"Patriots"
Alan Cresswell
Admin, 8th Day Host
in Hell
Hell is the only place suitable for that certain type of person who complains about crime on our streets, and responds by burning down homes and buses and throwing stuff at the police. Those people who say that women choosing to cover their faces is not British and prevents the police from identifying criminals, but then decide that face coverings are appropriate for them as they go on a rampage of criminal damage.
Comments
And the "legitimate concern" trolling from those too cowardly to commit to either supporting or opposing racism.
All racists are cowards. Their attitudes are based in fear.
Opposing racism comes at a cost and sometimes people keep quiet. Not out of cowardice but to protect themselves and/or their families.
Before you know where you are "dangerous people" becomes coterminous with "immigrants" and then "not white" in the discourse.
The signs and the planets are lining up like before. Rumours of War
I am very worried.
It also seems inevitable that many of the so-called 'patriots' aren't even from the area(s) concerned. I know people need to have a hobby, but this is ridiculous...
I'm worried. It's becoming an annual summer event now, it seems.
I'm specifically talking about the likes of Anas Sarwar and other politicians. If they can't stand up for what's right they need to resign.
I would also say that their shift to the rightwards specifically emboldens and feeds these kinds of elements.
As far as I am concerned, irrespective of what cause it is someone is demonstrating about, once it starts to mess other peoples's lives about, yet alone includes violence, criminal damage or the threat of either, it is not something that anyone has a right to do. It is not a way anyone is entitled to express themselves. The authorities are entitled to, and should, put in down with as much force as is necessary.
If you riot, irrespective of whether in a worthy or unworthy cause, you have no right to complain if you get imprisoned or hurt, or how badly. That's a price you should accept.
You are being far too kind about these monstrosities.
Even worse are foreigners like Musk who think they have a right to squirt their poison into the affairs of another country.
What has Anas Sarwar done that is so terribly wrong apart from being a politician you don't like? A quick check of the news strongly suggests he had condemned the riots in Belfast before the riots happened in Glasgow and that he has condemned the ones in Glasgow along with most of the other respectable Scottish politicians.
Precisely what I criticised: he qualified his condemnation with guff about "legitimate concerns". I named him because he was the one I saw a direct quote from.
That is an incredibly low bar that rules out almost every large-scale protest, not to mention "as much force as is necessary" could easily be used to justify the likes of the Bloody Sunday massacre and the Battle of Orgreave. To which I say: Fuck. That.
I did similar in the early 00s over various causes. The idea that the police should be called and allowed to beat people up (or shoot them?) for minor disruptive protest is deranged.
The patriot's dream is as old as the sky
It lives in the lust of a cold callous lie
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills
And a hit list of addresses has been circulated. Not sure of source but there has been an incitement to attack those addresses and those living in them
I don't think anyone was suggesting that. @Enoch may not have expressed himself very well, but I took his post to mean that reasonable force should be used to quell riotous assembly.
It's not as if the Belfast rioters would have shaken hands with asylum seekers had they broken through police cordons and gained access to an asylum seeker hotel.
We aren't talking 'minor disruption' here but threats to life, limb and property with racist motivations.
@Enoch's comments about protests that 'mess with people's lives' weren't worded that well, but I took it to mean things like intimidation, criminal damage and people having to be moved for their own safety. He can speak for himself but I didn't understand him to mean that police should assault anyone who blocks a road or causes minor disruption through peaceful protest.
@chrisstiles - in what way is Starmer treating this issue with 'minimal seriousness'? If I remember rightly he responded very robustly to the spate of riots that followed the dreadful Southport killings and woundings. Heck, he came under criticism from many on the right for the comparatively long sentences meted out to those who'd incited riot and violence online but who didn't actively take part in the rioting itself.
What do you think Starmer should be doing that the police and community leaders, local politicians etc aren't doing already?
If he introduces stricter legislation on migration he'll be lambasted from the left, if he leaves things as they are then the right will exploit the situation - as they are doing.
I'm certainly not suggesting he kow-tow to Restore or Reform, but what should he be doing?
This is a government that is quite willing to be very draconian (branding peaceful protestors as terrorists and talking about ending jury trials), so it's simply a question of looking at how they react to events. Which events require a meeting of COBRA and which should be couched in nuanced terms that emphasise 'legitimate concerns'.
Leaving aside the "island of strangers" speech ("incalculable damage" "squalid affair"), Starmer reacted to a far right littering campaign by saying that he - personally - always sits in front of a flag (the behaviour of a sane and very normal individual):
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25432047.keir-starmer-said-hangs-england-flag-number-10-flat/
And his home secretary went on TV to tell us that she hangs them around her garden.
His response to losing a by-election was to blame 'sectarianism'.
