Belfast still bears the scars of the decades-long civil and religious conflict known as The Troubles. Walking a single block, you can pass from a Republican neighborhood with tricolor flags and murals supporting Palestine and a 32-county Irish Republic, into a unionist neighborhood where Union Jacks abound and pro-monarchist slogans and images of the king are common. In the latter neighborhood, you can even find the occasional mural supporting the Israeli Defense Forces.

And no wonder. Belfast’s history in the 20th century is marked by repeated attacks by unionist groups on Republican (mostly Catholic) neighborhoods, burning their homes and businesses — often with the complicity of the local police and the British army, which at the time occupied all of Northern Ireland under the pretext of “keeping the peace” between Protestant and Catholic communities.

These scenes are repeating themselves. Groups of hooded individuals, largely from Unionist neighborhoods, have taken to the streets to burn homes, cars, and businesses. This time, however, the targets are not Catholic communities but members of the city’s immigrant and Roma populations. Although these attacks evoke the ghosts of earlier periods of sectarian violence, they are not isolated incidents. Rather, they form part of a broader phenomenon that has been unfolding across the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of Ireland, for several years.

The UK is facing economic stagnation, worsening living conditions, cuts to education, housing, and healthcare, and now a new surge in inflation caused by rising fuel prices due to the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. In this context, British far-right sectors (or, in the case of Northern Ireland, pro-British sectors) are scapegoating migrant communities, resorting to classic racist arguments that migrants are stealing jobs and housing that belong to “real” British (i.e., white) people, and that they “flood” the healthcare system.

Added to this is the spread of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, an alleged plan by the ruling elites to gradually replace the white population and its “Western values” with people from Asia and Africa, especially from Muslim-majority countries. It’s a delusional, racist notion that doesn’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny.

However, economic crises and crises of political representation, combined with a Labour government implementing brutal austerity measures that rival those of previous Conservative governments, have created the perfect breeding ground for such rhetoric to flourish. In Northern Ireland, it spreads easily in neighborhoods traditionally linked to Unionism and the Protestant paramilitary militias that used to suppress any pro-Republican or pro-Catholic expression through terror. Recently, this racist rhetoric has also surfaced in neighborhoods linked to the right-wing republican tradition — both sides have even marched together in anti-immigration protests, creating a truly unprecedented image for anyone who is familiar with their violent rivalry.

Racist Riots, Fueled by Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk

These groups needed an excuse to unleash their hatred, and this week, they found it.

A video circulating widely on social media, showing a Sudanese man stabbing a white person in the neck and face, became the catalyst for these groups to mobilize. Hooded men organized and targeted homes, cars, and businesses believed to house or belong to migrants, setting many of them on fire.

Some witnesses described scenes that seem straight out of the worst moments of The Troubles. These racist groups set up barricades at the entrances to neighborhoods and forced passersby to show their IDs to determine who were citizens and who were migrants, often on the very same streets where Catholic communities were attacked years ago. They also stopped cars near hospitals to ambush potential victims.

Fueling this racist violence were figures like Tommy Robinson, one of the most prominent figures of the British Far Right and a former member of the now-defunct British National Party, an openly fascist political organization, and billionaire Elon Musk. The former called on his followers to join the street protests against the “invader attack.” Musk retweeted the call on his social media platform, X, and commented that citizens should protest “repeatedly and loudly.” He later posted another message justifying his statements, saying that social media was not responsible for causing “people’s anger” but that this was the fault of “murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their hometown.”

His feed is also filled with retweets railing against multiculturalism, the Left, Muslims, and immigration. Musk is another example of how the Far Right uses its global network and resources to spread and promote its racist and classist message, not only within the United Kingdom and Ireland but around the world.

State Complicity

All this destruction was made possible in part by the complicity of the police, who, at best, dispersed those who started the riots only after they had burned a significant number of homes and cars, and at worst, remained completely passive in the face of the violence.

But this goes deeper: according to The Guardian, the Police Service of Northern Ireland had received multiple warnings from various groups monitoring the activities of these far-right networks since August 2025. They had discovered that a list of addresses of homes allegedly inhabited by migrants was being circulated among far-right and anti-immigrant groups as potential targets for future attacks.

They also found various threatening posts on social media. One on Facebook stated that areas with the highest concentration of migrants in the Glengormley area (10 km from downtown Belfast) would be considered targets and that, “Anyone caught funding or helping these animals in being housed will be condemned as equally guilty.” Several of the addresses on these lists were eventually attacked and set on fire, and Glengormley was one of the areas most affected by the riots.

This reveals that the riots are not a spontaneous outburst of anger but have been planned for over a year, with a level of organization and coordination that raises suspicions of involvement by public officials and the remnants of various Unionist paramilitary groups from The Troubles. However, the police did absolutely nothing: they did not investigate these networks of racist groups nor did they take preventive measures to protect the homes and businesses listed.

For his part, Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the events and promised legal action against the perpetrators and their instigators. But this is hypocritical. After all, it was his government that presented a white paper last year titled “Restoring Control Over the Immigration System,” in which it blamed immigration for placing greater pressure on social services. And it was Starmer himself, in presenting this document, who stated that the measures were intended to “regain control of the borders” and that Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers.” It was a clear nod to far-right conspiracy theories from a Labour Party more concerned with copying the Conservative Party and the tactics of parties like Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage — one of the leading figures in the pro-Brexit campaign and now one of the main spokespeople for that racist rhetoric.

And it is the Labour government itself, with its brutal fiscal austerity, that is causing the deterioration of public services, the underfunding of public health, rising rents, and the impossibility of accessing home ownership. The scapegoating of immigration as the root of all evil serves Starmer’s government well in its attempt to divert discontent, although the results of the latest local elections showed that this strategy not only failed to yield results for Labour, which suffered a resounding collapse, but also greatly benefited Reform UK, which ended up being the big winner.

In the face of these racist attacks perpetrated and fomented by the local and global Far Right in collusion with the police and the British government, the only effective force to stop these actions is that of the organized and united working class, without distinctions between Catholics, Protestants, and migrants. Just as the sectarian violence of the 1970s was a major factor in dividing Northern Irish workers, so too is the current racist violence — a division that serves only the capitalists and politicians