Our society is poisoned by the narrative that the UK is under threat from Black and Brown men. The systematic bid to deem anyone non-white as someone to fear is at critical mass, writes Darren Lewis
We warned about it. Now it’s happening. Pockets of hate from thugs and racists, fed on lies and hungry to choose violence.
I saw some distressing examples on social media last week: a Black man grabbed by the neck by a middle-aged white guy and punched – with his assailant demanding to know his address and telling him to “**** off”.
And the viral clip that appeared to show a racially aggravated assault on two elderly Sikh men outside Wolverhampton railway station. Three teenagers have been arrested.
And the man attacked and racially abused by two men at a Metro Station in North Shields in broad daylight.
Even the bizarre incident as the Premier League returned on Friday night, with an individual in a wheelchair hurling insults at Black Bournemouth player Antoine Semenyo.
Arrests have been made, but these kind of attacks continue across the country.
Many highlight the spike in the number of Muslims and migrants harassed and assaulted in public across England since last summer’s riots and the explosion of hate and xenophobia.
The attackers don’t even care about being filmed with phone cameras these days.
They are fuelled by the rhetoric of the usual suspects spreading fear and division on social media.
You will have heard it from the politicians indulged by print, TV and radio platforms who care less for the safety of ordinary people than they do for the engagement that anger and controversy generates.
It is getting worse.
Last week, Good Morning Britain newsreader Marverine Cole reiterated a truth we’ve known for some time now.
Our society is poisoned by the narrative that the UK is under threat from Black and Brown men.
The systematic bid to deem anyone non-white as someone to fear is at critical mass.
It has never really gone away.
Enoch Powell, the National Front and others pushed it in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
In the past 15 years or so it has been UKIP, then the Tories and Reform in a race to the bottom, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer even pandering to the online right. Now, powered by Big Tech, it is rampant.
When it triggered an indiscriminate targeting of Black and Brown people on the UK’s streets last summer, sections of our mainstream media threw their hands in the air in faux outrage, asking: “How could this happen?”
Now some of those same platforms are producing rage bait for those who either don’t have time or the inclination to read the details.
The attacks you’ve read about here are so often the result. And the tip of the iceberg.
Sections of social – and mainstream – media are dripping with the hate that will get someone killed. And if that happens, not a single one of them will be able to wash the blood off their hands.
The standard of our politicians, on all sides, is so poor there are few principled enough to lead us through this nightmare.
So it’s on us to push back. To support those producing the stats to expose, for example, the lie that London has fallen.
Crime has been proven to have fallen there.
More of us need to debunk the liars and fantasists skewing statistics and throwing around words like “per capita” to claim men arriving on small boats are more likely to commit crime compared to the rest of us.
More of us need to point out the lack of focus on paedophiles like Gordon Hamilton, Stuart Compton and Michael Bolderston, all white, all sentenced in the past few weeks.
As a father of two girls, protecting them from animals from any demographic has, and will always be, a priority.
We now have to protect each other from those who wish to divide us.