Britain: Why is it burning? Peopleism, Far Right, and the Vulnerable Republic

“The British government’s reaction focuses mainly on suppressing events and arrests, while the first analyses attribute the incidents to the phenomenon of increasing Islamophobia, characterized as a chronic problem of British society. But the real picture is clearly more complex than it is described and the answers to why “British is on fire” are not simply in the accidental rise of racist hatred of marginal far right, but have deeper sociopolitical and economic causes,” points out at the Step Elizabeth Kirtsoglou, professor of Political Anthropology and co-director of the University of Durham World Security Institute, in Great Britain, analysing the violent incidents, with intense anti-immigration and anti-Islamic character, which broke out and spread almost lightning in cities of England and Belfast. The ghastly event of stabbing nine children – the three, six, seven and nine years old exhaled on the spot – and two adults, on July 29, in Southport, coastal town near Liverpool, with a perpetrator of a 17-year-old, who, according to official information, is born in Cardiff, to parents from Rwanda, Africa.

– Did the incidents show divisions in the society that existed, Mrs. Kirchoglu? Where are they really based? The events, as they are currently evolving in the United Kingdom, must be understood in the context of the social and ideological division, which bred on one hand the economic recession of 2008 and on the other hand the political processes, which began at least ten years ago and eventually led to Brexit.

The public debate around Brexit took place under the conditions of a toxic populism, which unexpectedly united two totally socio-economicly different portions of the British people. The highly privileged and socially excluded. The privileged supported Brexit, possessed by a feeling of nostalgia of the “old greatness” of the British Empire. The socially excluded, however, were citizens who gradually split from the ideological priorities of the old “working class” (as we knew it at Thatcher) and turned to purely populistic far-right and Eurosceptic forms, such as the UK Independence Party (UK Independence Party- UKIP), then led by the well-known Nigel Farage. The strong anti-Europeanism of the leftist in Labour leaders’ annals, Jeremy Corbin, however elicited from a different ideological view of the “new liberal European Union”, of course did not help as it failed to offer a pro-European pole that could politically attract the traditional British working class.

When Corbin stood against Brexit realizing the distance between theoretical criticism and real political act it was now late. Britain’s political map had undergone a clear change. Since then this division has been more than visible in the United Kingdom. Economically more robust areas are dominated by middle-class citizens of high educational level, who regardless of political nuance defend the principles of an open society that can stand to a degree of multicultural, democracy, the State of Law, Human and Political Rights.

In contrast, in areas with high indicators of poverty and social exclusion, populist far-right narratives find more and more supporters. Citizens of low education who are mainly informed by social networks, particularly vulnerable to false, constructed news and oversimplified political analyses, alienated due to their social and economic exclusion, claim ownership through their national identity. Being English – being English – is for them a simple, equalistic way of readmission to the political body from which they feel – and to some extent are – a way of being expelled.

– Who exactly is the political enemy of these civilians? It is not some particular social class, but anything is surrounded – or they consider it surrounded, or presented to them as surrounded – by social, economic, or even legal privileges. Immigrants, Muslims, and any social group that receives, even fantastically, some kind of tolerance and protection from the state, or support from the middle-class becomes almost automatically “the enemy”. At the same time, however, radicalized Islam has an increasing penetration into Muslim populations of the United Kingdom for about the same reasons. Immigrants, mostly second generation, are cornered in the very same areas of deindustrialized England, are often equally socially excluded and with similar procedures claim ownership in an oversimplifying way in a political-religious community this time.

– Is that how their integration is torpedoed? Yeah. Taking advantage of the values of the liberal Republic trying to guarantee the equality and freedoms of all, Islamic leaders of local British communities promote a logic of “imposition” of their own cultural values, strongly resisting any attempt to cultural integration.

They even implement colonial criticism, presenting fundamentalist Islam as a post-colonial political stance of resistance to the supposedly morally degraded West. This of course does not automatically make all Muslim Islamists and all immigrant murderers. However, the coexistence of excluded and impoverished groups in certain parts of the country creates an explosive mixture, a legend of which were the tragic and unjust murders of children in Southport.

