Clashes outside Belfast City Hall on Saturday. Photo by Declan Roughan, Press Eye
IT'S often said that, when analysing today’s events, once you start to invoke comparisons with Hitler and Nazi Germany you’re losing the argument.
I get that. The extreme horror of that period is difficult to divorce from its milieu.
However, public discourse is increasingly taking on echoes of 1930s language and attitudes.
Last week’s violence in Southport and Sunderland, which spread to other parts of England; the ongoing trouble in Coolock in Dublin, and the dreadful scenes in Belfast at the weekend - none of this just happened.
Violence is being driven by the far-right, as populism rises on the back of an agenda which promotes fear of difference. For Jews and synagogues in Germany in the 1930s, read Muslims and mosques in 2024.
We live in dangerous times with a feeling that things are getting out of control. Moreover, unlike the 1930s, those who promote far-right agendas have the benefit of social media’s ability to reach many dark corners.
It’s obscene that the trigger for last week’s outbreak of violence was the truly heartbreaking attack on a children’s dance class in the Merseyside seaside town of Southport which took the lives of three beautiful little girls, injured several more and affected forever many families.
Many people from the Southport community came together in grief to support each other. Yet at that very moment, misinformation and disinformation were being pumped out online.
With police giving little detail about the alleged attacker straight away, due to legal restrictions, the vacuum was filled with false claims, such as the 'killer was an asylum seeker who arrived on a small boat'.
As misinformation spread, violence followed within hours.
There is an acceptance that social media can be something of a cesspit with personal insult and anger part of the daily exchange. The events of the last week have felt different, pushing agendas with a far and sinister reach.
The political class and sections of the right-wing press and media bear a heavy responsibility for a narrative that has built for some years now.
Former major figures in the British Government used language such as the “invasion” of refugees. “Stop the boats” became a slogan of the previous Prime Minister, which fed into a prejudice of fear. There were constant references to Muslims not having “British” values and the constant xenophobic anti-immigrant stories in the English press laid the blame for shortcomings in housing and the NHS at the door of these minorities.
The culture war meant that last week's violence was coming for some time.
Those responsible for this tone of debate have already refused to take responsibility.
Denzil McDaniel
A lot of criticism of those engaged in violence included a “but”.
‘It was Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s fault.’
‘The police were harsher on these protesters than on the lefties.’
‘The mainstream media was not telling you the truth, with the BBC particularly under fire.’
There is too much equivocation in condemning the thugs.
In Belfast, the business premises attacked were run by men who have made their homes here for years and have contributed positively to society. As indeed, have many people who have settled here and worked to our benefit in many areas.
Multiculturalism in an inclusive, welcoming place should be the real Northern Ireland.
Instead, protesters marching grotesquely in the name of 'Christianity', were prevented from gathering at the Belfast Islamic Centre and thugs banded together under the Irish Tricolour and Ulster and Union flags.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that some loyalists reacted angrily to a visit to Belfast by then Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Coveney.
Less than two years later, loyalists are welcoming to their cause Tricolour-waving thugs whose knowledge of Northern Ireland seems scant.
The targets of the thuggery across England and Ireland, north and south, prove that those engaged in violence are racist, pure and simple.
The voices of those opposed to it must become louder.