By now, you will have seen the atrocity that unfolded in Belfast. It is everywhere. I saw it before it had hit any of the mainstream broadsheets. At the time I am writing this, it is still too early to say much. After all, it was first reported the suspect was a Somalian man. Then, it was said, he was Sudanese. What he did has been variously called a stabbing, an attack and a suspected beheading attempt. All of these details speak to the slow drip feed of misinformation in the immediate aftermath, making it too early at the time of writing for me to say a great deal about what has specifically happened. What I am in a position to do, however, is note some of the strange ironies at play.

The first I saw of this incident was via Rupert Lowe of Restore. Even before the incident had come to proper public attention, a letter had been written and a statement put out. Initially, Lowe insisted that this attack warranted the deportation of all Somalis. I suppose one expects nothing less from reactionary hard right folks. By this logic, any Brit who commits a crime should mean all Brits go to prison.

However, as I noted, it later emerged that the perpetrator was not Somali but Sudanese. Lowe then corrected himself thusly:

His correction was not to revoke his earlier insistence on banning all Somali immigration, but to use the opportunity to take an attack by a man from Sudan to call for a ban on the citizens of two different African countries, one of which has no link to the attack whatsoever!

What makes this even more ridiculous – as if it could not get worse – is reported in The Times:

Asked about the suspect’s immigration status, [Assistant Chief Constable Ryan] Henderson said: “My understanding is that the individual came into Northern Ireland from Dublin, moving up, and then was granted leave to remain.”

He added that the “very distressing” event had left the victim, who is in his 40s, with injuries to his eyes and slash wounds to his face. Police were not seeking anyone else over the attack, which at this stage was not considered terror-related, he said.

This was no illegal movement. A man has moved freely across the free border from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland. It is a border over which foreigners move into the United Kingdom on a daily basis entirely legally. A free border, it bears remembering, was removed because of white British terrorist activities perpetrated over a c.40 years period.

Perhaps most ironically, this foreigner’s attack is not being treated as terror-related at all. This is in the region of the UK that has seen more terrorist activity than any other part of the country. Indeed, Lowe’s call for a ban on Sudanese immigration and, more bizarrely Somali immigration, based on the non-terror-related actions of one man from Sudan seem especially ludicrous in the face of a region beset by terrorism committed by the extremely white Protestant and Catholic indigenous population. It is impossible, given those facts, not to cast his calls as evidently and obviously racist; driven neither by concerns about terrorism nor even interest in the specific country of origin, just the colour of his skin and the knowledge that he is foreign. What else do we call tarring people with the same brush and inflicting a harsh measure upon all of them due to the actions of one man who happens to have the same skin colour? It is utterly ridiculous and undeniably, by any reckoning, racist.

Without wishing to belittle the attack in Belfast, it is difficult to see it as somehow worse than what has previously been at work among the white majority in the city. Put bluntly, this is far from the worst atrocity Belfast has seen. Though it is less in the spotlight and there is more fracturing, let’s not also make the mistake of thinking those old problems have entirely disappeared. The Good Friday Agreement and subsequent St Andrews Agreement, the implementations of the power-sharing executive and the one-time enemies nicknamed The Chuckle Brothers in their First and Deputy First minister roles did not spell the end of paramilitary activities. Just to take the PSNI statistics from 2025-6, they note 16 bombings, 18 paramilitary assaults and 2 casualties of paramilitary shootings. It was noted these are all down on the previous year and are the statistics from one solitary year. What we saw on the streets of Belfast yesterday was not the even among the worst kind of offence Belfast has seen in recent years. None of these atrocities hit even national UK press, let alone made it to the kind of international reach of one solitary black, foreign migrant with a knife. Why might that be?

It is similarly worth noting that a much less publicised, but more serious attack (inasmuch as more people were harmed), also took place yesterday. Three people – two children and one adult – were stabbed in Manchester. You can find that story a little way down the Guardian website homepage from the Belfast attack, but you can’t find it on the homepage of The Times. Yet we have three people stabbed. Worse, a school stabbing in which two students, children, and a member of staff were attacked with a knife. A girl is under arrest and the school was initially under lockdown before closing for the rest of the day. But this story gets hardly a whimper. Given that there were more victims and those victims included school children, why not? One can only suppose that it is harder to whip up foment over British school pupils doing more damage with a knife than Sudanese migrants.

