It has often been said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on. It is so easy for confected rage to reach a fever pitch and to reach uncontrollable levels and yet the rage is based on untruth. In recent days, there have been a number of high profile examples.
In the UK, the chief example is that which caused a series of far-right riots around the country. The spark that lit the touchpaper was a horrific set of stabbings, which led to the death of three young children, in Southport. The claims that quickly did the rounds were that this was an attack by a Muslim immigrant and was evidence of the pernicious impact of Islam on the UK. Asylum seekers were targeted and blamed as being the root of the problem. Riots soon followed and claim after claim of multiculturalism gone wrong and serious disquiet about immigration being a serious problem were made repeatedly. The main talking point on mainstream media outlets was immigration and its various apparent problems. The death of three young girls increasingly went by the wayside.
Of course, such a narrative fits the worldview of the far-right. It was the Muslims wot done it. Mass immigration is the cause of all our ills. Asylum seekers are the issue. Little did it matter that the original stabbing was by a British-born teenager with no connection to Islam whatsoever. Not a Muslim, not an asylum seeker, not even foreign. Just not white. It is hard to describe such a position as anything other than overtly and clearly racist. Nothing more, nothing less. And the lies that seemed to prompt the original riots were seized upon with gusto simply because it fit the worldview. Never mind the truth, the lie happened to fit preconceived views and that was all that mattered.
Indeed, those original lies also gave way to further lies that happen to fit the worldview. Many of those caught up in the anger were adamant that asylum seekers are taking “our housing” when “our people” can’t get a house. Never mind the issue that sparked it had nothing to do with asylum seekers. Never mind even that asylum seekers have no right to access council housing and have no recourse to public funds. The lie that fits the worldview happens to take precedence over the truth. Some prefer the lie because it fits prior assumptions so don’t want to probe too far into the truth lest their presuppositions are exposed and found to be faulty.
The second high profile example that has done the rounds is the case of Imane Khelif at the Olympics. Particularly in the aftermath of her fight with the Italian contender, it soon did the rounds that Khelif was a transgender boxer. Cue the outrage from anti-trans activists, media outlets and Christians among others. For those who are critical of trans ideology, the issue seemed pretty clear cut and for those of us for whom the trans ideology rubs up against our worldview, it is tempting to jump straight to the apparently obvious conclusion and add our voice to the noise.
Only, on closer inspection, it turns out that Khelif was born female, raised female, has female parts and a female passport. She is also from Algeria, a country in which it is illegal to have a sex change. That is to say, whatever else may be going on here, Khelif is categorically not a trans athlete. She has not changed sex and is not presenting as a sex that she is not. Minimally, those facts make the issue more nuanced and complex than a rather simplistic (and more straightforward) issue of whether biological men should participate in biological women’s sport.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues here. There are still questions that need answering and, more likely, policies and testing that need clarifying. It isn’t to say that Khelif should or should not compete where she is on that basis alone. It is to say the presenting issue is not the real one, even if there are issues to be discussed there.
My point isn’t to try and resolve that or suggest what should happen. Rather, it is simply to note that it is easy to leap to conclusions based on “facts” that happen to fit our worldview. It is very easy for us as Christians to leap on “facts” that seem to support our worldview, particularly when they seem to support our fears of whatever we perceive to be present cultural dangers. But as people committed to the truth, we need to be better than this and make sure that the facts we are citing really are facts indeed. We need to make sure that we aren’t raging against “facts” that are actually sub-truth.
This is precisely what the Pharisees did against the Lord Jesus. The untruth they peddled was that he was a blasphemer, claiming to be the Son of God when he was not. Nicodemus acknowledged early doors that the Pharisees did believe he was “from God” because they knew nobody could do his signs apart from this. But it suited their worldview to reject Jesus, to deny his criticism of their traditions and to admit “facts” against him. Their affirmation of these facts in support of their worldview led them to do some pretty heinous things too; not least repeatedly plotting to kill Jesus and eventually doing so.
