They weren’t protests
Last week I was listening to Eddie Nestor’s show on BBC London on my way back from a delivery run out to south Essex, and I heard him tell us he was going to be discussing the sociological explanations for “the protests” or some such thing. I was planning to write the show an email, but he didn’t get to that segment of the show before I arrived back at base and then I had other things to do. But I have to say something. It’s to be expected that racist agitators and propagandists will call the riots earlier this month protests, but a BBC presenter should be calling them what they were: riots.
Although there were a few peaceful demonstrations, the incidents in which mobs attempted to storm mosques, or set fire to hotels with people in them, or attacked police or counter-demonstrators, or destroyed shops, were not peaceful protests that got out of hand. Eyewitnesses reported that they attacked people as soon as they arrived, both police and anti-fascist counter-demonstrators. Others reported that the rioters disappeared when it was time to catch the last trains out. Protests are typically aimed at the government, either here or in another country; these were largely aimed at ordinary people who were in some incidents caught on film, dragged out of their cars or stopped as they drove and asked their race. Protests do not involve this sort of behaviour. This is simply lawless thuggery.
I’ve been on a few protests over the years: anti-cuts, anti-Brexit and most recently against the Gaza genocide. We marched and we chanted slogans and then we listened to some speeches and cheered along. There have been some arrests at the Palestine protests, usually not for violence but for speech offences such as posters deemed racist or celebratory of terrorism. Was anyone stopped in their car by a gang of men and asked if they were Jewish? Not once (we would know about it if anyone had been). During my childhood when the Poll Tax was introduced, there were riots, but this was because an unjust tax forced people to choose between impoverishment and losing the right to vote. These were not race riots which targeted ordinary people who were unarmed and going about their business.
Clearly there are agendas behind this use of ‘protest’ to refer to the organised racist violence: some, who share the bigotries of the attackers are playing down the violence while emphasising the “public anger” behind it, while others intend to tar actual peaceful demonstrators with the same brush because they cause minor irritation or are opposed to their politics (hence the insistence of some people on calling them “pro-Hamas demonstrations”, an obvious coded demand for them to be banned). So, by calling orgies of violence ‘protests’, we lump both into the same category. But it also smacks of fear and cowardice when BBC radio presenters use this dishonest euphemism: it sounds as if the management are clearly scared of offending someone powerful by using harsh language, when words like ‘riot’ and ‘violence’ describes those incidents perfectly, and ‘protest’ does not even come close.
Possibly Related Posts:
- The benefits of learning Jewish history
- There’s a genocide going on
- The Holocaust, Gaza and “how genocide happens”
- Guardian caves in to racist pressure on Gaza
- The irrelevance of the Blood Libel
