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- [00:00]
Jenny Garth
This is an I Heart podcast.
- [00:02]
Lambda Legal Narrator
Guaranteed human.
- [00:04]
Jenny Garth
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- [02:31]
James (Host)
Hi everyone and welcome to the show. It's me, James Today and I'm very lucky to be joined by Ali Ayub who's a UK based researcher and journalist with an academic background in memory studies and in particular focus at the moment on the far right. Also the host of the Fire in These Times podcast, which is an excellent podcast. I've been a guest on that one before. Elia, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
- [02:52]
Ali Ayub
No, thanks. Thank you for having me.
- [02:54]
James (Host)
Nice to be talking. And we are talking today about, I guess the kind of explosion. Explosion's the wrong word, I think actually, because it's more like with the iceberg when you only see the tip of it, you know, the more visible acts of bigotry that we saw in Belfast a couple of weeks back and the response throughout the UK and I guess also the discourse around it online, which, you know, a lot of online discourse is generated by Americans in America. It ends up being divorced from context because of that.
- [03:27]
Lambda Legal Narrator
Yeah.
- [03:28]
James (Host)
So I guess to begin with, right, like I know I'm personally intimately familiar with the English far right, but let's maybe distinguish a little bit between the far right in Northern Ireland and the far right in England. And I'm saying England consciously here, not the uk. I'm wondering if I should pause here to define terms for people. Do you think most people have an operating analysis?
- [03:51]
Ali Ayub
I guess we can at least say the four. The whole four nations in one nation kind of thing.
- [03:56]
James (Host)
Yeah, exactly. So I'll just break it down like Britishness is a national identity. If we talk about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we're talking about England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are four nations within that. Right. If you want to know what a nation is, you can read Ben Anderson. But I like Linda Colley's analysis of Britishness, which suggests that it is Englishness exported, like Britishness is essentially an English colonial project that co ops elites in Scotland, Wales from Northern Ireland and by its people within those countries against each other. So given, given that, and I've already recommended two academic books which we're finding five minutes in, perhaps you could explain this distinction between Northern Ireland and England as it pertains to the far right.
- [04:45]
Ali Ayub
So there are similarities in the sense that a lot of this is transnational these days anyway. A lot of it is online based. There are also a lot of reports of England based far right agitators like most notoriously, Tommy Robinson and whatnot, kind of almost visiting Northern Ireland and leaving overnight. There's kind of like dipping their toes in a sense. So there are similarities there. And the dominance of England cannot be overlooked because it's still kind of like the powerhouse or the capital of the UK is and just has this oversized influence. Right. But also pretty important differences. Northern Ireland, I don't know how much we're going to get into the entire history of it. But has had a different trajectory in terms of the far right than England. There is the added sectarian element. There is the added. Whether you poor Ireland as in Republic of Ireland or whether you call United Kingdom in. In UK and Ireland terms, this means a loyalist is someone who wants to remain in the UK and a unionist is someone who wants to what for Ireland to be reunified basically can be confusing because union and United Kingdom and whatever. Yeah, so there is that sectarian element. Historically the UK has one of the. The UK as in British government, one of the ways it has faced what it sees as this nationalist threat. By nationalist here I mean like Irish nationalist threat, which of course has as well in Northern Ireland particularly, but not exclusively among Catholic communities, it has essentially armed and de facto armed these paramilitary groups that are today kind of a de facto mafia. Like for me as a Lebanese, there are pretty similarities with how sectarian elites operate in Lebanon. They have carved out parts of the. What is essentially the state there in parts of. In different areas they even to some extent even provide services. You know, stuff like that. Again, not that dissimilar I would say. I would argue from how one might picture like a mafia. And so a lot of the violence that we're seeing today enacted against like people of color is the same sort of rationale that was enacted against just like Catholic working classes not that long ago. And in many ways that same kind of supremacist ideology has just been kind of transferred from one community against another one to another one. But it doesn't mean that it's completely gone from the sort of like anti Irish and anti Catholic sentiments either.
- [07:09]
James (Host)
No, it's definitely not those things you
- [07:11]
Ali Ayub
don't see in England. You know, I mean not. It's just not as prominent. There are like different dynamics here, I
- [07:16]
James (Host)
guess, like especially if you're watching from the outside, right. It can be easy to miss that because like yes, in England every year in November we symbolically burn a Catholic in effigy. Right. I say we that the English as a tradition, but like the. The anti Catholic sentiment is not as present as. As it is in North. It's a completely different fish. Like you talked about Lego. We want to get into history and I do because I think that that's really important. Right. Especially if we understand Britain as the beginning of the English colonial project and especially Ireland, I guess if we understand just to stick with conceptual clarity, the British Isles and especially the beginning of that colonial project in Ireland and to an Extent in Scotland, then I think it helps with an analysis of this. And I think something you'd mentioned, which I really like the idea of, is when we talk about sectarianism as, like, a fixed point, we ignore how we got to sectarianization. Right. And I think, yeah, you're obviously very familiar with the British and the Lebanese context. Something I used to talk about with my grandmother, actually, who spent a good amount of time in Lebanon that overlaps with these things. But perhaps you could explain that to people, because I think it's very easy to come at especially the history of Ireland, KWA island, with an S as like a preset sectarian kind of situation. And that's not really the case. Like a process occurred to get us to where we are.
