It Could Happen Here - The Media Context for the Belfast Pogrom

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

James is joined by Elia Ayoub to talk about how British media framing paved the way to a Pogrom in Northern Ireland.  Sources: https://chuffed.org/project/185445-support-people-and-groups-impacted-by-racist-attacks  https://shado-mag.com/articles/opinion/the-belfast-pogrom-was-predictable/  https://eliaayoub.com/    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit season two is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority, Black City in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All Zone Media. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show.

It's me, James today, and I'm very lucky to be joined by Eliyub, who's a UK-based researcher and journalist with an academic background of memory studies and a particular focus at the moment on the far right. Also, the host of the Fire in These Times Podcast, which is an excellent podcast. I've been a guest on that. one before. Alia, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me. Nice to be talking. And we are talking today about, I guess, the kind of explosion. Explosions are wrong word, I think, actually, because it's more like with the iceberg when you only see the tip of it, you know? The more visible acts of bigotry that we saw in Belfast, a couple of weeks back, and the response throughout the UK. and I guess also the discourse around it online,

which a lot of online discourse is generated by Americans in America, it ends up being divorced from context because of that. So I guess to begin with, right, like I know I'm personally intimately familiar with the English far right, but let's maybe distinguish a little bit between the far right in Northern Ireland and the far right in England. And I'm saying England consciously here, not the UK. I'm wondering if I should pause here to define terms,

for people. Do you think most people have an operating analysis? I guess we can at least say the whole four nations and one nation kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So I'll just break it down. Like, Britishness is a national identity. If we talk about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we're talking about England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are four nations within that, right? If you want to know what a nation is, you can read Ben Anderson. But I like Linda Colley's analysis of Britishness which suggested it is Englishness exported, like the Britishness is essentially an English colonial project that co-ops elites in Scotland,

Wales and Northern Ireland and by its people within those countries against each other. So given that, and I've already recommended two academic books, which were five minutes in, perhaps you could explain this distinction between like Northern Ireland and England as it pertains to the far right. So there are similarities in the sense that a lot of this is transnational these days anyway. A lot of it is online based. There are also a lot of reports of England-based far-right agitators like, you know, most notoriously Tommy Robinson and whatnot. Yeah.

Kind of almost visiting Northern Ireland and leaving overnight. They're just kind of like dipping their toes in a sense. So there are similarities there. And the dominance of England cannot be overlooked because it's still kind of like the powerhouse what the capital of the UK is and just has this oversized influence, right? But also pretty important differences. Northern Ireland, I don't know how much we're going to get into the entire history of it, but has had a different trajectory in terms of the far right than England.

There is the added sectarian element. There is the added, whether you're pro-Ireland as in Republic of Ireland, or whether you're pro-United Kingdom in UK and Ireland terms. This means a loyalist is someone who wants to remain in the UK. And a unionist is someone who wants to, what, for Ireland to be reunified, basically. It can be confusing because a union and the United Kingdom and whatever. Yeah. So there is that sectarian element.

Historically, the UK has one of the UK, as in British government, one of the ways it has faced what it sees as this nationalist threat by nationality. I mean, like Irish nationalist threat, which of course has grounds as well in Northern Ireland, particularly but not exclusively among Catholic communities. it has essentially armed and de facto armed these paramilitary groups that are today kind of a de facto mafia. Like for me as the Lebanese, the pretty similarities with how sectarian elites operate in Lebanon. They have carved out parts of what is essentially the state there in parts of in different areas. They even to some extent even provide services, you know, stuff like that.

Again, not that dissimilar. I would say I would argue from how one might picture like a mafia. And so a lot of the violence that we're seeing today enacted against people of color is the same sort of rationale that was enacted against just like Catholic working classes not that long ago. And in many ways,

that same kind of supremacist ideology has just been kind of transferred from one community against another one to another one. But it doesn't mean that it's completely gone from the sort of like anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments either. They would definitely do it. Those things you don't see in England.

