Nottingham attack... Keyboard warriors!

[BB78910]

Had no idea how to name this thread!

A news article popped up on my Facebook feed of a stabbing that happened in Nottingham yesterday.

Horrible news, and obviously really hard to hear that knife crime is still so prominent in our communities.

Within the article itself, there has been no mention of who the attacker was. No mention of his background, only that he was 16 years old. I even googled for other news sources and none of them have named the suspect even though he has been apprehended. As he is under age, he cannot be named publicly at this stage.

I often head to the comments to see a summary of an article on Facebook, because a lot of them are click bait headlines. I just could not believe the amount of hate in the comment section!!!

I'm copying and pasting some of them:

"stop letting the boats in"

"Mass deportations now simple"

"Every knife/machete crime in the UK now is more than likely to be perpetrated by immigrants"

"Stop letting them in"

Amongst other horrific comments about the Muslim community and immigration.

I know that Facebook is wild for things like that, but it's really sad to see how whenever anything bad happens, even without complete facts, immigrants and POC are automatically the reason.

There's a lot of that on Facebook and tik tok. Yet when the perpetrator of a crime is known and white, you either see very few or no comments or you see the opposite of all that.

I saw a shoplifting video on tiktok and the perpetrators (a man and a woman) are white. The comments were:

"Cost of living has been too high. Can't blame them"

"Tesco should stop putting their prices up and maybe people will stop stealing"

Things like that. But if it were a different race? The comments would been too much and just disgusting.

You'll see comments like:

"Well well well..."

"The usual suspects"

"Deport them"

"The same race everytime"

"They're always like that"

"No father at home"

Some people have started repeating the same things when the criminals are white...I'm sure it's for revenge.

[Edited spelling]

@ArrrghNoName honestly awful. I do sort of hope that this boy turns out to be white British.

Its horrible isn't it that when these things happen we hope the attacker was white.

It's sad, isn't it? When you're treated as a monolith, you're always on edge and hoping a member of your group isn't the culprit or else the usual group hate will crop up again.

But if he/she is white, they'll be treated and spoken about as an individual.

It’s the same on our local page unfortunately. A venue was advertising an LGBT coffee morning type thing and the comments were absolutely horrific. I won’t repost them here but there were probably 30/40 that I would call very very homophobic.

If you look at recent violent and well reported crimes in France, UK and Germany - there is a link with the perpetrators not being white and of British heritage. I believe the France and Germany killings were by Syrian refugees.

We could ignore this and propose whattaboutery or we could acknowledge it and ask ourselves whether our immigration processes are allowing some people into our countries that may not be suited to our western customs.

That said, riling up a section of society that's already angry with click baity articles probably isn't a helpful medium to aid discussion going forwards.

A few months ago several roads in my town were evacuated on suspicion of an explosive device in a house. Facebook was full of racist comments along the lines of 'this is what happens when you let anyone in', 'stop the boats etc'. The man eventually arrested was a middle aged white man. Did anyone admit they were wrong? Of course not.

I find people pretty universally harsh regardless of the colour of the perpetrator. For context, I’m in one of the smaller satellite towns of Nottingham. We have had some fairly bad incidents recently- stabbings, armed police trying to find lads with a machete in my area etc. fairly consistently over the last 6 months or so.

People are universally condemnatory about it, the youngsters are usually white.
Lots of name and shame about predators too, again usually white. When it’s someone who isn’t white, then yes there will be additional racists comments. There was a flasher/masturbator shared on FB recently and there were racist comments among the many calling for him to be castrated with rusty secateurs.

It’s robust round here.

Our facebook spotted is just as awful. Full of thick bigots.

I am not ignoring any of that but it would be nice if the racists and idiots could fact check first - but I suppose they don't want facts do they?

Our local group is normally the dog poo/reccomendations/opening times variety, but just recently there’s been a lot of right-leaning posts, including general discussions about bringing back the death penalty (most are in favour), stopping the boats (and how this could be forcibly done), and how many people should be deported (a lot, apparently). I feel like the UK is almost brewing up its own MAGA movement right now.

This virtue signalling of slamming all people with concerns as 'thick biggots' is what has got out country in the current tensions it's in.

You can't expect to only be able to name call one way and be faux horrified when other groups are name called.

Respect has to come from all sides and I say that as someone who sits firmly centre.

Even "thick" people deserve a voice. An opinion. The key difference with "thick" people is how they articulate themselves. They often don't have the vocabulary or finesse to make their argument sound worthy. But it doesn't always necessarily mean there is no basis for their opinions.

All people deserve a voice and an opinion. Even the "thick biggots'". Shutting down others because they are not wholly far left or agree with trending narratives is not a democracy. It leads to anger, resentment. I think we've already seen the results of that.

This isn't the 'gotcha' you think it is. "Idiots" you say? Do you think these labels to address a group of people is doing our society any favours "racists" "thick" "idiots" "gammons" "white middle class male" . How is labelling and shutting down a whole group of opposing people helping our country right now ? Do you think it's been a success?

What you're not realising is , it's not progressive. You've just swapped your target

There's definitely seems to be more racism and bigotry around, and too many people excusing it. And have you noticed if you call it out, you get told you are part of the reason for it!
It's sad and depressing.

@PearPineappleApplePen The key difference with "thick" people is how they articulate themselves. They often don't have the vocabulary or finesse to make their argument sound worthy.

I don't entirely disagree with you but when they express their "voice" by attempting to burn down hotels with actual people inside then it doesn't make one feel inclined to listen. No matter how much of a valid point they may or may not have.

It's been like this for months, definitely since the summer riots. So dressing. I've seen a photo of the perpetrator's family. Looks like he was mixed race. White mother and maybe black or mixed race dad. This will be enough for some people to have a field day.
So utterly depressing how rife racism is now and how normalised it's become.

By idiots I mean people who rant online without actually checking facts and by racists I mean people who assume all crimes are committed by immigrants.
Hope thats a bit clearer for you

I think that point would be valid if the perpetrator was announced as being from that demographic, then you can have a discussion as democracy allows us to. There is also a difference in discussing policy in a respectful manner and using derogatory blanket terms that are designed to hurt and put people down.

And if that is the case, it’ll be upsetting to see that because of his skin colour he won’t be deemed as ‘British’ either.

Nottingham and Southport murders are still too horrid for me to forget. Same with the acid attack man in London. I remembered clearly the outrage in MN along the same lines. When people were questioning why the Southport murderer was not named. I think unfortunately people are now too upset to wait for confirmation of facts. Specially when they are being let down by a bunch of people defending the perpetrators rather than having empathy for victims of these murders in the first instance. Being upset about this does not mean being a bigot.

I've had to leave FB local group for this reason. There are far more openly bigoted people around (albeit behind their keyboards) riling one another up and some of the tired cliches that get banded around dressed up as facts (Dave is outraged because "they come off the boat, get themselves a three bedroom all mod cons house and all the benefits going". Even though Dave cannot tell me how he knows this because he hasn't met anyone in the above situation or knows anyone who has. But it's definitely true. Apparently 🙄). Facebook should just rename itself BigotBook.

Indeed, doesn't matter if his grandparents were born here, he won't be seen as British.

Indeed.

And I expect the line they'd retort back is "I am not in the mood to #be kind about immigration whilst (insert recent atrocity)"

Axel Rudakubana was born here and people still pretzel themselves to try and claim otherwise.

I’ve seen a video recently of a call made to LBC radio where a lady was arguing very passionately about the fact that you can’t be British and of colour… I’ll try and dig it out