As people committed to truth, we don’t want to allow even convenient “facts” – that are not actually facts – simply because they support our worldview. That is to be sub-truth and may lead us down lines that are not only problematic, but downright dangerous and sometimes even against what is ultimately right.
Stopped reading as soon as I encountered “far right riots”. Hope the rest of the article wasn’t as lazy, hackneyed and innaccurate.
They were far-right riots. They were orchestrated by the EDL via telegram. The misinformation was spread by people with no connection to far-right groups, but the riots were orchestrated by the far right.
Simply saying it is ‘lazy, hackneyed and inaccurate’ actually proves the point of the post (which I suspect you would have found out if you had bothered to read on)
You know the political beliefs of those involved in the riots? How, may I ask?
The EDL hasn’t existed for the best part of a decade or more!
I think your reply and the lazy regurgitating of the legacy media’s narrative in your opening paragraphs indicate you might be guilty of the very thing I suspect your article was setting out to condemn.
As you know, people who belong to such groups that subsequently disband continue to operate either under other group names or without any label over them. People often continue to use the old labels to describe the people who are still involved, who hold the same views and who are simply organising online together without a new singular label. It is the same people bandying together but without the same centralised organisation. People often use EDL to refer to people en masse because they have no other label to describe them (former EDL group members or those who would once have aligned with the EDL is often a bit of a mouthful). Whilst they have been considered largely defunct since 2023/4, there are still people who still identify as supporters of the EDL.
Those who follow these things speak about the far-right as ‘post-organisational’ now. People often use old labels for ease. You will note, for example, Angela Rayner talking about ‘banning the EDL in law’ despite the fact that they no longer exist. Sky News do a reasonable job of outlining exactly what people mean and how they are using EDL as shorthand here: https://news.sky.com/story/does-the-english-defence-league-still-exist-and-could-it-be-banned-in-the-uk-13190517
For example, Tommy Robinson was involved in the spread of misinformation online concerning the stabbings in Southport and is accused of having stirred up some of the issues. He isn’t in the country, but he was involved in orchestrating matters and spreading misinformation online that fomented much of the anger. Again, when people say ‘EDL’ they often really mean Tommy Robinson and those associated with him. You will note my OP talked about ‘far-right’.
I don’t presume when I say that – or based on the OP – that everybody who was involved were necessarily active far-right activists. But then I didn’t say that everyone involved was far-right. What I said was that they were ‘far-right riots’ inasmuch as they were stoked and encouraged by such people, misinformation spread by them online and, frankly, the chanting that was going on during some of these riots was – without any shadow of a doubt – overtly racist suggesting people with such views were involved. My point is that these things were stoked by the far-right and based on demonstrable untruth. Some of those untruths were then picked up by people who I would not consider far-right, but who have particular views about immigration and were amplified by them because it fit their own narratives and worldview. My post is really about how easy it is for that to happen (and which you no doubt think is what I am doing here).
This is an absolutely flabbergastingly ignorant and prejudiced response. You are literally doing the EXACT thing your article is supposedly trying to call out. It is so far wide of the mark and preposterous that I almost don’t know where to begin!
Until a week ago, absolutely no one—and I mean NO ONE—was talking about the EDL, neither in the legacy media nor among the nationalist organisations I follow (Britain First, Tommy Robinson, Patriotic Alternative, Traditional Britain Group). Go search the groups; you’ll find no mention of the EDL. Look at Google search trends—the EDL hasn’t been searched in the best part of a decade until a week ago! The EDL is simply not an entity in any way, shape, or form, except as a conveniently resurrected phantom menace for the government and legacy media to label their enemies. And you have latched onto it because it supports your worldview. You have proven yourself a useful idiot for them.