I mean, it's just not as prominent, though, like different dynamics here. I guess, like, especially if you're watching from the outside, right, it can be easy to miss that because, like, yes, in England, every year in November, we symbolically burn a Catholic in effigy, right? I say we, the English as a tradition, but, like, the anti-Catholic sentiment is not as present as it is. It's a completely different fish. You talked about, like, where we want to get into history, and I do, because I think that that's really important, right? especially if we understand Britain as a beginning of the English colonial project and especially

Ireland. I guess if we understand just to stick with conceptual clarity, the British Isles and especially the beginning of that colonial project in Ireland and to an extent in Scotland, then I think it helps with an analysis of this. And I think something you'd mentioned, which I really like the idea of is when we talk about sectarianism as like a fixed point, we ignore how we got to sectarianization, right? And I think, you're obviously very familiar with the British and the Lebanese context. Something I used to talk about with my grandmother, actually, who spent a good amount of time in Lebanon that overlaps with these things.

But perhaps you could explain that to people, because I think it's very easy to come, especially the history of Ireland, Quar, Island, with an S, as a pre-set sectarian kind of situation. That's not really the case. A process occurred to get us to where we are. Oh yeah, I mean, kind of a simple way of explaining it, at least is how I do when I speak to relatives, you know, is that no one is born. Like, sure, they could be born into a Catholic or a Protestant family, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they therefore feel a certain way towards a member of that other community.

Yeah. That is a process. And so sectarianization is something that is crucially active. It is ongoing. Like, it never stops. it cannot stop because it can otherwise like, again, using that simple example of like you have a baby that's born into a Catholic family and a baby that's born into a protest family, if you don't put them in a certain context that includes this thing that you call sectarianism,

they won't necessarily develop like hostile feelings towards the other baby. You see what I mean when they grow up? Yeah, yeah. Kind of like a simplified way of putting it, but sectarianization, whether in Lebanon, whether in Northern Ireland, whether in Bosnia, whether and then it gets complicated and you have added nuances whenever you add the different context, of course. Yeah. But is something that is active.

As in like there are ruling elites that have a certain specific interest in maintaining the status quo in a certain way or in some cases worsening the status quo and so on. It is directly intersected with things like capitalism, like the other types of supremacy. you cannot have in a sectarian society if you have like a very strong, let's say, welfare state where everyone is given the basics, where everyone has access to everything, and you don't have these inequalities. And there are lots of case studies and studies. I mean, of the worst inequality gets, the more likely you are to get, like these

secretarian tensions. So it doesn't come out of nowhere. People aren't just born like that. It's not just something that people are born with. They are raised in a certain society. They are sectarianized to view members of a different community in a certain way. And also, most importantly, resources are allocated before one is born, are often based on where you live.

So there's a regionalism to it as well. But also, like, in the case of Northern Ireland and in case of Lebanon, for that matter, based on sects and so on. Yeah. Your understanding of Lebanon, perhaps, like, gives you an interesting perspective to, like, analyze this, right? because there's somewhat more formalized, to an extent it's not formalized in Ireland it very much is, like division of resources, allocation of state power even, that is sectarian.

So, like, do you think that helps you analyze Northern Ireland? It does, because it's one of the things I always bring up because it takes everyone by surprise when I talk about sectarianism in Lebanon, which is that the average person isn't necessarily sectarian. And it understands that the average person doesn't necessarily think in sectarian terms, certainly not like their primary identity. In fact, it's a poll I keep on mentioning, I can send it to you if you want, but whenever you've had these pan-Arab poles across the region of, the question would be something along the lines of like, do you primarily see yourself as being, let's say, Muslim, Christian,

Druze, etc. Or as your nation, as your national identity. And the Lebanese and the Palestinians are often the ones that say, they're more likely to say, like first Lebanese or Palestinian and then Christian, Muslim, etc. Yeah. And with Palestinians can maybe more well-known. story like there is a cause and so that cause has become the primary identity before even one is a Muslim one is a Christian or so on.

Yeah. In Lebanon it takes people by surprise because Lebanon, those who know anything about it is like what that's the sectarian place. That's where you have the president has to be Christian, the Maronite, the Prime Minister has to be Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of Parliament has to be Shia Muslim, which is true. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they, like the individual who's the president wakes up today and says, I'm going to act on behalf of Maronites. Yeah. It doesn't work. It's much messier than that. And most importantly, my personal beliefs in Lebanon, like I was raised in a Christian

Maronite family, but if I was an atheist or whatever, it just does not matter as far as the state is concerned because my legal status as a citizen is one that is a Maronite. Yeah. And so it affects how I vote. It affects how I do certain things, whether certain services I have access to in certain that, and then it's like a region specific. And in Northern Ireland, that's kind of the thing that you see, like, Of course, there is a process by which certain communities are already separated in the sense of like you grew up in a majority Catholic area or you grew up in a Protestant majority area.

