even hear of them. But the behaviors of the far right in the UK are really not that much different than the history of angry white mobs in America, which were once encouraged by the highest leaders in the land.
A Black and South Asian Democratic woman as president, who is a white man’s boss, would be the antithesis of pretty much everything they believe in. I’m not trying to scream the sky is falling, and I’m not the man who goes around triggering people with thinkpieces. But political violence goes back a long way in this world, and it’s well worth it to keep an eye on factions in America who would feel they have nothing to lose by behaving like those in Europe.
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