A bit worried that our NI correspondent
@TailWindHome has been silent... there's interesting commentary...
nohostages.bsky.social
June 10, 2026 at 7:53 AM GMT+1
English commentators need to stop analysing Northern Ireland through an English lens! When you see anti-immigrant riots in Belfast, Ballymena or Larne and immediately reach for "Britain's far-right problem", you're missing half the story. This isn't just racism. It's loyalist terrorism.
The areas most associated with anti-immigrant violence didn't emerge from nowhere. For decades, parts of loyalism have been linked to paramilitary organisations involved in drug dealing, extortion, intimidation, pogroms, and territorial control.
When masked men organise violence, patrol neighbourhoods, intimidate families and drive people from their homes, Northern Irish people recognise patterns that many English commentators seem unable to see. This is an attempt by loyalist gangs to make themselves releavant.
Sometimes, they target Catholics. At other times, it's Eastern Europeans, Africans, LGBT people or Muslims. By treating these riots solely as a reaction to immigration, some commentators launder the reputation of organisations that have spent decades terrorising working-class communities.
So cop on. If your analysis starts and ends with immigration, you're carrying water for people who have profited from drugs, terror, extortion and intimidation while wrapping themselves in flags. To understand Northern Ireland, you need to understand loyalist paramilitarism.
Educate yourself or shut up. Otherwise you're not explaining the problem. You're obscuring it. And that just makes things worse.