Yeah. And in some cases, you may, depending on where you live, for example, in parts of Belfast, you may not know a Protestant and or a Catholic, I mean, either up until a certain age, right? Before you know, you're 16, you go to college or whatever it might be. Yeah. And those, of course, reinforce certain tendency. But most importantly, you might be a, you know, you grow up in a Protestant family, maybe middle class and whatnot, but you don't. share the politics of your neighborhoods, it doesn't necessarily then translate into that affecting the politics of the whole because there's something that's already built there that's difficult

because it's entrenched now. Yeah. And so it's both something that's entrenched, something that's difficult to change, and also something that can't stop at the same time. It has to be both. Yeah, I think that's a very good analysis. Like, I guess like another example people cite for like I guess the way these things can so rapidly become entrenched. And they can disappear, but it can become less important. Like if we look at the example of Rwanda, which is obviously a long way away from both those places. But being Hutu Tutsi or Troyes, frustrates me a lot.

The analysis of the Rwanda genocide overlooks the Tau people. But that's another topic, right? But they suffered some of the worst ravages of the genocide. That was such a fixed identity that became this alien identity. and even if individuals were not buying into that increasingly opposed identities, those identities were what would affect the outcomes of their lives very clearly in 1994, right? And that is now less the case because, in part, the key to maintaining state power became decreasing those tensions or exporting those tensions in the case of Rwanda to the Congo, right?

And we can talk about how we got there because it wasn't a great process. It isn't a great process, but it's, it's, it's, it's, It's a good analysis point for people, I guess. An IHartRadio experience. Weekend gold tickets to Ilsonique. One, two, three. In Montreal with Dom Dalla, Chris Lakin Friends, Woolly, Deadmouse, above and beyond,

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you get your podcast. Open your free iHeart radio app. Search Pride and listen now. You said to me yo, you know, keep at it. Because you let me rap for you. It was magical for all of us. We made it. We made it. Yeah. I'm like, we? You know, I'm like, I know these guys, but who are you?

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And what we've seen since what happened in Belfast is that the vast majority of people in the UK reject their shit, right? The vast majority of people. That's the other thing I do want to harp on. Like when people say, oh, this is northern Irish groups in Belfast or whatever, it's a relatively small portion, even a relatively small portion of Protestants, even a relatively small portion of people who have strong loyalist feelings. Not all of those people are bigots. You know, it is a relatively small group, as you say,

that is now somewhat linked transnational hate networks. But the bulk of people think that that shit is absolutely repugnant, right? So should we talk a little bit about the backlash? Because I know you attended a massive protest, right? And also like half a dozen, a dozen fascists showed up to be like escorted out of town again. Yeah. So the backlash to the Belfast ones. What happened in Belfast, may I can give some context?

Yeah, yeah. So there was an attack by this Sudanese person against this white person. Yeah. And the reason I'm framing it in those terms is because that's how it was portrayed in the media in the sense that the attacker's ethnic. and national origins and whatnot has been front and center of that coverage and that's not, it's not like a small detail

in the story. It's why it's been linked to the Southampton murder that happened in December and the case, like the person, the attacker was sentenced a few weeks ago not long before the Belfast program happened. The reason these two are linked is media framing.

One was in Southampton, was the one in Belfast, there's no connection between those two. Other than the attacker had a specific skin color and the victim had a specific skin color. That's basically it. Attacks have happened in between, between December and June that don't fit that framing, don't fake that description,

and have been kind of left out of the discourse of that framing. And so it's contributed to this perception that is now, again, I wouldn't say it's a majority of the population, but it's this higher percentage of the population that now at least think that there's some problem with immigration and criminality. And that is something that is not borne out by the facts whatsoever. but it's still a dominant perception. It is, you tune into BBC question time on a weekly basis,

it's almost certainly going to be front and center of the conversation. And I put conversation maybe in quotation here. It's more like rage-abating and whatever. Yeah. So what happened in Belfast is, as I said, this Sudanese person attacked this white person. Initially, the media was reporting that a Somali person attacked a white person. So again, it tells you how these frames is inherently.