- [08:39]
Ali Ayub
Oh, yeah. I mean, kind of a simple way of explaining it, at least that's how I do when I. When I speak to, like, relatives, you know, is that no one is born. Like, sure, they could be born into a Catholic or a Protestant family, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they therefore feel a certain way towards a member of that other community. Yeah, that is a process. And so sectarianization is something that is crucially active. It is ongoing. Like, it never stops. It cannot stop because it can otherwise. Like, again, using that simple analysis, simple example of, like, you have a baby that's a. That's born into a Catholic family and a baby that's born into a protest family, if you don't put them in a certain context that includes this thing that you call sectarianism, they won't necessarily develop, like, hostile feelings towards the other baby. You see what I mean? When they grow up.
- [09:27]
James (Host)
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:27]
Ali Ayub
Kind of like a simplified way of putting it. But sectarianization, whether in Lebanon, whether in Northern Ireland, whether in Bosnia, and then it gets complicated and you have added nuances whenever you add a different context, of course, but is something that is active, as in there are ruling elites that have a certain specific interest in maintaining the status quo in a certain way or in some cases, worsening the status quo and so on. It is directly intersected with things like capitalism. The other types of supremacy you cannot have in a sectarian society if you have a very strong, let's say, welfare state, where everyone is given the basics, where everyone has access to everything and you don't have these inequalities. And there are lots of case studies and studies of the worse inequality gets, the more likely you are to get these sectarian tensions. So it doesn't come out of nowhere. People aren't just born like that. It's not just something that people are born with. They are raised in a certain society, they are sectarianized to view members of a different community in a certain way. And also most importantly, resources are allocated before one is born, often based on where you live. So there's a regionalism to it as well. But also like in the case of Northern Ireland and in case of Lebanon for that matter, based on sex and so on.
- [10:50]
James (Host)
Yeah. Your understanding of Lebanon perhaps gives you an interesting perspective to like analyze this. Right. Because there's some somewhat more formalized to an extent. It's not that it's not formalized in Ireland very much is like division of resources, allocation of state power, even that that is sectarian. So like do you think that helps you analyze Northern Ireland?
- [11:13]
Ali Ayub
It does because like it's one of the things I always bring up because it takes everyone by surprise when I talk about sectarianism in Lebanon, which is that the average person isn't necessarily sectarian and the sense that the average person doesn't necessarily think in sectarian terms certain like their primary identity. In fact it's a poll I keep on mentioning. I can send it to you if you want. But whenever you've had these pan Arab polls like across the region of the question would be something along the lines of like do you primarily see yourself as being let's say Muslim, Christian, Jews etc or as. As your nation, as your national identity.
- [11:46]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [11:46]
Ali Ayub
And the Lebanese and the Palestinians are often the ones that say. They're more likely to say like first Lebanese or Palestinian and then Christian, Muslim, etc.
- [11:54]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [11:54]
Ali Ayub
And with Palestinians can maybe more well known story like there's a cause and so that cause has become the primary identity before even one is a Muslim, one is a Christian or so on.
- [12:03]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [12:04]
Ali Ayub
In Lebanon it takes people by surprise because Lebanon, those who know anything about it is like well that's a dissectarian place. That's where you have the, the president has to be Christian, the Maronite, the prime minister has to be Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament has to be a Shia Muslim. Which is true. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they like the individual who's a president wakes up today and says I'm going to act behalf of Maronites.
- [12:26]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [12:26]
Ali Ayub
It doesn't work. It's much messier than that. And most importantly my personal beliefs in Lebanon like I was raised in a Christian Maronite family, but if I was an atheist or whatever, it just does not matter as far as the state is concerned because my legal status as a citizen is one that is a Maronite.
- [12:45]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [12:45]
Ali Ayub
And so it affects how I vote. It affects how I do certain things where there's certain services I have access to in certain that. And then it's like region specific. And in Northern Ireland, that's kind of the thing that you see. Like, of course, there is a process by which certain communities are already separated in the sense of like you grew up in a majority Catholic area and you grew up in a Protestant majority area.
- [13:05]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [13:06]
Ali Ayub
And in some cases you may, depending where you live, for example, parts of Belfast, you may not know a Protestant and. Or a Catholic. I mean, either up until a certain age right before you, you know, you're 16, you go to college or whatever it might be.
- [13:16]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [13:17]
Ali Ayub
And those of course reinforce certain, certain tendency. But most importantly, you might be a, you know, you grew up in a Protestant family, maybe middle class and whatnot. But you don't share the politics of your neighborhoods. It doesn't necessarily then translate into that affecting the politics of the whole. Because there's something that's already in build there that's difficult because it's entrenched now.
- [13:37]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [13:38]
Ali Ayub
And so it's both something that's entrenched, something that's difficult to change, and also something that can't stop at the same time. It has to be both.
- [13:46]
James (Host)
Yeah, I think that's a very good analysis. I guess another example people cite for, I guess, the way these things can so rapidly become entrenched and they can disappear, they can become less important. If we look at the example of Rwanda, which is obviously a long way away from both those places. But being Hu, Tutu, Tutsi or TWA frustrates me a lot. The analysis of the Rwandan genocide overlooks the TWA people, but that's another topic. But they suffered some of the worst ravages of the genocide. That, that was such a fixed identity that became the salient identity. Right. And even if individuals were not buying into that increasingly opposed identities, those identities were what would affect the outcomes of their lives very clearly in 1994. Right.
