The UK’s slow descent into disorder and intolerance

Rioting and violent protests taking place after a crime is carried out by a migrant — or someone believed to be one — are becoming a feature in the UK. They are slowly starting to form a serious challenge to law and order and community cohesion in a multiethnic and multireligious society.

The pictures from Belfast in Northern Ireland last week of violent and unnecessary riots were a reminder of the confrontations from the dark days of communal strife between Catholics and Protestants, republicans and unionists. The violence perpetrated by masked men against peaceful people who happened to look different to them calls for an examination of the root causes.

Yes, a savage knife attack took place. The suspect, Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man who had claimed asylum in the UK, has been charged with attempted murder. He is alleged to have used a kitchen knife to blind Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye and carve deep wounds on his head, face and back. Graphic footage of the stabbing and the response of passersby, who subdued the attacker, quickly spread on social media. Before the police had even determined whether to treat the incident as a terrorist act, all hell broke loose.

Protests flared into violence in Belfast and several other areas. Masked men set fire to several homes they believed housed immigrants, torched a bus and pelted police with rocks and other objects. The government’s Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn called the attacks acts of “racist thuggery.”

Thuggery is increasingly threatening democracy, law and order and trust in the system in many Western societies

Mohamed Chebaro

But this thuggery, amplified by some British and foreign activists and political personalities, aided by digital radicalization, is becoming more frequent. It is increasingly threatening democracy, the supremacy of law and order, and trust in the system in many Western societies.

This violence is not new. It is reminiscent of the riots that swept England and parts of Northern Ireland two years ago after a teenager — wrongly portrayed on social media as an immigrant — killed three girls and seriously wounded 10 other people in a stabbing rampage at a dance class near Liverpool.

The latest round of violence in Belfast broke out a week after protesters clashed with police in the southern English city of Southampton over the fatal stabbing of a university student and the subsequent release of a video showing police apprehending the victim rather than the perpetrator, a British-born Sikh of Indian origin.

All three of these crimes featured Black or Asian-origin suspects and victims who were white. Race and immigration are clearly a motive for whipping up anger, especially against the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Such events in the streets and the wider reaction to the stabbings reflect the broader rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK and Europe, which is being fueled by political debate over asylum policies, illegal immigration and small-boat crossings. There is also the alleged pressure this has been adding to the welfare state, but often all that has been magnified and heightened by an extreme and toxic online debate.

The dangerous aspects of the story we are seeing unraveling on the UK’s streets are also directly linked to the country’s persistently poor economic outlook and the failure of the state to deal with this. The unrest is also being fueled by sinister forces and social media, which allows extremism to incubate and even flourish. Politicians are trying but failing to separate the relationship between migration and the economic downturn, while racism against foreigners is becoming a normalized expression of social discontent, sometimes expressed violently.

Racism against foreigners is becoming a normalized expression of social discontent, sometimes expressed violently

Mohamed Chebaro

The role of far-right political parties like Reform UK and activists colluding with the tech mogul Elon Musk, among others, is not an accident. Musk’s tweets about British politics, which have a strong focus on the failure of the police and the state, echo the words of US Vice President J.D. Vance, who blamed the Southampton stabbing on the “mass invasion of migrants.” Starmer snapped back against such interventions, criticizing people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.”

The organized nature of the protests carried out by masked men remove any spontaneous, peaceful motives. These are not individuals merely expressing their democratic right to demonstrate and raise their voice about certain ills in society. One can easily see that the rioters’ actions show signs of foreign interference and the use of immigration as a tool to sow discontent and even chaos for political ends.

Many commentators in Britain fear that the social media posts of influential personalities are toxic and not innocent acts of free expression. They are seen as a dangerous practice that could harm the fabric of society in a country still deeply divided 10 years after the Brexit vote. One can even see them as part of a larger ploy to engineer chaos in Western societies in the hope of eroding domestic peace and shaking government stability — a tool of foreign forces that use hybrid forms of criminality to sow discord, aided by the digital media and which many Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned about, particularly since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The state versus the agitators is a battle that could have dire implications. It must be addressed urgently. The UK’s slow descent into disorder and intolerance should be stopped in its tracks through decisive policies that regulate social media companies and punish misinformation and disinformation. The digital realm’s toxic narrative, if left unpoliced, could spread chaos and divide communities everywhere. The target is not just peace and law and order but the trust of society as a whole in the legitimacy and validity of the state and its institutions to protect people and keep them safe. If the UK or any country loses that trust, there might be no turning back.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.