racial. They immediately went what they thought was the most likely demographic. Yeah. In response to that attack, despite the fact that the family of the victim explicitly asked people not to politicize this and that they rejected the politics of hate. Yeah. The same after the Southampton one for that matter. It made no difference to these far-right, uh, well, fascists and agitators and so on. And they basically went on a program throughout parts of Belfast and some I think 20 plus people who were rendered homeless, including like kids and so on. Uh, anyone who's a person in color in Belfast, including a bunch of people who have written about it since, reported feeling unsafe that day and, you know, and arguably probably to this day as well,

it hasn't been that long. Yeah. Some people didn't go to work. Some people went back home early. Some people asked their white colleagues to either, you know, take their kids to school or, you know, walk with them home, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. All of that because they felt unsafe and the reason why they felt unsafe, that was very obvious that those people who were engaging in these, in these programs were looking for people of color. The response to that, is you had this kind of a pretty big reaction from a good chunk of the population in a bunch of different city, including where I live, which is in Brighton and in the south of England. Belfast itself also had like a pretty huge mobilization. We saw one in, I believe, Sheffield

and I believe one in Liverpool as well. Yeah. In Glasgow as well. Where usually it would be a fairly small number of fascists and far-right activists agitators in Brighton, I think it was like 200 of them versus some 4,000 or 5,000 of on the other side. Yeah. I'm fairly certain. I can't say this 100% certain, but I'm fairly certain there were more police officers than there were like even far right people there. Yeah.

And Belfast as well, there was a huge reaction. There was even like a pretty huge fundraiser by this collective of women, people of color, that are based in Belfast called the Anaka women's collective that as of now, they were aiming to raise a thousand pounds and they've raised 253. thousand pounds as of as of today. Oh wow. Nice. To help those who were displaced and those who lost their homes and so on. Yeah. And it was even condemned that like at the national level like Belfast, the dominant party is actually not like it's Shane Fain which is not a loyalist party. So the people who did this act are very much in the minority in terms of everyone like popular sentiment in

Northern Ireland but even specifically in Belfast. Yeah. This didn't stop the ongoing kind of tensions between, maybe we can get into that on the far right in the UK and not only include, but especially the UK more broadly, between reform, which as of now is the dominant party on the far right and this new party that came out of reform called Restore UK. They are fighting with one another now.

Elon Musk has backed the Rupert Law, the Restore UK guy. You see things that Farage is too woke. You know, a lot of different things are happening. It's a fucking insane. It is quite insane, yeah. Yeah, Nigel Farage, people aren't familiar. Like, long-time bloviating shithead fixture of the UK far-right.

Many funny clips of Nigel Farage being made to look like a tool. Let's talk about this, this tension, right? Because we do have this, like, and this has been a constant on the UK far right for a long time. Like, I remember the BNP, which was getting on for 20 years ago. Yeah. But, like, essentially, you will have a electoral party that stakes out a position on the right. and then a movement slash party that seeks electoral legitimacy

will outflank them to the right and they will stake that position and have electoral success and then someone will outflank them to the right that is the process through which British politics has moved to the right for my entire life but let's talk about restore

and reform and maybe explain the two categories for people that are not familiar reform is led by Nigel Farage who's maybe the better known one He's the one that was like a close Trump associate for a while, and he was even friends with Elon Musk until they had likely falling out. He used to head this party called UKIP, the UK Independence Party, which was very pivotal in the Brexit vote.

Nigel Farage is definitely an interesting figure for all the wrong reasons in British politics because he started off being pretty small, like a small fish, not a lot of support in the polls, not a lot of people knew him. But he had one thing he did have, was like a disproportionate media appearance. He would be featured constantly on various shows. BBC Question Time is the one I just mentioned. Even when he was not, like now he's a member of parliament,

but for the longest time he was a member of the European Parliament. He wasn't a member of parliament in the UK. Yeah. And his entire thing was UK independence, as in what they call independence, as in leaving the EU, because the UK obviously was already independent. Yeah. And the way they framed this is anti-immigration and racism,

essentially, at one point, even they weren't even focusing on like as they currently are on like you know people from Africa or people from from Afghanistan or whatever their hatred was focused on the Romanians and Poles and and other members from Eastern Europe or Central Europe yeah I'm saying this because when Henry Novak was killed and Henry Novak was Polish British yeah they all they all pretended to suddenly include Polish people in the white category but that's a very much a recent convenient thing because just a few years ago they were absolutely not doing that yeah out of Reform UK, a lot of Reform MPs and councillors are ex-tories, so ex-conservatives.

