Tens of thousands marched in Belfast, Derry and Glasgow on June 13, answering the racist mobs that had terrorized immigrant families days earlier.
The rally outside Belfast City Hall sent a clear message: the racists do not speak for Belfast. Demonstrators carried signs reading “Refugees welcome,” “Belfast stands against racism” and “Riots don’t speak for Belfast.” The crowd chanted, “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”
A separate anti-racist rally was held in Derry. In Glasgow, thousands also marched against the far right.
Trade unions joined the Belfast rally. Carmel Gates of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions praised health care workers, firefighters, bus drivers and teachers who “picked up the pieces” after the racist attacks. She led the crowd in the chant: “Workers’ rights are migrants’ rights, same struggle, same fight.”
That is the answer the far right fears most: workers standing together against racism.
The mass rallies came after days of racist violence across Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, on June 9, attacks were organized against immigrants and asylum seekers by masked racist mobs. In East Belfast, a group of about 200 burned cars, smashed windows, and set fires in the homes of workers’ communities across the city and region.
The racist mobilization spread quickly. In East Belfast, masked men filled the streets, set bins and cars on fire and blocked roads. Burning bins were pushed into a bus on Newtownards Road, forcing bus service to be suspended.
The attacks did not stop there. A Middle Eastern supermarket in South Belfast was set on fire. A Turkish barber shop in Ballyclare, County Antrim, was attacked. Racist disturbances were also reported in Portadown, Derry and Newtownabbey.
The far right used a Belfast stabbing as a signal to mobilize. Tommy Robinson, founder of the fascist English Defence League, posted a video calling the stabbing “another invader attack on our people.” The post carried the slogan “Millions must go” and listed times and places for street actions that night.
Elon Musk fueled the pogroms, spreading Robinson’s post on X and adding his own call: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” He also amplified far-right politician Rupert Lowe, who demanded that “millions and millions” of people be forced out of the country.
Musk claims, like other white nationalists, that immigrants are a threat to “Western civilization.” That must be understood in the context that Musk’s wealth was accrued by his apartheid-Nazi father. Musk came out of apartheid South Africa’s white settler class, whose privilege rested on Black labor, stolen land and racial terror. Today he uses X to spread the same politics in modern form: immigrants as invaders, white people as victims, and billionaires as defenders of “civilization.”
The result was terror for immigrant families. In Belfast, families had to be escorted out of their homes as masked mobs set fires, moved through neighborhoods and built roadblocks out of burning garbage bins. Sudanese business owners closed early and pulled down steel shutters. The Belfast Islamic Center canceled evening prayers.
Racist mobs were also unleashed in Glasgow and Liverpool, cities with an historic presence of the right-wing Ulster British Unionist forces. Hundreds of masked men attacked migrants, and a hotel housing asylum seekers was attacked in Liverpool.
The riots incited by Musk occurred after a tragic incident in which the suspect, a Sudanese man, Hadi Alodid, stabbed and gravely injured Stephen Ogilvie. Police also say he threatened a health care worker after the attack and appeared to be in the throes of a mental crisis. Presently, he is in prison waiting for his case to be heard.
Stephen Ogilvie’s family rejected the racist campaign being built around the attack. In a statement, they said migrants make “a deeply valuable contribution” to society, including in health care and hospitality. “We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,” the family said.
Alodid, 30, a Sudanese refugee granted asylum in 2023 and permitted to remain in Britain until 2028, has been charged with attempted murder. Nearly 4 million people have been forced to flee Sudan since 2023, when a war broke out, exacerbating disease outbreaks and the country’s economic and political instability.
The fascist attacks were the second major occurrence of anti-immigrant violence organized by the far-right forces within a week. They followed racist riots in Southampton and across England. Last December, Vickrum Digwa, a British-born Sikh, was jailed for killing 18-year-old student Henry Nowak in an altercation that began with Nowak insulting the Sikh. Although Digwa is currently in prison, Nowak’s death is now being used as a rallying cry.
East Belfast is the historic stronghold of the loyalists and the Orange Order. Before the 1998 accord that ended the 30-year sectarian conflict, the Order’s annual July 12 marches — marking the 1690 victory of William of Orange, King of England, over Ireland — were a regular occasion for loyalist attacks on Irish nationalist communities.
More recently, most people in Northern Ireland are unified by dealing with the problems posed by the British Brexit legislation. Brexit complicates economic relations with the rest of Europe and the Irish Republic, a member of the European single market.
There is a reason now for Musk, Trump and NATO to incite old divisions. The Irish Republic, with a military force of 7,500, has never been part of the U.S., British, European or NATO forces.
Now, Ireland is being pushed into the European war drive.
Ireland has set aside €1.7 billion for military buildup from 2026 to 2030 — a 55% jump over the previous plan. The money will buy aircraft, naval systems, radar, drones, armored vehicles and military infrastructure.
In February, it unveiled its first Maritime Security Strategy. That is a five-year plan meant to patrol the surrounding Atlantic and enforce maritime sanctions against Russia.
Arms makers and oligarchs like Musk will pocket the windfall. Workers in Ireland and Northern Ireland, like workers across Britain and Europe, are being told to take the hit — less for wages, housing, health care and social needs, more for war.
That is the wider setting for the racist agitation. When governments demand more money for war and less for the working class, the far right looks for a scapegoat. It tells workers to blame refugees and migrants instead of the bosses, landlords, war profiteers and governments attacking their lives.
The budgetary increase will line the pockets of the military industry, namely, oligarchs like Elon Musk. Workers in Ireland and Northern Ireland, like those in Britain and the rest of Europe, are being commanded to “bite the bullet.” That is, take the hit on their living standards to pay for inflated military spending.
What is a better diversion than to try to turn the focus on attacking the most oppressed? This isn’t going to work because the greater part of the population is expressing disgust with the violence against their neighbors.
Martin Craigs, who was born in England but has lived in Northern Ireland since 1969, said that the riots were “a new chapter of violence and a new chapter that is deeply saddening when we thought we were moving away from street conflict, burned-out cars, car bombs and shootings.”
The troublemakers were “only a tiny proportion of people,” he said. He added that he believes that people need to take a stand against the violence.
There is evidence of that. Beginning the day after the riots, there was more alarm when a list of addresses that might be targeted by protesters circulated online. Around 400 volunteers helped to accommodate some 200 people, especially the 12 families who had to be evacuated from their homes the previous night, said Ms. Mohammed, who is originally from Sudan but has been in Northern Ireland for more than a decade.
Workers in health care and social services said that it was completely unacceptable that anyone should be “intimidated or feel too frightened to come to work.”
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