If you confine yourself to the mainstream media, you will see that what is happening in the UK today is entirely a tale of ‘far right’ yobs causing mayhem. We are given no real context at all.
The establishment narrative is that the riots are the product of ‘misinformation’ on social media being used by racist thugs to cause havoc.
The carnage and chaos unfolding before our eyes is not just about ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, ‘social media’, or ‘far-right thuggery’. It is about an elite consensus in this country, presided over by Left and Right, visibly losing control before our eyes.
No Christian can tolerate rioting and attacking the police. We cannot look on this and approve. Attacks on mosques, on Muslim-owned shops, and on Muslims themselves are indefensible, and must cease.
Lost trust
Many, with good reason, are losing trust in the Establishment, including the police, and especially the media. When it comes to telling the story of these riots, there is absolutely no question that we have a two-tier policing strategy backed up by a two-tier media strategy.
there is absolutely no question that we have a two-tier policing strategy backed up by a two-tier media strategy.
We know that we cannot trust everything we come across on social media, which is a montage of gossip, deliberate lies and honest mistakes as well as plenty of truth.
But without Twitter/X we would not have seen videos or even known of tooled up Muslim mobs rampaging through city streets chanting, ‘Allahu akbar!’, and threatening and even beating up white English people. In some cases, the police just stand by, as they also stood by while pro-Gaza mobs defaced British monuments and demanded the extermination of Israel.
This is an important part of the story, but it’s largely missing from the mainstream media.
In a speech to the WEF at Davos earlier this year, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said, ‘For the global business community, the top concern for the next two years is not conflict or climate, it is disinformation and misinformation, followed closely by polarization within our societies. . . This is not a time for conflicts or polarization. This is a time to build trust.’
The globalist business community believes that the greatest threat to peaceful co-existence is that we notice what is happening. The establishment wish to build trust by stamping on criticism of themselves and their actions. Speak up about anything which goes against their narrative and you are guilty of ‘spreading disinformation’.
This is an important part of the story, but it’s largely missing from the mainstream media.
Which is all rather Orwellian. Martin Luther King once said, ‘A riot is the language of the unheard.’ That seems certainly to be the general case here.
Deeper causes
The unrest at present is more than a reaction to the appalling murder of the three young girls in Southport. If the underlying causes of the riots are not addressed, then the anger and fear behind them will always be simmering in the background. These riots are the result of failing to be honest and deliberately ignoring the concerns of a mass of people who feel humiliated and unwanted in their own land.
The impact of mass immigration on working class communities and the concerns it engenders are never addressed seriously or with understanding by the establishment. Anyone who says they are concerned about unregulated immigration is castigated as a right-wing bigot. Anyone raising concerns with Islamic religion or culture is regarded as being a fascist and immediately silenced and treated as a social pariah.
‘Islamophobe’ is the automatic response to anyone who raises concern. This was the response when people reacted to the mass rapes of very young white girls by largely Muslim paedophile rape gangs. Even the police, Council officials and social workers failed to investigate for fear of being termed racist. The authorities didn’t care enough for the white victims of horrendous crimes, and those people who did care were condemned for it.
Anyone raising concerns with Islamic religion or culture is regarded as being a fascist and immediately silenced and treated as a social pariah.
What are those who have had enough of this supposed to do? Regular politics has failed. For 14 years, the Tory Party did nothing to address those legitimate concerns. There is good reason why many see little difference between Tory and Labour, as both share the same underlying liberal globalisation ideology and implement the same policies. Under Tory governments, the problems continued unabated, and people’s fears and concerns grew.
Give peace a chance?
As a Christian my answer is that we should organise peaceful mass protests, demanding change. It would have been much better for the cause of change if the rioters had done so.
Destructive passions would not have been released and lives would not have been disrupted; people would not have been put in fear and made to feel unsafe in their own country. It is too easy for the establishment to dismiss rioters, for they should indeed be dismissed.
The real result of this violence will not be to change government policy, but probably to empower the State against its own people. The prime minister is speaking of enhanced power for the police, the use of facial recognition, and harsh sentences from 24 hour courts.
The real result of this violence will not be to change government policy, but probably to empower the State against its own people.
But then I have to ask myself, would peaceful protest, no matter how large or how well organised, have gained the authorities’ attention? On past performance it is more likely that they would be castigated by our politicians and condemned by our media.
Should anyone trust their jobs and livelihoods to the understanding of the elites? When it becomes too risky to protest peacefully then some who think they have nothing to lose will turn to violent action. This is not to condone such action but to give a partial explanation of why it is happening.
Unless our rulers learn to listen to the ruled, I fear for our country.
The Rev. Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister; now a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Check out his many incisive articles on his blog, A Grain of Sand.