- [14:32]
Jenny Garth
Yeah.
- [14:32]
James (Host)
And that is now less the case because in part the key to maintaining state power became decreasing those tensions or exporting those tensions in the case of Rwanda to the Congo. Right. And we can talk about how we got there because it wasn't a great process, isn't a great process. But, but it's, it's, it's a good analysis point for people. I guess.
- [14:58]
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- [16:01]
George Taveras
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Jenny Garth
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Ashley Akonetti
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- [17:43]
James (Host)
We've spoken about how these identities are so enshrined and how they're codified now because it's not the case, like you said, that everyone believes in this. And what we've seen since what happened in Belfast is that the vast majority of people in the UK reject this. Right. The vast majority of people. That's the other thing I do want to harp on, like, when people say, oh, this is Northern Irish groups in Belfast or whatever, it's a relatively small portion, even a relatively small portion of Protestants, even a relatively small portion of people who have strong loyalist feelings. Not all of those people are bigots. You know, it is a small, relatively small group, as you say, that is now somewhat linked transnational hate networks. But the bulk of people think that that is absolutely repugnant. Right. So should we talk a little bit about the backlash? Because I know you attended a massive protest. Right. When. And also, like, half a dozen. A dozen fascists showed up to be, like, escorted out of town again. Yeah.
- [18:45]
Ali Ayub
So the backlash to the. The Belfast ones, what happened in Belfast, Maybe I can give some context.
- [18:50]
James (Host)
Yeah. Yeah.
- [18:51]
Ali Ayub
So there was an attack by this Sudanese person against this white person.
- [18:56]
Jenny Garth
Yeah.
- [18:56]
Ali Ayub
And the reason I'm framing it in those terms is because that's how it was portrayed in the media in the sense that, yeah, the. The attacker's ethnicity and national origins and whatnot has been front and center of that coverage. And that's not. It's not like a small detail in the story. It's why it's been linked to the. The Southampton murder that happened in December. And the case, like the person. The attacker was sentenced a few weeks ago, not long before the Belfast program happened.
- [19:20]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [19:21]
Ali Ayub
The reason these two are linked is media framing. One was in Southampton, was the one in Belfast. There's no connection between those two other than the attacker had a specific skin color and the victim had a specific skin color. That's basically it.
- [19:35]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [19:36]
Ali Ayub
Attacks have happened in between. Between December and June that don't fit that framing, don't fit that description, and have been kind of left out of the discourse of that. Of that screening.
- [19:45]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [19:45]
Ali Ayub
And so it's contributed to this perception that is now, again, I wouldn't say it's a majority of the population, but, like, it's this higher percentage of the population that now, at Least think that there's some problem with immigration and criminality. And that is something that doesn't. Is not borne out by the facts whatsoever. But it's still a dominant perception. It is. You tune in to BBC question time on a weekly basis. It's almost certainly going to be front and center of the conversation. And I put conversation maybe in quotation here. It's more like rage baiting and whatever.
- [20:17]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [20:18]
Ali Ayub
So what happened in Belfast is, as I said, this Sudanese person attacked this white person. Initially the media was reporting that a Somali person attacked a white person. So again, it tells you how these claims is inherently racial. They immediately went what they. What they thought was the most likely demographic.
- [20:35]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [20:36]
Ali Ayub
In response to that attack, despite the fact that the family of the victim explicitly asked people not to politicize this and that they rejected the politics of hate.
- [20:44]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [20:45]
Ali Ayub
The same after the Southampton one, for that matter. It made no difference to these far right fascists and agitators and so on. And they basically went on a pogrom throughout parts of Belfast. And Some, I think 20 plus people were rendered homeless, including like kids and so on. Anyone who's a person in color in Belfast, including a bunch of people who have written about it since reported feeling unsafe that day. And you know, and arguably probably to this day as well, it hasn't been that long.
- [21:11]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [21:12]
Ali Ayub
Some people didn't go to work, Some people went back home early. Some people asked their white colleagues to either, you know, take their kids to school or, you know, walk with them home. You know, stuff like that.
- [21:20]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [21:21]
Ali Ayub
All of that because they felt unsafe. And the reason why they felt unsafe, that was very obvious that those people who were engaging in these, in these programs were looking for people of color. The response to that is you had this kind of a pretty big reaction from a good chunk of the. Of the population in a bunch of different cities, including where I live, which is in Brighton in the south of England.
- [21:42]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [21:43]
Ali Ayub
Belfast itself also had like a pretty huge mobilization. We saw one in I believe Sheffield and I believe one in Liverpool as well.
- [21:49]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [21:49]
Ali Ayub
In Glasgow as well, where usually it would be a fairly small number of. Of fascists and far right activist agitators. In Brighton, I think there was like 200 of them versus some 4 or 5,000 of on the other side.
- [22:04]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [22:04]
Ali Ayub
I'm fairly certain, I can't say this 100% certain, but I'm fairly certain there were more police officers than there were like even far right people there.
