Islamophobic riots in Southport last week
The outbreak of rioting by fascist and far-right mobs should not be dignified by the term ‘protest’. Despite the flimsy pretext that they are in sympathy with the victims of the atrocious killings in Southport, they are nothing of the sort. They are using the issue to launch vicious attacks on mosques, hotels housing refugees, and other buildings, and on Muslims and other ethnic minority individuals unlucky enough to cross their path.
In this they are the echo of the pogroms and lynchings which litter the history of racism and which were designed to keep whole populations in subjugation and fear. The fascists want to create this kind of climate again. Their targets are above all Muslims, and they have been able to grow because there is a fertile ground for them in the Islamophobia and racism spouted daily by mainstream ‘respectable’ politicians and the media which dutifully repeats and embellishes their racist lies.
It is important to recognise that Islamophobia in Britain has been significantly aggravated since the outset of the “war on terror” in 2001. The hateful propaganda against Muslims used to justify the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is still echoing to this very day. It should also be noted that some of those being attacked in hotels housing asylum seekers have most likely fled the chaos left behind by those wars. They are here because we were there – this must not be forgotten.
The chants of ‘stop the boats’, ‘send them home’, ‘we want our country back’ didn’t originate with the fascists but in the palace of Westminster and on the front pages of the right wing papers (reported daily in ‘paper reviews’ by the supposedly liberal BBC). Nigel Farage, leader of Reform, has been given greater exposure on the media than any other politician – again look at BBC Question Time – to spout his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bile.
The dying Tory government doubled down on its rhetoric about deporting migrants to Rwanda and stopping the boats and were not challenged on their basic racist premises by Labour. We have had over two decades of growing Islamophobia, reaching a crescendo in the last year with repeated attacks on the mass Palestine movement as ‘hate marches’, ‘extremist’ and ‘anti-Semitic’. This is despite the fact that the marches have been overwhelmingly peaceful and composed of people from all ethnicities and religions.
Former home secretary Suella Braverman deliberately encouraged far right demonstrators onto the streets to confront the Palestine march of 11th November last year. We are seeing the consequences today of the politicians’ rhetoric.
Keir Starmer has little understanding of this and wants to treat the far right mobs as simply one wing of ‘extremism’ and to see their actions as purely criminal. While few of us would shed a tear if some of these people were locked up, it isn’t going to stop this behaviour. It is created by political discourse from above which then strengthens the far right in parliaments – as we see across Europe – and in turn helps to reinforce this type of racist street violence.
The right plays on genuine grievances – about poverty, housing, unemployment, rubbish jobs – in order to build its base and then uses that base to attack ethnic minorities, trade unionists and anyone who does not conform to its racist hierarchical views. Starmer’s Labour refuses to challenge the exploitative economic infrastructure and is therefore unable to deal with the reasons for the misery so many working class people suffer. Only last week it cut the winter heating allowance for pensioners, pushing many further into poverty. And Labour’s own response to defeats by independent candidates over Palestine has been to accuse them of violence and hate campaigns, echoing Islamophobic attacks.
The fascists will not be – and never have been – defeated through parliamentary means. They have to be confronted on the streets, as many people did over the weekend and will have to continue to do over the coming weeks and months. We also need to link the mass Palestine movement which has been such an important force for change in recent months to opposition to fascism and the far right.
Stop the War has always stood against attempts to demonise Muslims and we have fought for the cohesion of our communities in opposition to Islamophobia. It is clearly time to redouble those efforts.