National anarchism, gendered violence and the bigotry of low expectations

The media has ignored evidence of anarchist involvement in 2024's UK riots in order to maintain a 'far-right' narrative

In August 2024, BBC TV’s flagship News at Ten programme reported on the sentencing of people arrested in connection with the UK’s summer riots. 190 of those arrested had already been sent to prison or youth custody at that time. Journalist Daniel De Simone went before the camera to explain that although the people convicted had no known connections to ‘far-right’ groups, the far-right had somehow organised the riots online. De Simone published a fuller account of the theory on the BBC news website. By October, following the arrest of Pavel Durov, the BBC was reporting that the riots had been organised via Telegram by a ‘mixed race neo-Nazi’ in Finland.

The alternative to the ‘far-right’ narrative is that some people are angry because of the murders and attempted murders of young girls, and that we don’t know the politics or the attitudes of everyone involved. The progressive media’s analogy with 1930’s Germany requires a specific ethnic group to be the target of rioting. That is also the government narrative, with the Prime Minister having made claims of “far-right thuggery”, but not necessarily an accurate one.

Supposedly, online misinformation about the Southport murders spread by white supremacists led to the riots. The claim that these murders had been carried out by a Muslim was reported by ITV News to have been spread by a website based in Pakistan, which doesn’t fit the narrative of the far-right organising the riots. ITV correspondent Rohit Kachroo knocked on the door of website operator Farhan Asif, who has now come to the attention of police in Lahore. This misinformation was clickbait, and the motives for spreading the rumour were purely financial.

The claim that the summer riots were anti-immigrant is not supported by the complete lack of disorder regarding the many new arrivals from Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. 1.4 million people arrived in the UK in one decade from the eight former Eastern Bloc countries that joined the EU in 2004. That the protests were simply racist does not fit with the lack of complaint about Hong Kongers, Sikhs or Buddhists, or ordinary Muslims for that matter.

As for would-be ‘fascists’, it is politically inept to use that word to describe reactionary protestors. The protests and rioting which take place around the world on a regular basis don’t need to have anything to do with a particular ideology. In Kolkata, India, doctors angry that a female colleague was raped and murdered recently staged noisy protests and strikes. Presumably, they are not ‘far-right’ or ‘fascist’ for pointing out that gender-based violence is real and unacceptable.

Using Occam’s Razor, the more likely explanation is that the UK’s 2024 summer riots were about what the participants said they were about: the murder and injury of young girls. No doubt, some rioters decided to take out their anger on innocent people, as mob justice is no justice at all. The British state’s failures to protect women and children from the abuse of grooming gangs, media personalities and even serving police officers has also made it a target for public anger.

What is ‘vicarious retribution’?

In the definition used by Brian Lickel et al “Vicarious retribution occurs when a member of a group commits an act of aggression toward the members of an outgroup for an assault or provocation that had no personal consequences for him or her but which did harm a fellow ingroup member.” Sometimes the outgroup is those who wish to harm children for whatever reason, and the ingroup is the rest of humanity.

Mob justice requires that the UK’s white sex offenders are kept in separate prisons to protect their lives from other prisoners. In one example of why this has proved necessary, Richard Huckle, a white man convicted of abusing up to 200 children in the Islamic state of Malaysia, was murdered by another prisoner while in jail in the UK. If prisoners vehemently opposed to child abuse were racist or ‘Islamophobic’, and therefore viewed Malaysian children as being of lesser worth, Huckle might not have been targetted for ‘vicarious retribution’.

Britain’s progressives are committed to globalisation. Even questioning the claim that men from explicitly patriarchal cultures are no more sexist or dangerous to women and girls than the average British male is completely unacceptable to them. This is clear from the document ‘Online Allegations Of Gender-Based Violence’ published by government-funded ‘antifa’ NGO, ‘HOPE not Hate’. Page 4 of this document states that “…the far right are exploiting gender-based violence to serve their own anti-migrant, racist and Islamophobic narratives.” Page 9 states “Remember that the focus here is on the weaponisation of the allegations, not the allegations themselves.”

Under the principle of vicarious retribution, rioters were not angry with migrants in general; they were angry because of what happened in Southport and in previous examples of Islamist violence, in particular gendered violence. The murders and attempted murders in Southport resembled the modus operandi of previous jihadist attacks in the UK, as did the targets of girls, music and dancing. Some people were quick to make the association without waiting for further evidence. It is now alleged that the suspect for the Southport attack was in possession of a jihadist training manual and a chemical weapon substance, allegations which were not disclosed by police at the time of the riots. However, not all similar attacks are known to be linked to the jihadist cause. It has not been reported that Ioan Pintaru, a Romanian homeless man who is white and is alleged to have repeatedly stabbed a child in one of London’s most popular tourist locations, is or could be Muslim. The girl who was stabbed, who fortunately survived the attack, was hoping to see Taylor Swift in concert.

