Weltschmerz à Gogo<p>Six months after the anti-immigrant riots across (mostly) England (<a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/FarageRiots" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FarageRiots</span></a>), the Institute of Race Relations has just published a kind of interim statement on a year-long research project. The authors expect to publish the full results later this year.</p><p>===</p><p>Interim findings:</p><p>On racially-motivated violence</p><p>- Racially-motivated violence inflicted on communities clearly mirrored dominant political and media statements, including slogans, such as ‘stop the boats’ and ‘taking our country back’. It was also infected by far-right claims about two-tier justice, with claims such as ‘you’re protecting them while they target kids’ and ‘nonce protectors’.</p><p>- Racially-motivated violence included organised attempts to attack mosques, set fire to buildings with migrants inside, and opportunistic attacks on individuals from racialised communities. Attacks were accompanied by threats to kill and calls for mass deportations and the public identification of buildings and community resources accessed by migrants and refugees.</p><p>On the response of the criminal justice system</p><p>- The courts, with a few exceptions, have failed to acknowledge the full extent of the racial dimension within the violence. The official position from government, that the rioting was evidence of ‘thuggery’, and ‘violent disorder’ existing ‘across the ideological spectrum’, has been reproduced in prosecution and sentencing.[iii]</p><p>- One-in-five of those prosecuted (in the cases studied) were individuals responding to the riots – amongst whom are migrants and refugees, those who attended anti-racist mobilisations and/or those who defended community buildings and Muslims who defended mosques.</p><p><a href="https://irr.org.uk/article/irr-statement-on-research-findings-on-charging-and-sentencing-patterns-following-the-summer-2024-racist-riots/?ml_sub=2674836629851477653&ml_sub_hash=x8m3" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">irr.org.uk/article/irr-stateme</span><span class="invisible">nt-on-research-findings-on-charging-and-sentencing-patterns-following-the-summer-2024-racist-riots/?ml_sub=2674836629851477653&ml_sub_hash=x8m3</span></a></p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Southport" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Southport</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/England" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>England</span></a></p>