ALT The events of Saturday 3rd August took place in a climate of rapidly accelerating far-right militancy. Before we address its specifics, we feel it is worth presenting our analysis of how this militancy has reached an arguably unprecedented level, at least in the last decade. The current explosion in far-right demonstrations follows the tragic attack in Southport that took the lives of three young girls and injured multiple other children and adults. Immediately, far-right disinformation was spread in local Southport chats that alleged the attacker was a Muslim who came over on a small boat crossing, with neo-fascist groups such as Patriotic Alternative (PA) and the British Movement (BM) seeking to inflame tensions.

ALT This disinformation was deliberate, calculated and blatantly parasitic, with the Southport-based nazi David Adams (who is currently active in both PA and BM) entering the local chat to promote PA before promptly leaving.   The riot in Southport saw a police van set on fire outside of a mosque in an attempt to burn it down, and subsequent protests in Hartlepool, Hull, Liverpool and unfortunately Manchester have seen direct attacks on Mosques and Muslims despite the confirmation coming that the attacker was a Christian born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents: everywhere however has seen a dramatic upsurge in racist and fascist violence both around and outside of the demonstrations.  In light of this blatant lie, the far-right have doubled down on their racism, arguing that it's no longer even about Southport but a generalised cry to protect the figural women and children from an imagined 'invasion' of 'fighting age males.'

ALT Notably, these demonstrations have been predominantly male, and have seen an alarming amount of youth get sucked into violence through influence from fascist adults that will inevitably lead to criminalisation and further radicalisation towards the right.  We therefore understand this movement as having moved past it's oppourtunistic parasitic phase, where a tragedy was shamelessly used to propel the fascist movement: it has now entered a period where the fascists no longer 'need' Southport, but will reference back to it as part of a wider political 'justification' that also includes events, figures and positions like the Romani resistance in Harehills, Tommy Robinson's supposed 'persecution' and deliberately manipulated figures about migrant crime rates.  The media and government’s coverage of these far-right thugs as ‘protesters’ is a calculated decision to legitimize their ‘concerns’ obscuring the fascistic nature of their views which risks emboldening and normalizing their tactic

ALT With regards to Manchester on Saturday, we saw the extent of the state's response to the upsurge in far right militancy: Keir Starmer's new police powers that followed Southport were fully applied to antifascists and ultimately led the GMP to facilitate the violence of the far right demonstration.  From the beginning, multiple crowd control pens were set up that neither demonstration entered, and this meant that antifascists spent the entire day kettled by the GMP with helmets, batons and padded gloves ready, alongside intelligence gathering officers and mounted police behind them for any breaks. The GMP were far more concerned with protecting the fascists 'right' to march and harass marginalised communities in the centre of Manchester.  In the second half of the day, Hijabs were forcibly removed and Muslim women spat on, whilst crowds chanted "Allah is a pedo:" this was entirely preventable.

ALT A BBC image of police in riot gear and a headline saying LIVE: More than 90 arrests after violence erupts at several UK protests”