Please point to a SINGLE piece of misinformation that Tommy Robinson has given regarding the stabbings in Southport. I am an avid follower of his output. He said nothing—and I mean literally nothing—that would qualify as misinformation about the demonically inspired murder of three beautiful little girls and the attempted murder of five others, along with their two young leaders and another innocent good Samaritan. Here is Tommy Robinson’s Telegram channel—[https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews] —please search it and point out the misinformation. Are you sure you haven’t simply heard the legacy media fabricating stories about Tommy Robinson spreading misinformation and latched onto it because it supports your worldview? Would you be amazed if I told you that all of Tommy Robinson’s output from the moment the protests kicked off was appealing for people to remain calm and peaceful, or does that not fit with your Sky News worldview? Are you of the opinion that Tommy Robinson (not his real name, I know!) has “fled the country”?
You seem to think that “far-right” activists have fermented anger and orchestrated people into some sort of faux outrage as a pre-text to vent all their latent racism and bigotry. What a naive and condescending view. Were you one of those who believed millions of people were persuaded to vote for Brexit because of what they read on the side of a bus?
Could it possibly be the fact that a man entered a children’s dance club armed with a kitchen knife and brutally set about murdering as many children as he could is what fermented people’s anger? Or the systematic raping of over 20,000 young girls over decades while the police and authorities turned a blind eye might have fermented their anger? Or the 22 others being blown to smithereens at a pop concert, or others blown to pieces on a bus, or the stabbing of soldiers on our streets, or the 7-year-old girl with her throat slit while playing in the park—do I really need to go on? Because I certainly can, for a very, very, very long time. Could it be that the people most affected by these tragedies have simply grown fed up of being told to sing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and change their Facebook avatar? Is it only the “far-right” who get enraged by these things? If so, then I don’t care much for the rest of the political spectrum.
If the EDL/”far-right” activists were orchestrating much of this hatred, who was responsible for whipping up the wanton, overtly racist violence perpetrated by gangs of Muslim youths? Or does that not fit in with your worldview—it certainly doesn’t for Sky, which actually removed the video of one of their reporters being confronted by one such mob. After all, just like the gang raping of children, it’s better to conceal things than be accused of inflaming racial hatred!
So it appears that your article might be right after-all. But that it applies much more to yourself than those on the “far right” [sic]
I have commented on all these things in the past (regular readers will be particularly amused by your ludicrous speculations about me and my views at just about every point, both the inferred and the expressed). I will leave it to stand here because it speaks for itself and can be judged on its terms.
Deeply disappointing to see you parroting these false and lazy narratives. It seems somewhat hypocritical to say the least for you to complain about the media portraying all opposition to LGBT+ policies as a “tiny minority” of “phobic bigots” whipped up by the “far-right” into opposing a non-existant problem, when you then turn round and champion the exact same script just because it happens to suit you on this issue.
I have never said or complained that the media portray ‘all opposition to LGBT+ policies as a “tiny minority” of “phobic bigots” whipped up by the “far-right” into opposing a non-existent problem’. I have simply never made that case. Nor have I said that is the case here.
If you are suggesting that I sometimes think sections of the media are right in how they present an issue and I sometimes think they have got their analysis wrong, that is true. But I don’t think that is to do with hypocrisy; it is a different view of the issues at hand. Indeed, most people at some point will find this to be the case as they judge it.
More to the point, *if* the media had something equivalent to your quote – that all opposition to LGBT+ policies is whipped up by the far-right and peddled only by a handful of “phobic bigots” – I would say that is wrong. But I’m not aware of anybody having said exactly that in the mainstream media. Nevertheless, to suggest that opposition to that statement because it is demonstrably untrue means that any mention of the far-right must always therefore be wrong and evidence of media misinformation is not logically coherent. That is like saying, because the mainstream media are wrong when they speak about Evangelical Christians sometimes, everything they say about Evangelical Christians must necessarily *always* be wrong even when it is demonstrably true and that anyone who acknowledges the times it is true is necessarily a hypocrite if they have ever pointed out previous occasions when they are wrong. It isn’t a sensible thing to say.
This sounds like something straight from The Guardian.
You’re very wrong in your assumption that those who are concerned about unfettered, mass migration, are far right racists.
Also, if you believe that 2nd generation Rwandan child murderer wasn’t radicalised, you’re very naive. They’ll never tell the truth about him if he was an islamic extremist (who knows, maybe we will hear more once he turns 18), but the likelihood is extremely high that he was radicalised by Islamic ideology.