You can't remotely claim to be taking a fire seriously if you are pouring petrol on it at the other end. More immediately, given the role of Musk in boosting various far right elements, why is the government still on X? Why is the Tory appointed "extremism tsar" still in post, given that his concern about the latest riots in Belfast seem to be more about migration than (largely) loyalist violence?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2r0783x4go
(A gentleman with a very strange set of concerns, which one would think would be out of step with a Labour government: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:5hyjbx4hnlxe5il24ydnn4sr/bafkreifeuutx4okrlw3ab64e5xvm25aftw6omg6ivmxjgudgqbc7swcy2e )
From one his MPs: https://bsky.app/profile/bengoldsborough.bsky.social/post/3mnwabzyswk25
That's an awful lot of words to try and claim @Enoch meant something other than what he wrote.
So in fact, we have ethnic cleansing in part of the UK. Politicians are being quiet about it.
Perhaps it's better to let him speak for himself.
Sure, I can see Starmer as guilty as charged on some of those examples, certainly on the 'island of strangers' comment which was reprehensible in the extreme.
As for X and Elon Musk ... don't get me started ...
I don't find Hall's statements helpful and yes, the violence is coming largely from Loyalist elements in Northern Ireland - quite predictably.
That said, and I'll probably get some flak from you guys now, I do think there is a need for some kind of vetting and indeed assistance for young male asylum seekers from war-torn countries who may be traumatised by violence and a minority of whom may go on to commit violent crimes themselves. That in no way justifies attacks on migrants and the burning of people's homes and property.
We've got a situation where young male asylum seekers are holed up in hotels, bored and frustrated, not able to work or do anything constructive until their applications are processed and who could become easy prey to criminal gangs or enter the 'black economy'.
Now I'm Orthodox I am more aware of the experiences of Eastern European migrants - a mix of good, bad and indifferent - and of tensions within migrant communities. I wish I knew the answer.
It's also abundantly clear how far right activists are out to exploit these things for their own ends. I'd agree that Starmer is caught like a rabbit in the headlights and that flaunting flags isn't the way to go - although I suspect he (mistakenly) thought this would rehabilitate the St George's flag away from the far right.
What we need is a sane and sensible conversation and practical solutions to complex problems rather than internal infighting (Labour, I'm looking at you) and party-political point-scoring (Tories, I'm looking at you), and irresponsible rabble-rousing from the likes of Robinson, Lowe, Farage and Musk.
How we achieve that is easier said than done.
It is difficult for national governments to respond appropriately because actually this is not driven by local conditions or national policy - though those may be taken as a trigger or ad hoc justification - but by a widespread ideology given coherence by on-line culture and spurred on by globally prominent agitators like Musk and Trump.
This is a battle of ideas and unfortunately the bad ideas are currently the fashionable and exciting ones.
I'm surprised that 'Robinson' isn't behind bars (again), though I suppose that would make him a martyr.
Alas, this.
Accepted - indeed what's going on in Southampton is pretty grim, and not to be minimised.
I don't think anyone here would oppose better care for refugees and asylum seekers, particularly around trauma, not sure why you think they would. Vetting is more challenging, because how do you vet someone coming from Sudan? Scan photos online of militia groups to see if you can find someone who looks like the applicant?
You are assuming that this is something that works according to simple supply and demand, operates according to reason, and that you can triangulate your way out of it.
The reality is that any and every crime by a member of an ethnic minority is being spun as a collective problem, and well, you can see the conclusion they want you to draw.
I don't see where I assumed any of those things.
And yes, any crime committed by someone from an ethnic minority community is certainly being spun as a collective problem and that needs to be be resisted.
Because you are putting forward vetting as - at the very least - a partial solution.
I'm not suggesting that an interview or some kind of 'background check' would necessarily have prevented the knife attack in Belfast nor the thuggish, racist and 'let's exploit the situation' violence that followed.
However, there are clearly some issues, mental health, trauma, or whatever else, behind the incident and there must be someway of addressing those - or at least attempting to. Of course there wouldn't have been riots or anywhere near the kind of reaction we've seen if the knife man had been a white fella born and raised in Belfast.
So what relevance does it have to this discussion (rather than another one about mental health and mental health provision in the UK)?
And what Ruth says about the US is broadly true of the UK also.
And as @TurquoiseTastic observed, prejudice seems to have become fashionable. Not just in the UK.
It’s the baleful zeitgeist. Because of the general mistrust of establishment voices, I’m not sure if any general pronouncements by them would make a difference to the groundswell. These are bad times.
The situation that breeds riots is not autochthonous though, this situation is downstream from years of the media ginning things up (roughly the right wing print press, and outlets like gbnews, times radio etc) and the support of wealthy individuals (SYL has had his legal expenses paid by MEForum for years, and more recently Robert Shillman via Rebel Media) up to and including the richest man in the world.
And one has to wonder about the place Farage's cos-playing 'broadcast from the putative PM' has in giving people a justification structure to then go off and do things.
I think the rise of extremism, both on the left and the right is driven by local conditions and national policy.
There are regular articles all over the place, most recently in The Atlantic, about how badly Britain has fallen economically. Outside London, the rest of the UK is now apparently as poor as Mississippi.
They used to be great. Now they are most certainly not.
These are the conditions for the rise of extremism, as history tells us.
That's a bit economic nonsense, on the same scale Portugal is allegedly as rich as Japan.