Racist Riots In The UK And Their Wider Repercussions

 Tahir Mahmoud

In some parts of the world, the British political system is still associated with undeserved intellectualism and sophistication. The latest race riots led by an archaic socio-political trend has not only exposed this fallacy but also buried the intellectual image of Britain. Even proponents of western liberalism have noticed this reality.

As the riots were erupting across cities in the UK, a prominent Portugues intellectual Bruno Macaes wrote that “the idea that Western societies could conduct the war in Gaza the way it has been conducted, appealing to the complete dehumanisation of Palestinians, without awakening the worst demons at home never made much sense. We are witnessing this dynamic in Britain.”

Macaes’s observation hints at a deeper systemic problem that needs to be explained in practical terms. It must relate to ongoing global events.

Prior to analyzing the implications of the riots in the UK on the overall western power projection capabilities, it is important to have a realistic understanding of the UK itself.

It’s a tiny country with a shrinking mediocre economy and Soviet-style repressive mechanisms against those who do not tow the establishment line. However, due to its history, Britain represents an aura of western imperialist dominance.

Destabilizing socio-political processes in the UK cannot be brushed away as simple domestic disturbances. This applies particularly at a time when western hegemony is facing multiple obstacles in several spheres, from geopolitical to demographic.

Racist mobs rampaging through the streets of British cities are a manifestation of a broken political system with no remedy to revive it. This fact was best presented in an analysis by a former Italian diplomat Marco Carnelos.

Assessing the latest parliamentary elections in Britain, Carnelos pointed out that “the UK Labour Party last week won around 33 percent of the vote in national elections, with turnout at around 60 percent. The party has been assigned more than 60 percent of the seats in parliament. Under leader Keir Starmer, Labour received millions fewer votes than it did under the smeared (and later expelled by Starmer) Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 - and yet, the result was portrayed as a Labour landslide.”

Emergence of figures like Nigel Farage in Britain and Donald Trump in the US is a symptom of the malfunction of the established order, be it in Britain, the US or France. Trump and Farage-types emerged as the “answer” because the likes of Barack Obama and Tony Blair nudged their respective societies towards normalization of a sophisticated version of fascism.

Decades of demonization and institutionalization of kafkaesque mechanisms against Muslims naturally seeped into the wider political domain. As pointed out by Professor Joseph Massad “when Trump arrived on the scene, he did not tell poor white Americans anything that they had not been taught by US culture, media, and evangelical Protestantism since Billy Graham…Trump represents these corporate aspirations, which have been pushed by the US liberal media and culture for decades. Indeed, Trump is a creation of white American liberalism’s own trajectory, not a contradiction to it.”

Massad’s analysis of the Trump phenomenon and Macaes’s observation of the link between wholehearted western support for Israeli genocide in Gaza and internal destabilization in Britain, are basic introduction on what internal politics within many western countries will look like in the near future.

As the economic power of western regimes continues to decline, the ruling elite will divert dissatisfaction towards immigrants particularly Muslims by blaming them for the economic woes. Such scapegoating will escalate with time. While this is straight out of the old European political playbook, the world of 2024 is quite different.

Communication technologies, emerging alternative power blocs and most importantly the willingness of masses in western societies and abroad to challenge the west-centric narrative is taking western regimes into uncharted territory. Things which previously were considered “alternative” and “dangerous” are now mainstream.

It is no longer marginalized activists which shake the roots of western political and economic narratives. Today it is a very mainstream thing. From Yanis Varoufakis to Craig John Murray, it is now a norm to take on the western ruling caste head on.

Reading up to this point, readers might assume that we are trying to argue that the primary challenge faced by western regimes will emerge from within. This is not the thrust of this analysis.

While internal destabilization will certainly reduce the global influence of western regimes, it is the pushback from the victims of American/western imperialism which will end the west-centric global order.

Today, the emerging pushback has strategic tangible and non-tangible aspects to it.

For decades, it was an enforced norm for western regimes to create instability in other geopolitical spheres. Times have changed.

Today, Islamic Iran is bringing a strategic tangible pushback into western geopolitical sphere by supplying Russia with ballistic missiles.

However, it is the non-tangible pushback which matters most. One of its many important symbolic manifestations took place recently in the Turkish parliament. During one of its sessions, Turkish parliamentarians held up posters of Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar.

This signals a tectonic mental and intellectual regional shift. Governments worldwide no longer fear to take positions which openly challenge the redlines imposed by US imperialism.

The irony is that the harder the western regimes try to retain the US imposed global order outside of their borders, the greater the internal destabilization they will face. By targeting Muslim activists abroad through western-backed dictators, there will be higher pushback by Muslims inside western countries.

Economic warfare on China, Iran, Venezuela and Russia will increase internal economic woes. Greater weaponization of the dollar will only spur the global drive to trade in other currencies. The list goes on.

Considering that western political systems are becoming increasingly draconian and have dropped all pretense of civility, internal problems like the riots in the UK will become more widespread.

Currently, it seems that the western political clique assumes that only by doubling down on their outdated methodologies by supressing dissent abroad and at home they can retain their primacy.

Unfortunately, political apathy in many western countries disarms the societies from being able to institute real change which would benefit them as well as provide relief to the wider world.

United Kingdom