It's not about the ethnicity of one suspect. It's about a continual disregard of the will of the people who don't want the UK to turn into North Africa or Afghanistan. The government seems hell-bent on flooding the UK and EU with migrants to destroy any social cohesion. Did you know that thousands of people have been arrested in the UK over the last few years over social media posts? Some freedom you got there...
By the way, did you see the multiple instances of reporters being surrounded and intimidated (maybe even attacked) by "diverse" protesters out there as they claimed that protests were mostly peaceful? I have, and I'm on a different continent. You won't get good information unless you look for it. The mainstream media and most popular online stuff is completely controlled in most of the world.
Could I suggest this piece from the director of Hope Not Hate? It sounds like you've been reading people repeating the claims that there is somehow a justification for the violence.
That's comparable to the UK figures. In 2023 there were around 80k asylum seekers and refugees, making up around 11% of total immigration. That's the highest since a peak of similar height in 2002. Now, as then, asylum seekers are primarily people from wartorn countries like Aghanistan, Ukraine, or Syria, or people who face persecution for their beliefs or identity. They are generally choosing the UK because they have cultural ties (sometimes due to historic colonialisation by the UK) and/or can speak the language.
What gets me is the current obsession over small boat crossings. This is less than half of all asylum seekers, i.e. 5% or less of total immigration. Most of these people are from wartorn countries, have a valid claim to asylum, and some kind of link to the country. I find it abhorrent that certain demagogues are manipulating the narrative to make it look like this is one of the biggest issues facing the UK.
We should absolutely tackle the people-smuggling gangs that are putting migrants' lives at risk by overloading them onto dinghies and shoving them into the Channel. One of the best ways to do this would be to work on providing a safe alternative path to asylum, as for example exists for Ukrainians and Hong Kongers.
Lol those numbers are probably people who made it to court. Not very long ago (December), border control encountered 15k people per day who turned themselves in for processing. They're getting court dates up to 8 years out. In the meantime, they get to stay and work.
For the benefit of anyone else who gets this far and is curious about the actual figures...
Over December, there were just under 250k encounters with migrants crossing from Mexico. That is an average of roughly 8k per day. These are apprehended and detained pending a decision on whether they can remain, and are not given work authorization [1]. Migrants can be deported if they have committed certain crimes, or are not deemed to be in any danger in their home country.
It is wildly misleading to suggest that 15k people per day are getting through the border and starting work in the US.
It's very hard to trust any source on this topic, which makes it impossible to get a sense of scale, however anecdotal evidence definitely supports 'incompatible' immigration being a problem.
Its not to say we don't have internal problems already, but that doesn't justify importing new problems.
I'm not too sure what the rationale behind the record immigration happening across the "West" is (UK, USA, AU, EU). Is it a population decline thing?
I get that you're very passionate about this. But as soon as I start looking into your claims, I also get a strong sense that you're buying into misunderstood/filtered news that's been tenuously linked together into a compelling false narrative.
> It's not about the ethnicity of one suspect.
You'll need to give me more than that, as the timelines and events strongly suggest that this is tied to the spreading of anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media by high-profile far-right activists. Islamaphobic accounts like Europe Invasion promoted false claims that the attacker was a Muslim immigrant which were viewed over 6m times. The phrase "Muslim immigrant" was employed across far-right influencers and channels; someone even came up with a false name "Ali Al-Shakati". Mosques were a focal point of the attacks. Formerly banned Islamophobic accounts like Andrew Tate and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon got involved in stirring up and validating the hatred and legitimising the violence (protestors in Belfast and Blackpool were witnessed chanting Yaxley-Lennon's alter-ego name). This is happening less than two years after Musk gutted the teams that monitor and remove disinformation on Twitter and reinstated those two accounts. Independent thinktanks and analysts are in consensus that the misinformation spreading across twitter fuelled the violence.
That said, in a sense you're correct; it has nothing to do with the suspect's ethnicity because the attack in question was perpetrated by neither a Muslim nor an immigrant. What's happened here is that far-riight groups have seized on an opportunity and exploited their social media presense (including their newfound Twitter freedoms) in order to foment unrest and thereby self-affirm their own ideologies.
> Did you know that thousands of people have been arrested in the UK over the last few years over social media posts?
I did some research on this. Thousands of arrests have indeed been made under Section 127 of the Communications Act, although this includes any electronic communication (e.g. email as well as social media), and things like sexual offences (sending unwanted obscene images), grooming, stalking, racially aggravated hate crimes etc... . I can't find a source specifically for social media posts, but happy to take a look if you have one. This feels like an irrelevant misleading stat thrown in to muddy the waters.
> did you see the multiple instances of reporters being surrounded and intimidated (maybe even attacked) by "diverse" protesters out there
I've researched this and have been able to find one instance where a Sky news reporter's van had its tyre slashed in Birmingham while covering Muslim counter-protestors. This is abhorrent but it is nowhere near the level of callous violence being perpetrated in the protests: setting fire to buildings, destroying cars, assaulting police and civilians etc... . This also feels like an irrelevant misleading stat thrown in to muddy the waters but again I'm happy to look if you have more to evidence what you're saying.
By the way, did you see the multiple instances of reporters being surrounded and intimidated (maybe even attacked) by "diverse" protesters out there as they claimed that protests were mostly peaceful? I have, and I'm on a different continent. You won't get good information unless you look for it. The mainstream media and most popular online stuff is completely controlled in most of the world.