Racist riots and imagined purity - paradox: The UK's battle with its multicultural identity

The UK has experienced a surge of riots, civil unrest and disruptive violence over the last week. This unrest erupted after a 17-year-old Christian boy, born to Rwandan parents in Wales, killed three girls in Southport. Misinformation on social media platform X about the killer being Muslim is seen as the catalyst for anti-Muslim attacks on mosques and Muslim communities in Southport, leading to the burning of hotels housing refugees and asylum seekers.

These protests have become more organised and are spreading to different cities around the UK, including London, Bolton, Sunderland, Blackpool and Nottingham. Many UK-based analysts and media commentators are describing this as unusual, noting that the UK has not seen civil unrest on this scale in recent years. Some view this as behavior unbecoming of the world’s former biggest Empire, likening it to “third-world country” conduct. Many attribute this outbreak of far-right insurgency, primarily involving the white population attacking Muslim and people of colour British citizens, along with refugees, solely to misinformation on social media.

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While social media is, indeed, a key platform for inciting hatred, perpetuating racist rhetoric, and facilitating organisation of hate-based protests, it cannot be divorced from the larger context. Britain, like many Western countries, has long-standing issues with racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment. The Conservative government, in power for the last fourteen years, has intensified notions that ‘outsiders’ are dangerous to the country. This hate-based, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric has been perpetuated in public speeches by figures like Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman, who have unapologetically declared that ‘multiculturalism’ has failed and used ‘go home’ slogans publicly. Ironically, Braverman is herself the daughter of immigrants, and Johnson has Turkish roots.

This scapegoating of ‘immigrants’ is not a monolithic concept; it particularly targets Muslims and brown communities. It represents the epitome of racialising and dehumanising specific communities in the UK, operating on multiple levels: systemic, structural and legal. I refrain from using the term ‘Islamophobia’ because it implies a ‘fear’ of Muslims, which is an illogical premise that shifts blame to the victims rather than the perpetrators. This anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric has repeatedly treated British Muslims as dangerous and disloyal foreigners, despite their citizenship status. They have had to prove their belonging repeatedly, in a country that had invaded their ancestors’ lands and looted from them years ago.

When Sadiq Khan became London’s first Muslim Mayor, born to immigrant parents, Zac Goldsmith ran a toxic anti-Islamic campaign against him. Boris Johnson was seen making statements comparing Muslims wearing veils to ‘letterboxes’ and ‘bank robbers’. These public, top-down racist and discriminatory remarks only emboldened far-right extremists, further intensifying outward expressions of racism and hatred on an interpersonal level.

What the world is currently witnessing in the UK is a far-right racist riot and terrorist insurgency, bringing to light the structural and systemic extremist aspects of British politics and social structure. Using certain groups as scapegoats for national issues is not new; it echoes historical instances, like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and, more recently, Hindutva India and the US under Donald Trump. These are examples of populist regimes that employ an extreme, negative form of nationalism, authoritarianism and racism to appeal to the masses. Beyond this, nationalism itself constructs the concept of ‘others’ as a threat to the nation, with this ‘other’ being malleable according to dominant political agendas. While nationalism is not inherently bad, its impact depends greatly on how it is deployed and the other political ideologies involved. One thing is certain: nationalism mobilises people to kill and die for an idea of exclusivity in a way unprecedented in history.

READ: What is behind the attacks on Muslims and migrants by far-right groups in the UK?

The problem the UK faces now is not just a momentary outbreak of violence, but a deeply systemic and ideological one. Take Toryism, for example, the ideology informing the British Conservative party, which broadly advocates for the power of monarchy, the Anglican Church and traditional British values (however defined). When Benedict Anderson, a British-Irish political scientist, coined the term ‘Imagined Communities’, this is precisely the kind of imagination he was referring to. He argued that nationalism’s power lies in its ability to imagine new things as old, providing emotional legitimacy to national artifacts. The strength of nationalism, he posited, lies in the fact that so many people are willing to kill and die for such ‘limited imaginings’.

The Great Britain that the Tories wish to revive or reconstruct built its greatness through violent colonisation of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The Empire’s grandeur was founded on stealing wealth from colonies, enslaving and exploiting local populations – all under the guise of ‘civilising’ the uncivilised. These colonies were considered extensions of Britain, yet when people migrated from these colonies to Britain, the great Kingdom struggled to integrate the very people it had looted from and whose culture it had appropriated, in forms of food, clothes and ideas.

It is the power of collective amnesia that keeps only certain memories of this dark past alive in a way that serves extremist populism and far-right groups.

As I read horrifying social media posts by friends and colleagues in the UK, I am reminded of my time as a PhD student there a few years ago. While researching nationalism, I found the British case particularly intriguing. Often used as a classic example of 18th and 19th century nationalism, I discovered the British case to be full of paradoxes: from its unification as the UK to becoming the world’s largest empire, from monarchy to democracy, the battle between far-right and far-left ideologies, and the classic narrative of immigrants versus “pure” British values.

What does it mean to be British, and what makes Britain what it is today? If the greatness of British history is its celebrated imperial past, then what about the crimes of colonialism and the blood of ancestors of those multicultural communities who are, today, UK citizens legally, but perhaps not culturally? These questions highlight the complex nature of acclaimed real ‘British national identity’ and its historical legacy.

The British colonial past, though criticised by many, seems to remain alive in the country’s dominant narrative – discursively, politically and socially. This represents a new form of neo-colonialism, different from its original counterpart. It embodies the paradox of “We can civilise them, steal from them, exploit them and take their lands, but God forbid they integrate into our nation-state legally – that’s cultural invasion and political danger.”

For me, the national myths of greatness in UK’s story never quite added up. Instead, they highlighted the classic contradictions of nationalism – a project that is never complete and can easily be manipulated.

Perhaps the starkest paradox of present-day extremist populism, which borrows from a negative, inward-looking nationalism, is this: it targets immigrants, even though migration has been natural to human societies throughout history. It blames religion for extremism, yet populist nationalism itself has become the new extremism, plaguing advanced first-world nations, like the United Kingdom of Britain.

This version of nationalism ironically mirrors the very extremism it claims to oppose, creating a cycle of intolerance and division in a country built on a history of global interactions, exploitations and influences.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.