So reform has been taking a lot of the conservative votes and even conservative personalities, including most of their high-ranking members. Out of that came out, this new, relatively new party called Restore, which some people would say it's further to the right than reform. The way I would describe it is that they're both vying for the far-right position in the UK. And reform is trying to position itself as the more professional, the more kind of like, you know, would the new Tories kind of thing and the Tories fail, but we will be better than them. Yeah.

Whereas Restore is just like directly. Like we were just depored millions of brown people and black people back to where they came from and whatever. Like very just straight. The closest thing to the BNP really, historically speaking. Yeah. They don't have a huge percentage from last I check was like 3%. Restore UK. But, and this is where it gets back to the to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the,

the media problem in this country again. The BBC started one of their coverages of the Belfast programs with a coat by Rupert Lowe. Fuck. Who is like, again, maybe in terms of parties, the sixth or the seventh or the eighth in the UK currently. Yeah. But they have this disproportionate media presence because their position keeps on being framed as like the default position as if everyone has some concerns about, and put some concerns

and quotations about foreigners or immigrants or what have you, you know. Yeah, and they like anchor the debate on the right there. Like the BBC or anyone else is running at like, let's have a debate about the humanity of people who weren't born in the United Kingdom or people who aren't white in the United Kingdom. They anchor that debate on their terms. They get to define the terms. Exactly.

Yeah, I think Nick Griffin, like, would be a place where I could like see this, this particular tendency starting, right? like the sort of new, I guess Nick Griffin comes out at the national front, so it's really a continuous, just for people who aren't familiar, like hate groups from the 80s to hate groups in the 2000s, as Nick Griffin to hear. I think you're right, they are the new analog for that. There's a reason the BNP sounds a British National Party,

but British Nazi Party isn't a fucking accident there, if you look at how these guys like to dress up. But, like, that's how we get here. I guess it is a real problem in the British media, right? I know Americans are very familiar with the Charlie Kirk stick and the debate me stick, but like Britain has been doing that perhaps for even longer. Yeah. I remember Nick Griffin attending the Oxford Union in 2007, 2008,

and I remember big protests at that time. Like, Britain has been doing this for a while. And like most people, when it's, this hate is so evident if it wasn't Belfast and it as it has been in many other places, right, reject it. Yeah. It's not the mainstream British dance. No. Hate is somewhat different in the UK.

That's the other thing that we should mention, I guess. Like you say, it's not entirely racialized in the Polish people are othered from British and earth, othered from whiteness unless it is useful for them. Yes. So, like, I guess what did you see when you participate in this Brighton March? Because what we don't have in the UK as much, right? Like, Labour is pretty shit at this. We haven't had the similar thing on the left. So let's say like, explain how people are going about rejecting this,

which is largely an extra parliamentary process. It is. It is largely an extra parliamentary process. Greighton historically has had a different trajectory than other parts of the UK. Yeah, Britain's quite unique. It was the only Green MP, for example, was from Greighton. Now it's exchanged with the Green MP, kind of taking a lot of the votes from the left because of labor's right word shift in the past few years.

I mean, labor has always been arguably a writing project anyway. But in the past few years, especially on the Starmer, it has been the past couple of years. Today is when he officially resigns. So it's also like a momentous day. Brighton has had this kind of long history of anti-fascism. A lot of it has been cultural and it came out of his music scene and all of that. And it has meant, like, as someone who's like,

I am a migrant, I am also a person of color and I live in the UK. it was pretty nice to see because Brighton is mostly white. Yeah. Like a mostly white city really come out in force against these people who a lot of them I should say were not even from Brighton

because that's not unusual these days. They were busting quite literally in some places. Yeah. But they want to come to where they feel like the migrants are or the liberals are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people, like there were different groups

that marched. The Green Party was among them, but largely it was just like a bunch of unions, a bunch of like student groups, local anti-fascist collectives, even some religious groups like multi-faith alliance stuff and all of these things, which Greighton is pretty good at, I would say, overall. Yeah. And there were these different marches that ended up kind of joining as is, you know, typical in these types of marches.

They had like the Palestine one, the feminist one, you know, the LGBTQ one and so on. they were kind of joined in the next to the station, the Brighton station where the fascists were were meeting up essentially. As I said, there were more cops than, I'm fairly certain of this, there were more cops than like fascists that were there.