- [22:12]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [22:12]
Ali Ayub
And Belfast as well, there was a huge reaction. There was even Like a pretty huge fundraiser by this collective of women, people of color in that are based in Belfast called the Anaka Women's Collective, that as of now, they were aiming to raise a thousand pounds and they've raised £253,000 as of. As of today.
- [22:30]
James (Host)
Oh, wow. Nice.
- [22:32]
Ali Ayub
To help those who were displaced and those who lost their homes and so on.
- [22:35]
Ashley Akonetti
Yeah.
- [22:36]
Ali Ayub
And it was even condemned, like, at the national level. Like Belfast, the dominant party is actually not, like, it's Sinn Fein, which is not a loyalist party. So the people who did this act are very much in. In the minority in terms of even, like, popular sentiment in Northern Ireland. But even specifically in Belfast.
- [22:53]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [22:53]
Ali Ayub
This didn't stop the ongoing kind of tensions between. Maybe we can get into that on the far right in the UK and Northern include, but especially the UK more broadly between reform, which as of now is the dominant party on the far right.
- [23:07]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [23:07]
Ali Ayub
And this new party that came out of reform called the RESTORE uk.
- [23:10]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [23:11]
Ali Ayub
That are fighting with one another now. Elon Musk has backed the Rupert Low, the RESTORE UK guy.
- [23:16]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [23:17]
Ali Ayub
Because he thinks that. That Farage is to walk. You know, a lot of different things are happening.
- [23:22]
James (Host)
It's fucking insane.
- [23:24]
Ali Ayub
It is quite insane. Yeah.
- [23:25]
James (Host)
Yeah. Nigel Farage, if people are familiar, like, long time, bloviating shithead fixture of the UK far right.
- [23:31]
Lambda Legal Narrator
Yeah.
- [23:32]
James (Host)
Many funny clips of Nigel Farage being made to look like a tool. Let's talk about this, this tension, right. Because we do have this, like. And this has been a constant on the UK far right for a long time. I remember the BNP, which was getting on for 20 years ago, that, like, essentially you will have a electoral party that stakes out a position on the right, and then a movement slash party that seeks electoral legitimacy will outflank them to the right and they will stake that position and have electoral success and then someone will outflank them to the right. That is the process through which British politics has moved to the right for my entire life. But let's talk about Restore and reform and maybe explain the two categories for people who are not familiar.
- [24:20]
Ali Ayub
Reform is led by Nigel Farage, who's maybe the better known one. He's the one that was a close Trump associate for a while, and he was even friends with Elon Musk until they had, like a falling out. He used to head this party called ukip, the UK Independence Party, which was very pivotal in the Brexit vote. Nigel Farage is definitely an interesting figure for all the wrong reasons in British politics, because he started off being pretty small, like a small fish. Not a lot of support in the polls, not a lot of people knew him. But one thing he did have was like a disproportionate media appearance. He would be featured constantly on various shows. BBC Question Time is the one I just mentioned. Even when he was not like now he's a Member of Parliament, but he, for the longest time he was a member of the European Parliament. He wasn't a Member of Parliament in the uk and his entire thing was UKIP independence, as in what they call independence, as in leaving the eu because the UK obviously was already independent. And the way they frame this is anti immigration and racism essentially. At one point even they weren't even focusing on like, as they currently are on like you know, people from Africa or people from, from Afghanistan or whatever. Their hatred was focused on Romanians and Poles and, and other members from Eastern Europe or Central Europe.
- [25:37]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [25:38]
Ali Ayub
I'm saying this because when Henry Novak was killed and Henry, Henry Novak was Polish British.
- [25:43]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [25:44]
Ali Ayub
They all pretended to suddenly include Polish people in the white category. But that's a very much a recent convenient thing because just a few years ago they were absolutely not doing that.
- [25:53]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [25:54]
Ali Ayub
Out of Reform UK, a lot of Reform MPs and councillors are ex Tories, so ex Conservatives. So reform has been taking a lot of the Conservative votes and even Conservative personalities, including most of their high ranking members. Out of that came out this new relative new party called Restore, which some people would say is further to the right than reform. The way I would describe it is that they're both vying for the far right position in the UK and reform is trying to position itself as the more professional, the more kind of like, you know, we're the new Tories kind of thing. And the Tories fail. But we will be better than them.
- [26:32]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [26:32]
Ali Ayub
Whereas RESTORE is just like directly like we will just deport millions of brown people and black people back to where they came from and whatever. Like they're just straight to the closest thing to the BNP really. Historically speaking.
- [26:43]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [26:44]
Ali Ayub
They don't have a huge percentage from, last I checked was like 3% restore UK.
- [26:50]
StartPage Advertiser
But.
- [26:51]
Ali Ayub
And this is where it gets back to the, to the, to the media problem in this country again. The BBC started one of their coverages of the Belfast programs with a quote by Rupert Lowe, who is like again, maybe in terms of parties, the sixth or the seventh or the eighth in the UK currently.
- [27:09]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [27:09]
Ali Ayub
But they have this disproportionate media presence because their position keeps on being framed as like the. The default position. As if everyone has some concerns about. And put some concerns in quotations about foreigners or immigrants or what have you, you know.
- [27:27]
James (Host)
Yeah. And they like anchor the debate on the right there. Like the BBC or anyone else who's running are like, let's have a debate about the humanity of people who weren't born in the United Kingdom or people who aren't white in the United Kingdom. They anchor that debate on their terms. They get to define the terms.