Teenagers who commit murder against children, such as school shooters for example, almost always do it because they were loaners, outcast amongst their peers and have huge levels of anger towards these people, which is why they shoot them up before killing themselves. This particular child murderer was known to be a bit of a loaner, but the children he killed were chosen by him for other reasons. They were not linked to him at all. This was therefore most ikely an act of terrorism.
Majority of people protesting are people, like myself, who are not far right, but can see the massive issues that these asylum seekers are bringing to our country. Poland has refused to take any asylum seekers and they’ve not had a single terrorist attack. Not one.
Apart from a small minority who are right wing, racist thugs, the rest of us, including people like Tommy Robinson, actually care about our country and don’t like what it has become. I’ve watched TR’s film, and that, along with what we’re seeing blatantly with our own eyes, proves the massive issue this country has with two-tier policing and the fear that authorities have over criminalising Muslims.
When you take the human detritus from countries that have backwards, misogynistic, violent, cultures into Western society, and they don’t have to assimilate, you get increased rape (look at the Asain grooming gangs and rape stats generally), increased violence and lawlessness. These are not the doctors, nurses and pharmacists who are coming here illegally on rafts!
My grandfather was an Iranian immigrant. He escaped by the skin of his teeth, being shot at as he escaped across the water from Iran to Iraq and eventually making it to the UK to join my grandmother. Do you know though, he worked hard to build a life, he didn’t get handouts and likely wouldn’t have accepted them.
Nobody really knows what these people coming on rafts to our shores have done before getting here, but the evidence speaks for itself due to the number of terrorist attacks by foreigners in our country, that they are a massive risk.
The fact is, illegal immigrants and migrants end up being housed at tax payers expense, are prioritised for housing over British people once granted asylum (that is a fact actually). There are British people who have waited for housing for years in some instances. It’s disgraceful that we are not prioritising people of our own country first.
So they get free accomodation, free food, free clothing, free healthcare (free interpreters too by the way as we book them regularly in work), free prescriptions, free dental care and free education (not that most need that as the majority are adult men). This all comes out of our taxes. This all puts massive strain on the local public services. It’s not rocket science and it’s neither far right or racist to point these facts out.
Some of the most neglected amongst our society are poor, young, white males. No wonder they’re breaking into Gregg’s for a tray of pastries, because what do they have to look forward to in our society!? I’d rather see my taxes used to help keep them in education, or learn a trade, than housing hoards of foreigners in 4* hotels!
People have had enough! Normal people, not far right racists!
Now we have the misery of living under Kier Stalins totalitarian regime. Never have I witnessed the level of fascist behaviour that I’m seeing from the far left. We are having our freedom of speech taken from us, which is one of the most important things we have in our society. It’s a travesty!
I didn’t say ‘those who are concerned about unfettered, mass migration, are far right racists’. I didn’t say people with concerns about immigration were far-right. Indeed, I specifically mentioned some with concerns about immigration – who I expressly said were not far-right – picked up on the misinformation and pushed it because it fit their particular worldview (not that they were racist; that their views on immigration initially appeared to be supported by the false information that was being peddled). My post was about how all of us can seize upon such false information when it happens to suit our worldview.
It doesn’t change the fact that the information being passed round online, and that first prompted riots, was the untrue claim that the Southport stabbings were carried out by an Islamist asylum seeker when, in fact, it was by a British-born Rwandan of Christian background. Neither does it change the fact that the riots were first orchestrated by and stoked by those on the far right.
I am quite sure many people rioting have nothing to do with the far right. In fact, I’m fairly confident quite a lot were not particularly bothered about immigration either. It seems to me, an awful lot of people just saw the opportunity to go out looting and/or have a tear up. I don’t think the extremist Asian groups who showed up to have a fight are particularly concerned about the far-right or immigration either. But, of course, I wasn’t talking specifically about any of that.
Amusing when your interlocutors precisely prove your point…