Daniel York Loh describes the real confrontations that occurred ahead of recent racialised violence and connects the dots between earlier incidents such as at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day 2023. Featuring the usual suspects.
Back in November 2023 I found myself in the bizarre and disorientating position of attending both the Armistice Day commemorations in Whitehall and the pro Palestine march that had aroused such contrived and manipulative opprobrium from right wing politicians and commentators.
Because I wrote a play, Forgotten 遗忘, based on the experiences of the World War One Chinese Labour Corps I’ve been invited since to be part of the wreath-laying procession during the service by the Cenotaph, as part of a ‘Chinese community’ group, after which I had planned to join the Palestine march which then Home Secretary Suella Braverman had spent weeks raining mendacious hate upon.
The odious Douglas Murray, ‘honorary editor’ of The Spectator, joined in, tweeting from America that we peace marchers were ‘planning to defame our war dead and desecrate the Cenotaph itself’ This, continued The Thinking Man’s Racist, was ‘the tipping point’. ‘If such a march goes ahead’, implored Murray, ‘then the people of Britain must come out and stop these barbarians’.
I’ll never forget walking out for the ceremony with the atmosphere all around us thick with tension and rage. The ‘patriots’ surrounding us chanted ‘Inger-lund’ at one point during a silent pause then ‘oh Tommy Tommy’ (of all things) during the prayer (which actually mentioned Gaza).
There was a group of them behind us laughing sniggering and messing about loudly, climbing up gantries, complaining about being ‘packed like sardines’ (do they not want people to come?) handing up an orange Sainsburys bag full of cans
One of our group heard someone say something about “f*cking ch*nks”
Everyone saw the carnage that broke out afterwards in what was a forerunner – both in the incitement of Murray, Farage , Robinson, Anderson, Fox etc with their constant use of words like ‘war’ and ‘army’ against’ barbarians’ and ‘animals’ – and the inevitable (to many of us) end result.
Already in the build up to Armistice Day I had been tweeted at by someone who described themselves as an ‘ex-serviceman’ threatening serious violent consequences to ‘you and your scummy mates’ if he saw us anywhere near the Cenotaph on the day.
“F*ck off” he said, “don’t f*cking talk to me”, then again and again, “f*ck off”.
Earlier in the day I’d stopped to take a photo of the XR Ceasefire Now banner being set up in Trafalgar Sq. A man in shorts behind me said loudly, “what about all the dead Israeli babies then?”, so I replied to him that a ceasefire would save hostages as well.
A few years ago I came across a American white supremacist meme: ‘Day of the Rope’. Chilled by the words I googled it to discover it comes from a book called The Turner Diaries by neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce. The plot outlined on Wikipedia details a scenario where the titular Turner and his colleagues wage a guerrilla war against what he terms the “System”, a loose network of of government, media, society and finance, which are depicted as all being led by Jews after System begins implementing numerous repressive anti-white laws : by making it a hate crime for white people to defend themselves when crimes are committed against them by non-white people etc.
Sound familiar?
The White supremacist paranoia of replacement and subjugation erupted in terrifying scenes around Britain at the beginning of August after the kind of build-up that has become symptomatic of the post-COVID rabbit hole we find ourselves existing in.
A horrific knife attack on defenceless children resulting in three senseless murders, social media filling with speculation then followed immediately by feverish certainty that the still unidentified killer was an ‘illegal immigrant’ who was a Muslim and arrived on a boat last year complete with a nonsensically fictitious Arabic name.
When the suspect turned out to be none of the above, though still non-White enough to arouse racist ire, the hysterical pitch had been dialed so high there was no turning back as the ‘Farage Riots’, as they’ve come to be known, exploded in an incoherently thuggish outbreak of brick attacks on mosques, people of colour being attacked in the streets and dragged out of their cars, refugee hotels being set on fire with residents cowering inside, advice centres and libraries burned down, looted Greggs outlets and chants of ‘who the f*ck is Allah?’ and, most troublingly of all, the echoing of Tory and Reform slogans ‘Stop The Boats’ and ‘we want our country back’, (that the likes of Lee Anderson, Tice and Farage tweeted on a daily basis during the recent general election campaign, along with their claims to represent a ‘people’s army’).
We don’t mention that then Conservative Prime Minister, now Leader of the Opposition Minister, Rishi Sunak stood in front of what was a Tory slogan throughout the election campaign any more.
Kinder. Gentler. Politics.
And of course the ubiquitous ‘oh Tommy Tommy’, song in eulogy to the pied piper of Islamophobic stigma, Stephen Yaxley Lennon aka Tommy Robinson.
Nothing summed up the impossibility of the situation than footage, from the initial orgy of racist destruction in Southport itself, of an incredibly courageous young woman running to the centre of the storm with a makeshift homemade sign welcoming refugees and deploring racism.
Off camera can be heard one of Lee Anderson ‘people’s army’ berating “it’s not racism, ya stupid c*nt” We’re constantly told that these people have ‘legitimate concerns’ that need to be ‘heard’. But how is there any ‘discussion’ with the inherent white privilege of being able to shout down and physically assault as some kind of ‘right’ while never even beginning to acknowledge the jaw-dropping racism of somehow feeling justified in hurling bricks at a mosque and arson-attacking hotels with migrants inside because a homicidal act was committed by someone who happened to not be White British?
And here emerged an excerpted interview clip from Douglas Murray again, first published in November 2023 when thousands of Palestinians had already been killed by Israel newly emerged and gone viral on social media as the streets seethed with violence proffering that
“if the army will not be sent in then the public will have to sort this out themselves and it’ll be very brutal“. While bitterly pouting “I don’t want them here’”,like a spoiled posh child being asked to share his expensive toys with his visiting cousins.
And how more spoilt does it get because, in reality, the White supremacist Right got everything they wanted in the last ten years. They got their Brexit, they got their Boris, they got their no deal.
And now they want all of us gone. And will that lead to flower dances and peace and happiness?
It’s hard to believe that would be the case.
Daniel York Loh is a writer, filmmaker, actor and musician. His first stage-play, The Fu Manchu Complex was produced at Ovalhouse. His second, Forgotten 遗忘, played at Arcola and Plymouth Theatre Royal in 2018. He is one of 21 “writers of colour” featured in the best-selling award-winning essay collection The Good Immigrant.
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