- [27:44]
Ali Ayub
Exactly.
- [27:44]
James (Host)
Yeah. I think Nick Griffin, like, would be a place where I could like see this. This particular tendency starting, right. Like the. The sort of new. I guess Nick Griffin comes out the National Front. So it's really a continuous. Just for people who aren't familiar. Like, yeah, hate groups from the 80s to hate groups in the 2000s. Is Nick Griffin too. Yes, yes to here. I think you're right. They are the new analog for that. Like, there's a reason the BNP sounds a British National Party, but like British Nazi Party isn't a. A accident there, if you look at how these guys like to dress up. But, like, that's how we get here. I guess it is a real problem in the British media. Right. Like, I know Americans are very familiar with the Charlie Kirk stick and the debate. Me stick. But like, Britain has been doing that perhaps for even longer.
- [28:30]
Ali Ayub
Yeah.
- [28:30]
James (Host)
I remember Nick Griffin attending the Oxford Union in 2007, 2008. And I remember big protests at that time. Like, Britain has been doing this for a while and like most people when. When it's this hate is so evident. If it wasn't Belfast and as it has been in many other places. Right. Reject it.
- [28:51]
Mistr Advertiser
Yeah.
- [28:52]
James (Host)
It's not. It's not the mainstream British stance.
- [28:55]
Ali Ayub
No.
- [28:55]
James (Host)
The hate is somewhat different in the uk. That's the other thing that we should mention, I guess. Like, you know, like, you say that it's not entirely racialized in the Polish people are othered from Britishness, othered from whiteness, unless it is useful for them.
- [29:08]
Ali Ayub
Yes.
- [29:09]
James (Host)
So, like, I guess, what did you see when you participated in this Brighton march? Because what we don't have in the UK as much, right. Like Labour is pretty shit at this. Like, we haven't had the similar thing on the left. So let's say, like, explain how people are going about rejecting this. Which is largely an extra parliamentary process.
- [29:30]
StartPage Advertiser
It is.
- [29:30]
Ali Ayub
It is largely an extra parliamentary process. Brighton historically has had a different trajectory than other parts of the uk.
- [29:37]
James (Host)
Yeah, Brighton's quite unique.
- [29:38]
Ali Ayub
It was the only Green mp, for example, was From Guyton. Now it's changed with the Green MP kind of taking a lot of the votes from the left because of Labour's right word shift in the past few years. I mean, labor has always been arguably a right wing project anyway.
- [29:53]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [29:53]
Ali Ayub
But in the past few years, especially on the Starmer, has been past couple of years, as today is when he officially resigned. So this was also like momentous day.
- [30:01]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [30:01]
Ali Ayub
Brighton has had this kind of long history of antifascism. A lot of it has been cultural and it came out of his music scene and all of that.
- [30:09]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [30:10]
Ali Ayub
And it has meant like, as someone who's like, I am a migrant. I am also a person of color and I live in the uk. It was pretty nice to see a. Mostly because Brighton is mostly white.
- [30:20]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [30:20]
Ali Ayub
Like a mostly white city really come out in force against these people who. A lot of them, I should say, were not even from Brighton because that's not unusual these days. They were busting quite literally in some cases.
- [30:32]
James (Host)
Yeah. They want to come to where they feel like the migrants are or the liberals are.
- [30:38]
Ali Ayub
Yeah. And people like. There were different groups that marched. The Green Party was among them. But large, largely, it was just like a bunch of unions a month of like student groups, local anti fascist collectives, even some religious groups, like multifaith alliance stuff and all of these things, which Greta is pretty good at, I would say, overall.
- [30:58]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [30:59]
Ali Ayub
And there were these different marches that end up ended up kind of joining as is, you know, typical in these types of marches.
- [31:05]
Febreze Advertiser
They had like the.
- [31:06]
Ali Ayub
Yeah, the Palestine one, the feminist one, you know, the LGBTQ one and so on. They were kind of joined in the next to the station, the writing station where the fascists were, were meeting up. Essentially, as I said, there were more cops than. Than. I'm fairly certain of this. There were more cops than like fascists that were there in Belfast. It was different because it was the most direct reaction to what happened just a few days prior.
- [31:29]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [31:30]
Ali Ayub
And this was like largely organic in the sense that the Brighton one was like, we were planning for this for some time because the fascists had long before even the Belfast program. It just happened to occur after the Belfast program. But it was already announced before. Yeah, all that really happened was that they made the announcement. People were already organizing. And then a bunch of fascists did a program in Belfast and that motivated even more people in Brighton to come out in Brighton, if that makes sense.
- [31:55]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [31:55]
Ali Ayub
And we saw similar dynamics in Glasgow and similar dynamics and I believe, as I said, Sheffield and Liverpool and Other places, like in smaller numbers.
- [32:01]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [32:02]
Ali Ayub
It's important to say that, like with the exception of when they did the whole Unite the Kingdom rally, like last year, which was the biggest of its kind. And it was the biggest of its kind for like different reasons. There was even like a very mediatized attack like a few days prior. There was of course a Charlie Kirk murder just like a few days prior. So it's kind of like it was a perfect storm that brought them all out at the same time. Yeah, that's very, very uncommon. The average protest that they managed to pull is in the lower hundreds. Usually at most is like in the lower thousands.