How many buildings were burned down?

The official narrative implies that mosques and hotels containing Muslim migrants have been burned down by angry ‘fascists’ radicalised online. On the basis of media reports, it seems this did not happen. One example is from County Down, Northern Ireland. If you only read the Mirror newspaper's headline, you would assume that the local mosque had been set on fire. According to the article itself, the solitary petrol bomb thrown on that occasion failed to ignite, which by Irish standards of organised political violence is not a riot.

The 2024 rioters convicted so far seem to have been in conflict with police who supposedly contained public protests against the Southport murders, rather than being jailed for fighting immigrants or British Muslims. To the best of my knowledge there have been no mosques or migrant hotels burned down during these riots, and no reports of injuries to anyone inside or leaving these buildings.

A Citizens Advice office in Sunderland was set on fire, right next to a police station which was also vandalised. CNN, which claimed that two Holiday Inns containing migrants had been set “ablaze”, published a photo of a plastic bin on fire outside a hotel in Rotherham, one of the key towns in the British grooming gangs phenomenon. The hotel itself did not catch fire, according to reports. The Holiday Inn Express in Tamworth, rented in its entirety by the UK government to house asylum seekers, suffered limited fire damage in the area of a side window, one of several windows which was broken. A convicted rioter from Tamworth was sentenced in October 2024 to six years and 17 weeks in prison due to his part in the attack on police and the hotel building.

Accounts of the 2024 riots include claims that bricks were thrown ‘towards’ mosques, and that vehicles were smashed or burned outside, but there have been few reports of damage to a mosque, except to a wall outside and a photo of a broken window at Southport Islamic Centre Mosque. According to one police report, fifty-three officers were injured during the 2024 riots, of which forty-nine were from Merseyside and four from Lancashire. Eight of these officers were reported as seriously injured with fractures, lacerations, a suspected broken nose and concussion. Three police dogs were injured by bricks thrown at them. These reports suggest the bricks in the Southport mosque boundary wall were used as ammunition by the rioters to attack the police, rather than people at the mosque. The media has had nothing to say about injuries to protesters against the Southport murders, although police batons and dogs were used on them.

If there were any arrests or convictions relating to assaults or injuries other than on police officers, please set the record straight by commenting below with details.

Demagogues and elites

Writing for The Guardian’s ‘Observer’, Josh Cohen repeated the claim that “The recent riots after the stabbings at a children’s dance class in Southport were largely triggered by online demagogues and provocateurs who spread the false rumour...” In this analysis, it cannot be possible that the riots were a reaction to the murders and attempted murders themselves, which would have made the murderer the provocateur ultimately responsible for ‘triggering’ the riots.

Cohen’s article asserts that we must not look back in anger at atrocities, and all need to calm down. This piece starts with trivial examples of anger in everyday life, such as negative restaurant reviews, and then switches to discuss the recent murders and riots. The sinister effect is to place this serious public unrest as on a continuum with unimportant matters.

The government and media’s use of ‘phobia’ after a terrorist incident is a manipulation technique, because it attempts to persuade the anxious and afraid that they are irrational. Telling people who are shocked by the multiple murder of girls that they have no legitimate concerns is gaslighting on an organised scale. It seems traditional chivalric values combined with the modern recognition of gendered violence and sexual abuse have provoked a dangerous reaction in the 2024 riots.

The word ‘demagogues’ used in Cohen’s article has a dual meaning; like ‘democracy’, it stems from ‘demos’ and did not always have a negative connotation. Wikipedia, now in the multi-millionaire club of progressive journalism thanks to Google’s money, defines demagogue as “a political leader who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, often through oratory and emotion.” The Guardian is the most elite of all ‘progressive’ newspapers, thanks to its billionaire backing by the Scott Trust, and its greatest fear is apparently the white working class. Sir Roger Scruton called the fear of one’s own populous ‘oikophobia’.

National anarchism

No doubt, the experience of being inside a building with an angry mob outside can be terrifying. Especially since the ‘mostly peaceful’ riots of 2020, that is now a regular occurrence in the West, whether you happen to be an academic feminist who doesn’t think men can become women, or a Jewish humanitarian with doubts about the intifada. Perhaps the progressive anarchists in the ‘black bloc’ assumed that no-other group would adopt these mob tactics, least of all their cousins among the national anarchists: the anti-globalisation wing of the anti-authoritarian movement.

The 1993 Welling riot in south-east London was the culmination of street protests, six months after the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and three other racist killings beforehand. That protest in Welling turned into a riot because police fought for hours to prevent the anti-Nazi contingent reaching the British National Party headquarters. The BNP operated in the open, and had no need of face masks.