After all, the grifters and doom mongers were on top of the Belfast story before the mainstream press. Their statements were out, their calls ready to go, their rage (whether pure, cold or otherwise) was already turned up to 11. Their outrage over the Manchester stabbings has yet to register. There don’t seem (as yet) to be any foreign men to blame there I suppose. Their concern over the ongoing activities of proscribed terrorist organisations made up almost exclusively of white men does not seem to feature on their socials nor in their parliamentary speeches. There are no sweeping references to the “savages” of Ulster because of such activities. And rightly so! But one Sudanese man’s non-terror-related actions apparently justify calls for demonstrations and rage, calls for bans on all migrants from Sudan, calls for bans on migrants from Somalia simply because somebody wrongly attributed this act to someone from Somalia. This is not a mere call for “managed immigration” that many insist is all they are asking for.

What happened in Belfast is a tragedy. Make no mistake about that. It should rightly carry consequences for the perpetrator, that much is certain too. But those who make much of claims of two-tier policing then have some explaining to do when their argument is to blame whole countries of people with no involvement for the actions of one of their citizens and whole countries of another whose citizens are not related to what happened at all. They insist on the deportation of those whose only link to one another is the colour of their skin whilst overlooking the even more serious crimes of those who share their own ethnicity. I suspect a lot of this lies behind their hatred of the word ‘racism’ and their insistence it gets ‘bandied about’ too readily these days. They might be right, but at some point, you have to accept that if it keeps getting bandied in your direction there may be some credit to it.

There has been much talk of two-tier justice recently. Specifically in relation to the Henry Nowak case. As Fraser Nelson rightly pointed out in The Times (paywall) in that case the kirpan being a religious symbol was dismissed as irrelevant by the judge, no discount was applied to his sentence for being Sikh, and ‘the judge added eight years for ten aggravating factors, among them that he had “abused the privilege extended to Sikhs” and “dishonoured” his religion… Religion made his sentence longer, not shorter.’ Even in his arrest, Nelson notes the context into which the police were walking – the 999 call was not vague but a clear claim of assault with the assailant held captive, the victim’s bleeding was predominantly internal and not visible, it was dark and he was wearing a black top all making it hard to see his wounds. Despite all that, and cut off from the leaked video, the police discovered their error within one minute and tried to save Nowak’s life even though the judge ruled he could not have been saved at any rate. Digwa, along with his mother for aiding and abetting, were arrested and have been sentenced accordingly. That is not to say there were no regrettable mistakes made by the police, but it is to say two-tier justice is unfounded in this case. Nobody can accuse Fraser Nelson of being a fully paid up member of the wokerati – he is the former editor of the Spectator!

But if we want to shout two-tier justice, why are the actions of one Sudanese man attacking one person in Belfast taking priority over the actions of one Mancunian school pupil attacking three people? Why is it deemed acceptable to call for blanket immigration bans on all Sudanese people simply because one Sudanese person has broken the law? Why is it deemed acceptable to call for a blanket ban on all Somali immigration when no Somali was involved and so have no link whatsoever to this? Why are the multiple Northern Irish terrorist atrocities that have occurred since 1998 – and continue occurring even today – overlooked entirely, with no travel restrictions being suggested for Northern Irish people, when they are far more serious than this singular attack in Belfast? You tell me why the white majority terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland barely generate a whimper but the single black Sudanese man leads to front page news and total travel bans on anyone from his country? If we are going to bleat about two-tier justice, who is actually worst affected?

Those who have not shown the slightest interest in Belfast before today, and who are quite happy to overlook those issues that occur that do not serve their divisive narratives, such as in Manchester, are not serious people. They are ideologically driven race-baiters of the very worst kind, fomenting rage for the sake of votes. Mainstream politics needs to take a hard look at itself and understand why people are so disenfranchised that they are turning to these groups. But disenchantment with the failure of mainstream politics is no reason to lend your support to those who would – for the sake of change – make matters vastly worst. In the name of defending Christian values, many seem happy to saw off the branch on which they sit.