- [32:35]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [32:35]
Ali Ayub
Whereas like, you know, on a every other month or whatnot, you have a massive pro Palestine protest in London that has like 200, 300, 400,000 people.
- [32:43]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [32:43]
Ali Ayub
And that's putting aside pride and that's putting aside all of those other things that happen. So they never managed to have enough people on the streets. At least not yet. The danger in some sense is that the response to those far right marches and in some cases the pogroms shows how rightward what you might think of, like centrist politics has gotten in the uk. Like the default is very right wing.
- [33:08]
James (Host)
Yeah, like the Overton window has moved way to the right in the uk.
- [33:12]
Ali Ayub
Exactly.
- [33:19]
George Taveras
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Ashley Akonetti
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- [35:29]
Lambda Legal Narrator
Dozens of executive orders, thousands of anti LGBTQ bills, all designed to harm people we know and people we love. The people we are. Every day, Lambda Legal is in court fighting back. And when we take a stand, we're standing as the last line of defense between real human beings and harm. But we don't do it alone. With every act of support, you stand with us and together we'll hold the line. Fund the fight@lambdalegal.org donate.
- [36:04]
Ali Ayub
Even though it doesn't necessarily make. Makes sense in the sense that, like, when you poll people, you have a difference between when you ask them what are like, what are the top five problems whatever of like, what the UK is going through and then immigration is usually in the top five. But then like, what are the top five things, the top 10 things that you are personally struggling with. And immigration is usually never, you know, never in those top 10.
- [36:26]
Mistr Advertiser
Yeah.
- [36:26]
Ali Ayub
And so there is a disconnect there. That's why I emphasize so much on the media framing and the centrality of the types of framing that we are seeing, has. Have been seeing for some time, like in the run up to the, to the Brexit vote and since Brexit, like, which, you know, it's going to be 10 years now.
- [36:41]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [36:41]
Ali Ayub
Yeah. Literally, I think in a few days it's going to be 10 years into exit.
- [36:44]
James (Host)
Yeah. Yeah.
- [36:45]
Ali Ayub
The tabloidization, I don't know how you call it, of the, the, the media in the uk where basically everything is tabloid.
- [36:51]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [36:52]
Ali Ayub
Has not helped to, to put it mildly. I started One of my, the article I wrote recently, which is I, I, I just randomly took a newspaper on the bus, the Mirror, which is not even particularly right wing compared to the Daily Mail, for example, or whatever.
- [37:07]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [37:08]
Ali Ayub
But there was a short story, a very like, small short story, and it was about like a drunken asylum seeker vandalizes memorial or something like that. And the headline was asylum seeker vandalizes memorial, whatever it is.
- [37:22]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [37:22]
Ali Ayub
And then the first sentence was a drunk or caps, all capital letters. And the story was just a drunk guy who damaged some property.
- [37:29]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [37:29]
Ali Ayub
His, his legal status and origins was, is literally irrelevant to the story.
- [37:34]
Mistr Advertiser
Right.
- [37:34]
Ali Ayub
He's a guy who's drunk who did something which is not that uncommon in the uk, unfortunately.
- [37:38]
James (Host)
Yeah, yeah. That's one of our national pastimes.
- [37:40]
Ali Ayub
Exactly. If any, I joke, like, if anything, it just shows that the guy was, is well integrated into British culture.
- [37:45]
James (Host)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's become British.
- [37:47]
Ali Ayub
But they, the editor of that paper on that specific. They decided that adding asylum seeker made this a more sexy story for readers and so on. And that's a very common thing.
- [37:58]
James (Host)
Oh, yeah.
- [37:59]
Ali Ayub
As soon as you add asylum seeker or migrant or refugee or whatever to these headlines, it can drive engagement up on social media. It can attract eyeballs more because it's rage baiting. And it's become such a big problem.
- [38:11]
James (Host)
Yeah. It is like a, largely a media problem. And I think, like, that's a really important place to talk about. There's this idea again that, like, this came from Elon Musk. Right. And that, like, undoubtedly Elon Musk has amplified the very far right in the uk. Undoubtedly. The fact that so many journalists spend so much time on his website.
- [38:33]
Ali Ayub
Oh, yeah.
- [38:34]
James (Host)
Changes their perspective of where the debate is at, especially when, like, you know, not, not to be too, too much a dick about it, but like, a lot of journalists don't go outside and talk to normal people very much.
- [38:44]
Mistr Advertiser
Yeah.
- [38:45]
James (Host)
My folks are both in agriculture.
- [38:47]
Lambda Legal Narrator
Right.
- [38:47]
James (Host)
Like, when I'm home, I'm talking to people who work in that world too. And like, it's just not a. You've Sometimes people say, I saw X on the tv, I saw Y on the tv. But like, you're just not running into many people who are seeking asylum, causing problems, nor is it a major issue in their life. And when there are migrants in their lives, they're people who they cherish. Right. They're members of their community.
- [39:08]
Mistr Advertiser
Yeah.
- [39:09]
James (Host)
That doesn't get reflected in the media debate. But, like, this is a longer issue than Elon Musk buying Twitter in the uk.