– What was the role of the far right in them? Authorities consider ethical perpetrators of far-right influencers episodes. All international information networks, as well as those of the United Kingdom, are talking about far-right violence these days. It is important to note here that far-right narratives in Britain are not promoted at the level of political formations or parties with some significant electoral representation. The English Defence League, for example, associated with the well-known Tommy Robinson, who is currently controlled by the British authorities for spreading false news through social networks that may have urged citizens to violence, began as a home organization, acted about 2013 and is currently considered to be dissolved. The British National Party, a neo-Nazi education that has been active since 1982 and managed to win some election representation in self-government and 2004 and in the European Parliament, won 563,000 votes in 2010, but only 510 votes in 2019 .

It has since been considered inactive. Nigel’s Reform UK is an exception. Farage – a paraphylaze/separation of the UK Independence Party /UKIP – which won election representation (five MPs) and 14% of the vote in the recent 2024 election. The Reformation moves on the same right, extreme populist trajectory of UKIP.

– Doesn’t Farage condemn violence? Farage stunts, taking security distances from violence, which he formally condemned, and at the same time trying to gain politically from recent events with statements of “two-speed police”, supposedly favoring immigrants and colored people, at the expense of white English.

At the same time, he does not hesitate to use a conspiracy speech with expressions of the type “not telling us the truth” and generally to politically caress the ears of his potential voters, but strictly at the level of statements and avoiding any involvement with violence events.

– The latter can be said to be motivated by an organized and centred mechanism;

They are almost certainly not motivated by a center, but coordinated organically, through social networks and applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram. This digitized dimension of political violence, ranging from the spread of false or distorted news, to the incitement of hatred and self-organization of rioting elements, leads government circles in Britain to consider the role they may have played in shaping public opinion other state entities—such as Russia. E

Whether we are faced with a phenomenon of hybrid micro-threat and foreign involvement in the UK factor, whether or not, it is worth stressing that social networks have now acquired a new, dynamic and remarkable role in shaping the modern political scene. They contribute to the breakup of social cohesion, promote de-politicisation, are best conductors of populism and at the same time excellent tools for building opportunistic political communities that do not need to have clear ideological goals or specific, logical demands.

But platforms and social networking applications are just tools. The real causes that some citizens are spreading in violence and intolerance must be sought primarily in the lack of social cohesion and populism as a political platform that gives rise to the phenomenon of ‘vulnerable democracy’.

– Does the map show us anything in particular? > Yeah. If you attempt to compare the map of incidents with that of social exclusion, you will find much in common. Some areas, such as Blackpool – Leeds – Liverpool – Manchester (including Southport), or the Sunderland– Middlesboro– Darlington triangle, are at the same time areas where economic and social exclusion reaches high levels over time and in which there has been a direct outbreak of current riots.

The comparison could be done at micro-level even with the Brexit electoral map, if the anthropogeography of the larger urban centres involving large university communities (students, researchers, teachers) and extensive middle-class areas did not confuse the picture.

The snake egg is incubated in the poor communities of the so-called white underclass;

No, exclusively. The bigoted, populist, far-right narratives are certainly not produced by socially excluded white Englishmen, who barely finished the respective British high school and are often invited to choose between food and heating, because their meager income is not enough for both. The opposite.

Populist narratives are more often produced, as I have already said, by frustrated great bourgeoises who nostalgic the old British greatness, or even by left-wing leaders who adopt a simplified version of the class struggle. Thus, in the first case, the populist dipole takes the form of the “conflict of civilizations”, while in the second of the conflict of non-existent with the representatives of neoliberalism. Finally, to examine objectively all the ‘players’ of the British field, and radical Islam does not escape this polaristic view of History. Here the dipole concerns the unfaithful West, including Muslims who do not embrace Islam, against faithful fundamentalists. Producers of the various versions of populism, however, are by no means those who will go on the streets to clash with the police, who will fly improvised molotovs, or who will engage body-to-body with other citizens threatening to burn them alive. So here we have an extra layer of asymmetry. Meaning? Other social groups produce and process the populist narrative, drenching and its political fruits, and others shoulder enormous personal cost to transform the narrative into a political act. The former make some statements or posts from the comfort of their home or even from a tourist resort, while the latter commit gross crimes, are arrested and taken to the courtrooms, where they are expected by the corresponding penalties and – perhaps the most important – no political gain, as no such violent outbreak will bring any political change to them.