Anarchists wear masks because they expect hostile surveillance. The photo of the 2024 riot in Rotherham that the Guardian used for Josh Cohen’s article shows a participant holding a red flare, disguised by a mask and hoodie. The England flag shown prominently in CNN's photo of one of 2024’s white riots is decorated with anarchy symbols, not ‘far-right’ iconography. The person holding this flag wore the Guy Fawkes mask designed for the ‘V for Vendetta’ graphic novel, a fixture of the anarchist uniform.

With these mask-wearers and their anarchy symbols painted on Saint George’s flag, the photographic evidence points to national anarchist rather than ‘far-right’ organising. Graffiti on the wall of one damaged migrant hotel included the slogan “F**k Feds”, youth slang referencing the Federales, an expression which could just have easily been spray-painted by ‘antifa’ anarchists.

No ‘leader’ of the 2024 riots has been arrested; there was no Oswald Mosley figure present. Mosley addressed his supporters at several rallies before the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ in 1936. Court reports suggesting police and their vehicles were a target in the riots of 2024 again point to the principal actors being anarchists rather than national socialists or fascists. Both of the latter groups support state power and wish to become the police force of an authoritarian government, not fight the police.

Photographic evidence, court reports and the media’s failure to find a credible link to far-right groups suggests the 2024 riots were in part apolitical reactionary, and in part self-organised by national anarchists, perhaps imagining themselves at war with the ‘globalist’ hegemony of the World Economic Forum, George Soros and Bill Gates. They could be a throwback to the 18th and 19th century anarchists who aligned themselves with national liberation movements.

The UK Police’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office groups anarchists with ‘left wing’ security threats and declares the risk of an attack to be low. By contrast, this organisation lists ‘cultural nationalism’, including the idea that western culture is at risk from a lack of integration, under ‘Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism’. Perhaps these are the sources that the media uses when classifying rioters, and the information offered on anarchist threats is incomplete and out of date.

A disproportionate reaction

While the recent riots were obviously unacceptable for anyone who supports the rule of law, and very intimidating for people in the areas where these events took place, it was hyperbolic for the Prime Minister to talk of “Nazi salutes in the street”. During the riots of Kristallnacht, more than 1000 synagogues were burned or damaged; Ernst vom Rath had been killed by Herschel Grynszpan, and national socialists took revenge by killing 91 Jews. Even the UK’s riots of 2011 following the police shooting of Mark Duggan, in which five other people are known to have died, featured far more arson and looting than the supposed ‘far-right’ insurrection of 2024.

In 2017, less than a month after the jihadist Manchester Arena bombing which killed 22 people and injured hundreds more, a white man, allegedly radicalised online, used a van as a weapon to attack the mosque in Finsbury Park, London, killing one Muslim and injuring nine others.

Since that tragedy in Finsbury Park, I know of no-one killed in retaliation for any of the knife and suicide bomb attacks perpetrated in Britain, including attacks which specifically targeted girls, dancing, pop music and gay men. The progressive paradox of open border policy is that it means allowing people in to your country who don’t share your intersectional analysis, including people who want to kill people like you.

Attacks on Muslims in the UK are not exclusively perpetrated by white supremacists, with several examples of sectarian and so-called ‘honour’ killings recorded by the courts. One of the most terrible attacks in recent years was carried out by Mohammed Abbkr, who set worshippers on fire at two separate mosques in England. When motivation is politically inexplicable, a mental health judgement is usually offered; but anyone who wishes to carry out mass murder, by any means, is not well.

It appears essential for the progress of globalisation to reassure people that acts of violence are inevitable, and that punishment after the fact is all government can do. The media is complicit, instilling fear of the white working class in the bourgeoisie and migrant communities, even those settled black communities which were not the target of the most recent riots in Britain.

In fact, the greatest threat to black lives in Britain is ordinary street violence, not the organised ‘far-right’ or national anarchists. Two people died following eight reported stabbings at this year's Notting Hill Carnival in London, including Cher Maximen, a young woman who had reportedly tried to stop a fight.

No explanations were made by the intelligentsia for this violence at Carnival. There was no emergency government announcement, and no special courts convened to process the hundreds of people arrested. The Prime Minister, while asserting that he is even-handed in the punishment of rioting, has not ascribed a political motive to the latest murders in Notting Hill, nor has he called young black Londoners who are assumed to vote Labour ‘far-left thugs’.

While the white working class is considered so stupid and easily manipulated that they will riot when instructed to by a tweet or Facebook post, the progressive bigotry of low expectations sees violence in our communities as inevitable and insoluble. It is past time that violence itself was identified as the problem to be dealt with, rather than focusing on the reaction.