In Belfast, it was different because it was the most direct reaction to what happened just a few days prior. And this was like largely organic in the sense that the Brighton one was like we were planning for this for some time because the fascists had announced it long before even the Balfas program.

It just happened to occur after the Belfast program, but it was already announced before. Yeah. All that really happened was that they made the announcement. People were already organizing, and then a bunch of fascists did a program in Belfast, and that motivated even more people in Brighton to come out in Brighton, if that makes sense. Yeah. And we saw similar dynamics in Glasgow and similar dynamics, and I believe, as I said, Sheffield and Liverpool and other places like in smaller numbers.

Yeah. It's important to say that, like, with the exception of when they did the whole unite the kingdom rally, like last year, which was the biggest of its kind. and it was the biggest of its kind for like different reasons there was even like a very meditized attack like a few days prior there was of course a Charlie Kirk murder

just like a few days prior so it kind of like it was a perfect storm that brought them all out at the same time yeah that's very very uncommon the average protest that they managed to pull is in the lower hundreds usually at most as like in the lower thousands

whereas like you know on a every other month or whatnot you have a massive pro-Palestine protests in London that has like 200, 300, 400,000 people. Yeah. And that's putting aside pride and that's putting aside all of those other things that happen. Yeah.

So they never managed to have enough people on the streets, at least not yet. The danger in some sense is that the response to those far right marches and in some cases the programs shows how rightward what you might think of like centrist politics has gotten in the UK. Like the default is very right wing. Yeah. I think the Overton window has moved way to the right in the UK. Exactly.

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And start your day with intention with waking up with Ryan coming in July. Celebrate pride with the outspoken network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Pride and listen now. What did Black Music, Food, and Culture teach us about who we were becoming? 2016 was sort of that last era

of monoculture, where we still consumed things in community. From Beyonce and Rihanna. Everybody wanted to be Beyonce. I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna. To soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through black culture. What does it mean to be black?

and eat in America. So we were these group of people who knew how to work the land, who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it do. Therapy for Black Girls is bringing together the conversation shaping Black Life right now. You will never make me feel bad

for being a Black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever. Therapy for Black Girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Even though it doesn't necessarily make sense in the sense that like when you pull people, you have a difference between when you ask them what are like, what are the top five

problems, whatever, of like what the UK is going through? And then immigration is usually in the top five. But then like what are the top five things, the top ten things that you are personally struggling with? And immigration is usually never, you know, never in those top ten. Yeah. And so there is a disconnect there. That's why I emphasize so much on the media framing and the, the, the centrality of the types of framing that we're seeing, has been seen for some time, like in the run up to the Brexit vote. since Brexit, which is going to be 10 years now. Fuck, yeah.

Yeah, literally, I think in a few days it's going to be 10 years since Brexit. Yeah, yeah. The tabloidization, I don't know how you call it off, the media in the UK, where basically everything is tabloid, has not helped to put it mildly. I started one of my, the article I wrote recently which is, I just randomly

took a newspaper on the bus, the mirror, which is not even particularly right-twing compared to the Daily Mail, for example, or whatever. Yeah. But there was a short story, a very small short story, and it was about like a drunken asylum seeker vandalizes memorial or something like that. And the headline was, asylum seeker vandalizes memorial, whatever it is. And then the first sentence was a drunk, all caps, all capital letters.

And the story was just a drunk guy who damaged some property. His legal status and origins was, is literally irrelevant to the story. Right. It's a guy who's drunk who did something. Yeah. Which is not done uncommon in the UK. unfortunately. Yeah, that's one of our national pastimes. Exactly. I joke, like, if anything, it just shows that the guy was as well integrated into British culture. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, he's become British. But the editor of that paper, and that specific, they decided that adding asylum seeker made this a more sexy story for readers and so on. And that's a very common thing. Oh, yeah. As soon as you add asylum seeker or migrant or refugee or whatever to these headlines, it can drive engagement up on social media, it can attract eyeballs more, it'd be. because it's rage-baiting and it's become such a big problem. Yeah, it is like a largely a media problem. And I think like that's a really important place to talk about. There's this idea again that like this came from Elon Musk, right?