It may even bring negative, in the sense that the disputed areas will probably be policed more strongly in the near future, and some citizens – the white, poor English to say things by their name – will gain a profile “penalized if the presence” making it a “two-speed police” that he recently spoke about Farage, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This will also be the final victory of populism in a country that is indisputable a mature, but unfortunately vulnerable Republic. However, every civil liberal democracy is vulnerable when it does not aggressively promote social cohesion. By disproving the expectations of a share of its citizens of truly equal opportunities and strong political representation, a democracy becomes vulnerable when it leaves space in populism that erodes the democratic feeling of citizens. With their confidence in institutions impaired, the citizens, or portion of them, turn to political Messiahs whose power lies in the collective rejection of political personnel, often with conspiracy theories, or false news. The United Kingdom has been paying for many years the unequal growth which, mainly because of the educational deficit it produces, leaves room for the development of populism, the levelling, simplistic and polarizing view of political reality as a play of zero sum between us poor but honest excluded from life and others, the privileged who supposedly impose their own political visions against our will. The prevalence of populist vision only helps those who produce it and who use it to systematically erode the trust of citizens in the State of Law, institutions and ultimately in the Republic itself. Blackpool’s ashes will be built and strengthened undoubtedly political careers. But it is good to remember that those who build or strengthen them are already socially and economically far from the places of destruction. Hate crimes with a knife, and motive for the victim’s race or religion, have increased in England and Wales in the last decade, while vice versa, crime in the UK has been steadily declining, over the last two decades.

This is also linked to the simultaneous increase in the number of asylum seekers?

The official explanation of the British Home Office in your question is that hate crimes are now reported more frequently in Britain and recorded more carefully. Although I have no reason to question this version, I would add hate narratives as an important factor. To achieve a hate crime, hatred must have been caused by specific social representations that are recycled and strengthened, often through social networks. At the same time, to make some populations good recipients of such narratives means they already feel to some extent excluded from the social body and the explanation that this exclusion is due to certain other populations, however simplistic it may seem, finds convenient territory.

– Why have they grown especially in England and Wales? This coincides with the “geography” of today’s deflectors, the areas of major social exclusions;

England and Wales make up most of Britain and gather most impoverished citizens (regardless of race or religion). Britain’s cities in which the incidents first broke out have a long history of social exclusion that has started many decades now. The discontent of people transformed into violence has its roots in social and political conditions that are not directly related to recent migratory waves.

Migration comes as a supposedly explanatory account that politically radicalizes indigenous populations, who have been experiencing at least since the 1980s a process of unequal growth in the UK that results in the creation of apparent differences between social classes, with poor layers having minimal escape and growth pathways.

– Despite the deeper, timeless pathogens of British society, highlighted by the spread of fake news for the perpetrator in Southport, the newly elected government with what policies and structures could halt racist, Islamophobic violence in the country?

What could or should the Labour Government do? What did she not do for years? Has the racist rhetoric of the Tories governments played a role in the current events? The present government was criticised for reacting slowly, i.e. it did not “prevent”, or miscalculated the magnitude of the cluster of incidents. The Conservative government that preceded it could be blamed for expanding social inequalities – or even for failing to reduce these inequalities. But perhaps the most important factor here is that the previous Tories government, as well as a number of other politicians in Britain, do not escape easily but particularly damaging populist dipoles which provide them with some votes in a demagogic way, but which poison the social and political body.