- [39:16]
Ali Ayub
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
- [39:17]
James (Host)
It's a big fucking problem. And it's one I think we can't fix. Like trying to diversify people's media diet, that is a challenge. Like as you say in the uk, like, just the way we consume media is different. Right. Like you think about like when my dad's driving and he's listening to Radio 2 all the time. Right. Like they will have, they will have these debates there. Like it's different media consumption, media diet than people in the US And I wonder like, yeah. Even if there were just like, if there were good outlets who you prefer to read. Like, especially for people who are not from the UK to understand the debate in just more rational, anchored in reality terms. Like it doesn't even have to be a, like a, A left source. Like, it's just if they're not distorting most people's lived experience. That's relatively unusual in the uk.
- [40:03]
Ali Ayub
It is, yeah. There's a fascinating program on the BBC that weirdly enough, given that I do media studies I actually did not know about until relatively recently, but it's called News News Watch. I sent you a clip.
- [40:14]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [40:15]
Ali Ayub
A few days ago. And it just. It is what it is. It, it. It is. It's kind of this program within the BBC, but clearly editorially independent BBC that does critical media coverage. And they pointed out.
- [40:26]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [40:26]
Ali Ayub
That after the Belfast program, a lot of. They got a lot of comments from people who were concerned by how the BBC was covering the. The Belfast riot slash program. Whatever.
- [40:37]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [40:38]
Ali Ayub
And including the fact that again, again, initially people thought they were saying this is Somali person when it wasn't even the case.
- [40:44]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [40:45]
Ali Ayub
But immediately racializing these terms and so on. And one of the people that came on said that like, you know, there was an attack in Bolton the day. Which is out of Manchester just the day after the b. Against an imam's house. Like a guy just firebombed his house. His kids were inside. Luckily they were unharmed, but they could have easily died.
- [41:03]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [41:03]
Ali Ayub
Then made the news. But it's not. And if there was even an attack in Peace Haven, which is not far from where I live in October 2025, against a mosque there, there were two worshippers inside that could have also died. Luckily they were okay. And again, it's not that it doesn't make the news, it gets reported on. But like it. That's it. It doesn't then get debated ad nauseam. It doesn't get. It doesn't become this huge sensational thing that like politic to opine about or whatever. It's just a thing happened. That's sad. Let's move on. Whereas if it's all you need is a single story of a non white person attacking a white person and it's like in a particularly good times in terms of, I don't know, whatever is happening on Twitter or whatever. But again, not just that, it's only that, but it's become this huge amplifier then you're more likely to see what we've been seeing really. That's why I insist on the media framing. It's not the only thing. I mean you cannot talk about even if the media was bad. But if everyone was comfortable and didn't struggle with these income inequalities and precarity and whatnot, then the media wouldn't be as big of a. Its salience wouldn't be as relevant. But it's those two things at the same time that there's kind of this perfect storm right now.
- [42:13]
James (Host)
Yeah, it's hard times for people.
- [42:16]
Ali Ayub
Exactly.
- [42:17]
James (Host)
And the hard times are breeding ground for hate.
- [42:19]
Jenny Garth
Yes.
- [42:20]
James (Host)
And I think like, yeah, that's something we all have to work against, especially in the British context. But also like that's coming here. It's hard times here too. The hatred is always going to find like fertile terrain in those difficult times. Even that framing. Right. Like I was thinking about this the other day, like talking to a colleague in the UK like all the time. The quote unquote migrant crisis is used as a framing in European politics. And that's something the U.S. right, learned from. And they created a crisis here. Right?
- [42:49]
Febreze Advertiser
Yeah.
- [42:50]
James (Host)
It's not a fucking crisis. There is plenty of space in the UK for more people and like these people are like members of our communities and a benefit to all of us. The UK should be talking about the bigotry crisis, the racism crisis. We have a pogrom Belfast, we have someone attacking an imam's house. We have constant, constant macro and microaggressions for people.
- [43:13]
Ali Ayub
Yeah.
- [43:13]
James (Host)
Like including on our state funded media and like that. That is the framing I'd like to see. It's not a framing you're going to see from the people who are perpetuating it. Because it's a profitable strategy to whip up hate like this.
- [43:27]
Ali Ayub
Yeah, I mentioned this. If like I had a post on this guy a few days ago of like, this country also has an aging population crisis, it has a job crisis, a lot of those jobs, because it's structured, the economy is structured in a way that certain jobs are very difficult for locals to do like nursing, nursing homes and stuff like that. Largely because pay is so bad.
- [43:48]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [43:48]
Ali Ayub
And you have at the same time the media kind of and lots of politicians focusing on this very made up migration like migrant crisis, as you said, whereas this country is actually struggling with an aging population. In addition to that, the increase in migration since 2004, there's been an increase in migrants. I mean I'm one of them. Has not actually brought more crime to the uk. The data is pretty clear on that. The crimes has actually been steadily declining in the past couple of decades. Trades in this country, including in London, the most diverse city in the UK by far. Yeah, there's just no, there's no core. And I know I'm saying this and you know, obviously for the like listeners of this, I'm kind of like preaching to the choir here.