And that like undoubtedly Elon Musk has amplified the very far right in the UK. Oh, sure. Undoubtedly, the fact that so many journalists spend so much time on his website changes their perspective of where the debate is at, especially when like, you know, not to be too much of dick about it, but like a lot of journalists don't go outside and talk to normal people very much. My folks are both in agriculture, right? Like when I'm home, I'm talking to people who work in that world too. And like it's just not a, sometimes people say I saw X on the TV, I saw Y on the TV.

But like you're just not running into many people who are seeking asylum causing problems, nor is it a major issue in their life. And when there are migrants in their lives, their people who they cherish, right? They're members of their community. Yeah. That doesn't get reflected in the media debate. But like, this is a longer issue than Elon Musk buying Twitter in the UK.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a big fucking problem. And it's one I think we can't fix. Like, trying to diversify people's media diet is a challenge. Like, as you say, in the UK, like, just the way we consume media is different, right? Like, you think about, like, when my dad's driving and he's listening to Radio 2 all the time, right? They will have these debates there.

It's different media consumption, media diet than people in the US. And I wonder, like, even if there were just, like, if there were good outlets that you prefer to read, especially for people who are not from the UK, to understand the debate in just more rational and anchored in reality terms, like it doesn't even have to be like a left source. Like, if they're not distorting most people's lived experience, that's relatively unusual in the UK.

It is, yeah. There's a fascinating program on the BBC that, weirdly enough, given that I do media studies, I actually did not know about it until relatively recently, but it's called News Watch. I sent you a clip a few days ago. And it is what it is. It's kind of this program within the BBC, but clearly editorially independent of the BBC that does critical media coverage. And they pointed out that after the Belfast program, they got a lot of comments from people

who were concerned by how the BBC was covering the Belfast riot slash program, whatever. Yeah. And including the fact that, again, initially people thought they were saying this, a Somali person when it wasn't even the case. Yeah. But immediately racialized in these terms and so on. And one of the people that came on said that, like, you know, there was an attack in Bolton the day, which is out of Manchester, just the day after the Belfast program against an imam's house. Like a guy just firebombed his house. His kids were inside.

luckily they were unharmed, but they could have easily died. Yeah. They made the news, but it's not. And there was even an attack in Peace Haven, which is not far from where I live in October 2025 against a mosque there. There were two worshippers inside that could have also died. Luckily, they were okay. And again, it's not that it doesn't make the news.

It gets reported on, but like, that's it. It doesn't then get debated at nauseam. It doesn't become this huge sensational thing that, like, politicians are asked to opine about or whatever. It's just a thing happened. That's sad, let's move on. Whereas if it's a one, all you need is a single story of a non-white person attacking a white person,

and it's like in a particularly good times in terms of like, I don't know, whatever is happening on Twitter or whatever, but again, not just that it's only that. But it's become this huge amplifier. Then you're more likely to see what, you know, what we've been seeing, really. That's why I insist on the media framing. It's not the only thing.

I mean, you cannot talk about, even if the media was bad, but if everyone was comfortable and didn't struggle with these income inequalities and precarity and whatnot, then the media wouldn't be as big of a, its salience wouldn't be as relevant, but it's those two things at the same time that there's kind of this perfect storm right now. Yeah, like people, like it's hard times for people. Exactly. And like it's the hard times you're breeding ground for hate. Yes.

And I think like, yeah, that's something we all have to work against, especially in the British context, but also like that's coming here. It's hard times here too. Yeah. The hatred is always going to. find fertile terrain in those difficult times. Even that framing, right, like I was thinking about this the other day, like, talking to a colleague in the UK, like all the time the quote-unquote migrant crisis is used as a framing in European politics. And that's something the US right learned

from and they created a crisis here, right? It's not a fucking crisis. There is plenty of space in the UK for more people. And like these people are like members of our communities and a better benefit to all of us. The UK should be talking about the bigotry crisis, the racism crisis. We have a pogrom, Belfast. We have someone attacking an imam's house. We have constant, constant macro and microaggressions for people, including on our state-funded media. And that is the framing I'd like to see. It's not a framing you're going to see from the people who are perpetuating it, because it's a profitable strategy to whip up hate like this. Yeah, I mentioned this if like I had a post on Blue Sky a few days ago of like this country also has an aging population crisis.

It has a job crisis, a lot of those jobs because it's structured. The economy is structured in a way that certain jobs are very difficult for locals to do like nursing homes and stuff like that. Largely because pay is so bad. Yeah. And you have at the same time the media kind of and lots of politicians focusing on this very made up migration like migrant crisis as you said. said, whereas this country is actually struggling with an aging population. In addition to that, the increase in migration since the 2004 has been increased in migrants, I mean, I'm one of them, has not actually brought more crime to the UK.

