U.K. riots hold lessons for complacent Canada

National Post, 11 August 2024

ANTI-ISRAEL MARAUDERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ALLOWED TO RUN WILD IN OUR STREETS. DON’T THINK OTHER INTEREST GROUPS WON’T FOLLOW SUIT

There was apprehension ahead of the Paris Olympics about urban unrest. The banlieues of Paris erupt in violent riots from time to time. The poor suburbs were last aflame in July 2023. What if it happened again this summer?

Thankfully, Paris was peaceful. The riots were across the Channel in England, where mobs rampaged in the streets of multiple cities. The violence edged toward mass murder, with attempts to block the doors at hotels housing migrants — before setting them alight. This particular lawless violence is an foul expression of “white identity” politics, driven in part by racism and hatred of Muslims. Hence the brick-throwing at mosques.

There’s more to it than bigotry. Decades of neglect and social decay have contributed to the current eruptions.

“The scenes have been horrifying, but somehow not surprising,” writes Andrew MacDougall in The Line. “Something like this has felt inevitable for some time. While the recent brutal murders are what set this off, it has been fuelled by a series of governments not only ignoring the tinder and undergrowth that has been accumulating on British soil, but adding to it as well.”

When the ethnic minority banlieues are set aflame, there is widespread attention to the underlying social dynamics — “the tinder and undergrowth.” So when that lethal virus infects the white majority in parts of Britain, identifying the tinder is to be expected, even as the lethal violence and hatred is condemned unequivocally — as MacDougall does.

Instead of the attention to decreases in manufacturing jobs and increases in immigration, I suggest Canadians be attentive to one specific part of that flammable undergrowth.

When the police lose control of the streets and public spaces to one set of protesters, agitators, occupiers, vandals and aggressors, another set will eventually follow. If antisemitic marauders are more or less permitted to run wild — or sit wild, in the case of campus occupations — then others will take note.

Americans learned that lesson the hard way. Many who characterized the Black Lives Matter riots as “mostly peaceful” in the summer of 2020 were less inclined to characterize the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “mostly peaceful.”

Continue reading at the National Post.