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- [00:00]
A
So what I would tend to understand by that, as I've seen it used by other people, is bits of the Scottish or the English far right trying to learn the lessons of loyalist paramilitaries and how to act more like loyalist paramilitaries.
- [00:18]
B
As in, like, be more effective because of them and, you know, intimidate more people and do more harm and.
- [00:25]
A
Exactly.
- [00:27]
C
Yeah.
- [00:27]
B
I mean, to me that just seems a little bit like wishful thinking. Like in the same way that these posts, the AI posts that they put out with these 26 locations and this whole focus on like, you know, unite the clans. Like, this spontaneous eruption of violence just was like, Catholics and Protestants are united in racism. Like, isn't that great? I, it just, it doesn't hold true. It doesn't, it doesn't reflect what is actually happening here. But I think you're right in that it is a very useful radicalizing tool because it shows you what is possible in terms of, you know, mobilizing communities against, against each other effectively. Like mobilizing communities to do harm to each other. So I, I, I think the impact of Ulster or Northern Ireland on the UK Far right is very, I think the impact of the, you know, Ulster and British loyalism on the wider UK foray is very, very strong. You know, we had the BNP founder, Jim Dowson. Well, he's Scottish, but he was here for a good while. We've had Jada Franson from Britain first living in North Belfast. We've had, you know, all sorts of individuals are, are here, and Sue Gray. Pardon?
- [01:49]
C
Sue Gray famously ran a pub for several years in a loyalist area, Northern Ireland, for fun.
- [01:56]
B
And there is a lot, I mean, I think the right in general and the far right in particular are better at networking than, you know, the left. Like, they're fine to be in rooms with appalling people and learn tactics from them. And I think that there's also like, like a lot of, they do learn from a lot of kind of Christian and church groups in terms of, like, actual community activism. So, like, paramilitaries claim that they serve their community when actually they, they rule them. But there is a sense of protection that was kind of perhaps needed during the worst days of the Troubles where people felt like, you know, once you were home in your area, you were safe. And I think they're trying to kind of, you know, emulate that again. You know, you will, you know, our areas are safe, but they're effectively intimidating normal people off the streets and out of certain areas. And yeah, do I think that that's what the, like, wider far right are trying to do. Absolutely. My God. Are they going to call it the Ulsterization? That's.
- [02:59]
C
I mean, there's. There are some things you can't help notice. The sort of broader UK far right's specific ambitions to copy sort of things that have been happening in Belfast specifically. You mentioned, you know, that these loyalist areas are, yes, they're affordable, but they're also like festooned with union flags and so on and so on that you're say you're living in the middle of a permanent BNP rally. And I mean, I'm just reminded of a couple of things from the last couple last year or so, which is that all of the racist riots in London have been called Unite the Kingdom and number two. Unite the Kingdom. Unite the Clans. Number two is Operation Raise the Colors, if you remember, the. The attempt to festoon every surface you could find with St. George's crosses. Right. This is. This is. Hey, how can we make this village in, I don't know, Cheshire look more like it's in Belfast?
- [04:00]
B
Gosh. I saw the other day that Jim Dowson from Knights Templar is advertising that you can get a free jack from Belfast. All you have to do is send for postage. So I feel like there's some, you know, Loyalist shed probably on the outskirts of Belfast full of Union Jacks, just like posting them off.
- [04:21]
A
Getting a great deal on flags from my flags guy.
- [04:24]
C
Yeah, yeah, the vexillology warehouse. World's most flammable building because it's full of polyester.
- [04:30]
B
But that is also like an interesting way to obviously spread here. But if money's been changing hands there, like, that could also be an interesting way to do so in a kind of under the radar way. You know, if all these flags that are. And I haven't been really in England since I moved back here, like three, four years ago. Is it as bad as people say? Like, do you go in, like. I just feel since I've moved back here, there's just Union Jacks everywhere. I know there were always Union Jacks in loyalist areas, but they're just everywhere now and they've got bigger and bigger. They're like the size of bed sheets or windows, you know, everything. The culture has just got more and more, like, heightened. And the bonfires, like, you know, we do have to talk about the bonfires. There was those despicable images a few years ago of the refugee ship on top of a bonfire and it was burned. Do you remember that?
