A near-beheading brings British rage to a boil.
Belfast, of course, has seen its share of violence in modern times. During the last three decades of the last century, it was Ground Zero for “The Troubles,” during which terrorism between Catholics and Protestants claimed from eight to 480 lives a year. For those of us who lived through that era, it felt like one of those historical conflicts that would last forever, like the Thirty Years’ War. But eventually it did end, and today it can feel like a memory of the distant past, one to which few young people on either side of the Irish/British border can relate.
No, today both the Republic of Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland are very different places than they were then. It seems only yesterday that both of them were (by Western European standards) poor, tradition-bound, and deeply religious: in the Republic, divorce remained illegal until 1997; in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, abortion was prohibited until 2019. Today, both parts of the island are highly modernized, surprisingly secular, and extremely prosperous: the Republic of Ireland’s GDP per capita is now the fourth highest in Europe.
But not all is paradise on the Emerald Isle. In the Republic as well as in Northern Ireland, the economic progress of recent decades has brought with it, as in other parts of Western Europe, a naive belief that newfound wealth carries with it an obligation to invite hordes of needy, dubious foreigners to share in the largesse. So it is that both Dublin and Belfast, which not long ago were rife with poverty, have become the prosperous hosts to very small but fast-growing Muslim communities: in Dublin, about 37,000 of them, amounting to about a third of one percent of the inhabitants; in Belfast, about 5,000 people, representing about one percent. By current Western European standards, these are very low numbers. For example, you have to go back to around 1985 to find a cohort of Muslims in Oslo that is so small in comparison to the total population.
Even so, the natives have been restless for some time. As Emma Shaw, a Belfast community worker, explained in a BBC interview the other day, many locals resent what they see as the official attitude that immigrants are “entitled to everything when they arrive” and the fact that they’re given access to benefits, government housing, and employment opportunities “that young people from here don’t have.” Now, the people of Belfast have seen what Islam has done elsewhere in Europe, and they know that this kind of thing can only get worse. So why not undo it all while it’s still a relatively easy proposition? It’s one thing to have the natives at each other’s throats, as was the case during the Troubles. But why on earth, once you’re finally attained peace and prosperity, invite more troubles from another part of the world?
For that’s what has happened. On Monday, in yet another recent incident reminiscent of the horrible December 3 murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton, Hadid Alodid, a Muslim immigrant in his thirties, stabbed a man in the head several times in the middle of a street in Belfast before trying to decapitate him. Fortunately for the victim, a local resident named Stephen Ogilvie, who is in his forties, bystanders rushed in to put a stop to the assault. As in the case of Henry Nowak’s killing, a video of the incident went viral online; in it, the perpetrator can be heard shouting “Allahu akbar!” while other voices can be heard screaming; “He’s trying to cut his head off!” The good news is that Ogilvie survived – although he’s entirely lost his left eye, suffered damage to his right eye, and sustained head and back injuries.
After the attack, Alodid was put under arrest and charged with several offenses. Officials also looked into his background, which proved complicated. At first he was described as Somali, then as Sudanese, and finally as a Saudi who relocated to Libya, traveled by boat to France, then flew from Paris to Dublin before crossing the border into the UK in February 2023 and settling in Belfast, where he was granted asylum in the UK until 2028. He appeared in court this past Wednesday, at which time it was revealed that he’d moved in next door to Ogilvie only four days before the attack – and that Ogilvie had helped him move in. Also revealed was that Alodid, upon arrival at a hospital following the assault, boasted “I’ve killed someone”; and when a National Health Service worker tried to help him with an injured hand, Alodid threatened to kill him, too.
Elsewhere in Britain – principally in English cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, and of course London – such incidents as the assault on Ogilvie are old news. But in Northern Ireland, they’re a new phenomenon. Not that the butchering of Ogilvie was Ireland’s first encounter with immigrant violence: in 2022, in Sligo, an Iraqi immigrant named Yousef Palani killed and mutilated two gay men, Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee; last year, two Romanian teenagers sexually assaulted a teenage girl in the Northern Irish town of Ballymena only to end up being let off with no charges. Turmoil ensued. --->READ MORE HERE
And the media won't say why.
Nearly three decades after the end of the Troubles, Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, is once again on fire.
On Monday, June 8, a Sudanese “asylum” seeker attacked a local man on the street with a kitchen knife, slashing him across the face and neck. Graphic video of the attack, which blinded the victim in one eye, rapidly spread online. The suspect, identified as Hadi Alodid, has been charged with attempted murder, possession of a knife in a public place, and making threats to kill.
In response, Belfast erupted.
Rioters took to the streets, hurling bricks and bottles at police, torching vehicles, and burning homes in some Belfast neighborhoods with large migrant populations. Police deployed water cannons. Families were forced to flee burning buildings. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service responded to 62 incidents in a single night. At least 27 people have been left homeless.
Lest there be any doubt: Arson, mob violence and the burning of innocent people’s homes are all indefensible acts. Mobocracy is here, there and everywhere the enemy of civilization. The masked men who burned out their neighbors for no reason disgraced themselves and their cause.
But that hopefully obvious point aside, here is the question the Western press refuses to ask: Why does this keep happening?
Because it does keep happening. Almost exactly a year ago, Northern Ireland convulsed in riots after two Romanian teenagers were charged with the attempted rape of a schoolgirl in Ballymena. The year before that, riots swept across England itself — Southport, Rotherham, town after town — following a mass stabbing at a girls’ dance class by a Muslim terrorist.
The pattern is not difficult to discern. A horrific crime, or series of crimes, is committed. The perpetrator is a migrant, often some variety of “asylum” seeker. The government responds by condemning the violence of an enraged public while studiously avoiding any reckoning with the underlying policies that generated the crime and the inevitable subsequent rage. The Pravda press dutifully follows the official, regime-approved script.
This week’s coverage has been instructive. The framing in outlet after establishment outlet has been nothing if not predictable: “anti-immigrant violence,” “far-right protesters,” “racist riots.” Northern Ireland’s first minister called the rioters “thugs” but had very little to say about the fact a Sudanese national blinded a constituent in Northern Ireland’s largest city. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the stabbing as “sickening” – fine — but devoted considerably more rhetorical energy to warning that “violence against people based on their background would not be tolerated.” --->READ MORE HERE
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