- [44:28]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [44:28]
Ali Ayub
But just, it just bears repeating that like this is generally entirely made up. Like there is absolutely no correlation between these two, between like just an increase of people from a certain skin color or whatever and then the prevalence of crime. And so there's no correlation between those two. And when we talk about one of the big things that the far right here, as in the US and as in a good chunk of the world it's all about, you know, save our women and girls essentially is how they frame it constantly. Pretty huge percentage of the far right people have. For example, two years ago you also had riots in Belfast. Something like a ridiculously high amount of those who were arrested were and were later released were since re arrested due to like domestic abuse allegations and sexual harassments and stuff like that, you know.
- [45:12]
James (Host)
Yeah, many such cases, they're not framed
- [45:15]
Ali Ayub
as like a civilizational crisis for women and girls because they are the default. They are the white guys. They are, you know, they, they don't get spoken of in the same way as the, the rest of the population in this country. So it's a, in that sense maybe it's a more familiar problem for American listeners. In that sense. You have these similarities there.
- [45:32]
James (Host)
Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good, that's a good analogy to draw. I wonder then as we wrap up like you wrote an excellent article on this which we will link in the show notes. Do you have anything else you want to share with people or you'd suggest like it's a little less easy to feel so isolated in the uk, Right. Which is like a smaller polity. Like it's, it's, you can normally find people, but just people who are, if People are wanting to support. If people are looking to find like minded folks.
- [46:02]
Ali Ayub
Yeah. In the uk, I would say. I mean I guess this is a bit of bit everywhere the same thing. But it's going to depend on like where you live.
- [46:08]
James (Host)
Yes.
- [46:09]
Ali Ayub
Like you know, if other people listening, if they happen to be in great an a, feel free to reach out to me. I like meeting people but like you have these different collectives that are like usually very locally based. I mentioned the Anaka Collective, the women's collective in Belfast for example. If folks want to support them, they can still do so Maybe I could put it this way. I mean I moved here 10 years ago and then I left for to do my PhD in Switzerland and then me and my partner and kid, we moved back here a couple of years ago. There are lots of reasons not to be here. There are lots of good reasons not to want to be and want to be elsewhere. But there are also pretty good reasons to be here for me personally which is that there are lots of different networks, communities that are. Have been kind of built for decades now. In some cases that one can, can join, one can help again it's going to be very much like depending on where you live. London is not going to be the same as Manchester, as Belfast, as Glasgow and so on and so forth. Yeah, but like that's one of the good things about it. The other thing you mentioned in terms of reading and I write for this, the one that you're going to link Shadow Mag without the W in the end.
- [47:12]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [47:13]
Ali Ayub
And at the end of every article they have recommendations usually of like what people can do and usually it has to do with either like you read further. But it could also be like support this collective or like, you know, follow this person or whatever. Like just very, very small things. Like yeah, by no means are we, are we claiming to fix everything through that but like there's just small things that people can actually, yeah. Feel more connected maybe if they, if they actually live here and that they don't feel connected to different communities or if they're abroad and they want to support this could also be like an
- [47:39]
James (Host)
easy way to do so. Yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice I get. It's very local, which is good. Like the response to austerity has been people taking care of their community and then like that is how we get through this. Yeah, same as though. Yeah. The poverty the government is deciding that everyone has to live in. Like it's the same shit and it's the same response yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [47:57]
Ali Ayub
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
- [47:58]
James (Host)
Well, thank you very much for your time today. That was really good, I think. Insightful. I hope it helped people. Where can people find you if they'd like to follow you and your work in Brighton, obviously.
- [48:06]
Febreze Advertiser
Yeah.
- [48:06]
Ali Ayub
If you embryo reach out, I. I do post on. On Blue sky from time to time. It's just a. You'll find me there. And other than that, I have the podcast the Fight is Times. It's been inactive for the past month, but I'm gonna start again soon. And I have a newsletter called Hauntologies that I try and keep active as well in which I talk about some of the stuff we talked about here.
- [48:25]
James (Host)
Yeah.
- [48:26]
Ali Ayub
With sometimes more Lebanon stuff and Palestine stuff where I'm from and. But also a lot of Western, like UK and US stuff and so on.
- [48:31]
James (Host)
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's great to have those conversations connected. Like the struggle's not as distinct as people think.
- [48:37]
Ali Ayub
Yeah, yeah. Thanks.
- [48:38]
James (Host)
Well, thank you so much. That was great.
- [48:40]
Ali Ayub
Thank you. Thank you.
- [48:44]
Lambda Legal Narrator
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode description. Thanks for listening.
- [49:03]
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- [50:07]
Ashley Akonetti
This is Ashley Akonetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. You know what's become a literal nightmare lately? International travel. Why sit on a plane for 14 hours to get to Lake Como when you could be having the time of your life at Caesars Republic in beautiful La Tahoe. Caesars Republic Lake Tahoe has it all. Incredible dining, amazing entertainment, gaming, fun on the lake and more. And it's right in your backyard. Caesars Republic, Lake Tahoe.
- [50:37]
Lambda Legal Narrator
Book today Dozens of executive orders, thousands of anti LGBTQ bills, all designed to harm people we know people we love the people we are. Every day, Lambda Legal is in court fighting, and when we take a stand, we're standing as the last line of defense between real human beings and harm. But we don't do it alone. With every act of support, you stand with us. And together we'll hold the line. Fund the fight@lambdalegal.org donate this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.