- [05:25]
A
Yeah, I do.
- [05:26]
B
It was you know, that type of image is kind of made for social media because then it can be shared all over the. Well, you know, by US and UK and wider European networks of like, you know, again, look, look what's possible. But it is quite sad though as well, because the people who are involved in the bonfire building, you know, kids are taken out of school to build these bonfires. And, you know, Protestant working class kids are doing really badly anyway. Protestant boys are doing particularly badly. You know, they have some of the lowest educational attainment outcomes in the whole of the uk. And I mean here, like, worse than people who neither of their parents speak English, you know, and they're being taken out of school to build these bonfires. And it's this whole big source of community pride. And that's why it's very difficult to unpick it. Because, you know, if your community is offering you hate, you know, you don't really. Where else can you go? You know, like one of the bonfires last year was trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records for being like the biggest bonfire ever. Until Guinness decided that, no, they didn't really want to be supporting this type of paramilitary activity.
- [06:35]
C
I mean, fitting.
- [06:37]
A
Just the way it feels like this is going is if we just cover the entire city in one big enough flag with a bonfire underneath. Just hot box the whole thing.
- [06:49]
B
Yeah, the flags are everywhere. And then because in Belfast the union flag isn't flown every single day over the. The City hall or anything like that has enraged people. So that has kind of produced this. Right. Well, the flags will just be everywhere now. Like, you cannot go on a journey across Belfast without seeing 300 Union flags. Is it that bad in England now
- [07:11]
C
if you're out of London? Yeah, but they're England flags, though, not Union flags. Right, okay.
- [07:18]
D
Even parts of. Yeah, even parts of like the London suburbs, like, you sort of go. You like cross a road and you're just like, oh, my. Like, there was one street, like, and I live on, like, in the suburbs of North London, which is not as bad as the suburbs of South London. But like, yeah, I was driving to, like, drop off some stuff and, you know, this one road, like, completely covered in like, England flags. And I guess, like, I don't know, like, at the moment it's sort of weird because the World cup is on and I'm wondering whether, like, people are kind of using that as sort of an excuse.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah, we need, we need a sort of like, strict division of like, are you. Did you get caught up in the, like, football or you have to use the, like, woke Nike flag from, like, the Euros, otherwise I'm not going to.
- [07:52]
D
I've actually. Yeah, I've actually put mine up. Um, but it says, like, on the corner in brackets is football. Don't be mad at me. Sorry.
- [08:02]
A
Just like football in the middle of the St. George's Cross. No, I mean, it's slightly different for me because I live in Scotland and, you know, Scotland obviously has, you know, more of the kind of sectarianism of Northern Ireland mapped on more directly. And it was interesting to see some of the links there. We also had, like, not on the same scale, but we also had some riots, we had some demonstrations and stuff. And again, very much sort of like, along those really concrete links of, like, oh, well, Scotland, and particularly Glasgow on the west of central Scotland is like the kind of overflow valve for loyalist paramilitaries. You get into too much trouble in Belfast, you come to Glasgow, you come to Edinburgh, and so a lot of those people seem to have been involved. So again, I think it comes back to this thing of, like, there are really sort of concrete, provable links here that you can make, and not just between different parts of the uk, but also internationally. You can think about this as, like, I don't want to sort of like, surely, surely there is a group chat, right? And just at some level, I just know that there is. And it's got to have the worst memes imaginable posted in there. And I dare not speculate as to who is in that group chat, but I'm sure that there is one.
- [09:24]
C
If I'm to speculate, it's maybe that, like, a bunch of guys who did, like, you know, basically, like, who basically broke knees in the 1980s and stuff, are now having to be like, yeah, Rick and Morty's pretty funny. Thank you.
- [09:40]
A
Yeah. I mean, like, this is the real sort of point of divergences. If you were a kind of, like, serious Republican paramilitary back in the day, you're a playwright now. If you're a serious loyalist paramilitary back in the day, you are having to talk to the most annoying American in the world who sends you 50 cry, laughing emojis.