The data is pretty clear on that. The crimes has actually been steadily declining in the past couple of decades in this country, including in London the most diversity in the UK by far. There's just no, there's no core. And I know I'm saying this, obviously, for the listeners of this, I'm kind of like preaching to the fire here. Yeah. It's just, it's just barely repeating that like this is generally entirely made up. Like, there is actually no correlation between these two, between like just an increase of people from a certain skin color or whatever and then the prevalence of crime and so there's no correlation

between those two. And when we talk about one of the big things that the far right here, as in the U.S. and as in a good chunk of the world, it's all about, you know, save our women and girls essentially is how they frame it. Like constantly. Pretty huge percentage of the far right people have, for example, two years ago, you also had riots in Belfast, something like a ridiculously high amount of those who were arrested and later release were sins re-arrested due to like domestic abuse allegations and sexual harassment and stuff like that, you know? Yeah, many such cases. They're not framed as like a civilizational crisis for women and girls because they are the

default. They are the white guys. They are, you know, they don't get spoken of in the same way as the rest of the population in this country. So it's a, in that sense, maybe it's a more familiar problem for American listeners. In that sense, you have these similarities there. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good analogy to draw. I wonder then, as we wrap up, like, you wrote an excellent article on this, which we will link in the show notes. Do you have anything else you want to share with people or resources you'd suggest? Like, it's a little less easy to feel so isolated in the UK, right, but just like a smaller polity. Like, it's, you can, you can, normally find people, but

just people who are, if people are willing to support, if people are looking to find like-minded folks. Yeah, in the UK I would say, I mean, I guess this is a bit everywhere the same thing, but it's going to be depending on like where you live. Yeah. Like, you know, I have other people

listening, if they happen to be in Brighton A, feel free to reach out to me, I like meeting people. But like, you have these different collectives that are like usually very locally based. I mentioned the Anaka collective, the women's collective in Belfast, for example, if folks want to support them, they can still do so.

Maybe I could put it this way. I mean, I moved here 10 years ago and then I left to do my PhD in Switzerland. And then me and my partner and kid, we moved back here a couple of years ago. There are lots of reasons not to be here. There are lots of good reasons not to want to be in, want to be elsewhere. Yeah. But there are also pretty good reasons to be here, for me personally, which is that there are lots of different networks, communities that are, have been kind of built for decades now in some

cases that one can join, one can help. Again, it's going to be very much, like, depending on where you live, London is not going be the same as Manchester, as Belfast, Glasgow, and so on and so forth. Yeah. But, like, that's one of the good things about it. The other thing you mentioned in terms of reading and I write for this website, the one that you're going to link Shadow Mac without the W in the end. Yeah.

And at the end of every article, they have recommendations usually of like what people can do. And usually it has to do with either, like, you read further, but it could also be like support to this collective or like, you know, follow this person. or whatever, like just very, very small things. Like, by no means, are we claiming to fix everything through that? But, like, just small things that people can actually, yeah, feel more connected maybe if they actually live here and they don't feel connected to different communities or if they're abroad and they want to support this.

It would also be like an easy way to do so. Yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice. Like, it's very local, which is good. Like, the response to austerity has been people taking care of their community. And then, like, that is how we get through this. Yeah. Same as though, yeah, the poverty, the government is deciding that everyone has to living. Like it's the same shit. It's the same response. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Well, thank you very much for your time today. That was really good. I think it's insightful. I hope it helped people. Where can people find you if they'd like to follow you and your work in Brighton, obviously? Yeah, if you're in Brighton, reach out. I do post on blue sky from time to time. It's just a you, but you'll find me there. And other than that, I have the podcast the Friday's Times. It's been inactive for the past month, but I'm going to start again soon. And I have a news letter called Hontologies that I try and keep active as well in which I talk about, some of the stuff we talked about here, with sometimes more Lebanon stuff and Palestine,

where I'm from, but also a lot of Western, like UK and U.S. stuff and so on. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's great to have those conversations connected. Like, it's struggles always distinct because people think. Yeah, yeah, thanks. But thank you so much. That was great. Thank you.

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getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit, season two, is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaveers. than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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