DH’s attitude re riots etc upsetting and angering me

[Pinkycloud]

I feel so sick. Every time we talk about the riots, DH comes out with ‘well people are angry, etc’. He says he doesn’t condone violence, but there’s always a ‘but’. He voted Reform, I voted Lib Dem. I tell him he sounds racist in some of the comments he makes, which he vehemently denies.

He’s a loving, hardworking husband and father but… this! He is honestly a good man. I don’t know how to deal with it other than banning the subject. Has anyone else got very different political views from their spouse or partner?

I would certainly check out what someone's political views were before getting into a relationship with them. Values are important.

Well, if they do have a point it would be interesting to hear them articulate it. But mindless thugs are not generally of the articulate type. Arson and throwing rocks at the police, Nazi salutes and chanting racist slogans are about their limit.

The spark for these riots was the senseless murder of three precious little girls. What are these thugs articulating by ignoring the stated wishes of at least two of the victims' families? They have been put in the disgraceful position of having to appeal publicly for peace when they must be blindsided and numb with grief and shock. Are their wishes being listened to? They've answered that one for us. 'No'.

The 17-year old boy/man now charged with murder and attempted murder is British. His parents are from a majority Christian country and are themselves Christian. Are they attacking churches? Of course they're not. They're attacking mosques and also going after Jewish people. Out of the three monothestic faiths, they've hit two of them, excluding only the one the alleged perpetrators' families are actually members of (disclaimer needed: that faith is no more culpable than the other two. But that doesn't seem to be the point here).

The inarticulate thugs are holding their own cities and economy to ransom, nobody else's. If the NHS is at breaking point, then for sure causing sick people's appointments to be cancelled is exactly the right way to go about 'protesting' against that. Slow handclap. 👏

Whatever 'point' these imbeciles are trying to communicate they're certainly being singularly ineffective at it.

The point is that there is no point. Mindless violence is precisely that.

It’s one thing to have an opinion on immigration.

You may differ in these opinions and depending on how extreme each others opinions are, it doesn’t need to tear apart a relationship.

But it’s a completely different thing to support thugs who think it’s acceptable to have swastika tattoos and affiliate with Nazis, to attack people of colour, to smash a brick in a dogs face, to set fire to places where children live, to attack the police and paramedics etc.

I genuinely couldn’t get over his comments. And his views are very similar to those who are committing these crimes - men who think they are superior.

Part of the reason fewer women riot is because we’d be treated more harshly by the justice system. Men get the “boys will be boys” attitude. The book gets thrown at women that do masculine things like riot because it is “unnatural”.
The consequences aren’t the same.

@Thebellofstclements England losing the football is the craziest excuse I’ve seen for violent rioting. And housing people who arrive here? What do you suggest we do with them? Drown them?

The rioters absolutely are far right, and unless they were brought up by far right parents from the beginning, it's very likely that they have been radicalised at some point. These are not innocent people with a few concerns, they are dangerous criminals.

My godson told me he voted Tory but could have voted Reform except he thought they are outright racists. He is 25, educated, kind, nice but has had a privileged middle-class life in many ways. He works really hard and has bought a flat in a leafy Newcastle suburb which he shares with a friend who rents a room from him. He is very 'it's one or the other 'about issues- no shades of grey.

He thinks the country is over-crowded and takes more than its fair share of refugees/immigrants given the smaller size of the land area in comparison with other European countries(his words).

He thinks our public services are in no fit state to stand the strain of coping with hundreds of thousands of extras of people every year.

He is a chartered surveyor so works in building for a large company across the North of England and says there are numerous areas in Lancashire and West Yorkshire where white British people are in the minority and he thinks the customs and traditions of English life have disappeared in those areas.

His company's main office has been boarded up today in one of those cities because they share the building with a large HMRC office which is expecting to be under attack. All of the staff have been told to work at home.

He thinks the amount of house building that will happen because of housing shortages will change huge swathes of our countryside forever and it would not be necessary if we had limited immigration.

He thinks ignorant white English men (and women) who join in attacks shoukd be fully accountable for their own actions and should be locked up. He is sick of seeing feckless lads his age and younger who 'take the piss' and 'do fuck all to make a difference or help themselves'. Doesn't want any excuses made for them. His word was 'moronic'.

He thinks there are sub-groups of dangerous, radicalised muslim men who he regards the same way and thinks should be treated the same way.

I would not describe him as racist. This is his perception of what he sees.

I honestly can’t see how someone who votes Reform can be described as a good man. What if they’d won? We’d be ruled by bigots and racists. Is that good?

There are a lot of posts in this thread that are a country mile away what the feelings actualy are on the streets and held by the public at large.

There are some racist scruffbags on both the left and right who want to cause bother, more so and to a deeper intent on what is being lightly branded the "far left" but thst isnt what these riots are actualy about if you take only a brief moment to listen to people.

This site is more than a little liberal / left - so are the loudest voices here - I dont know if some peoples lives are so isolated from things they genuinely arent aware of how many places in the UK are now or if its plain wilful ignorance mixed with some virtue signaling hot air straight out the top of their hat.

I wonder if the Asian and black gangs decide to riot, if he’ll be so quick to defend them then.

Would he really think they’ve got a point if Asian gangs are dragging white people from their cars, black gangs attacking lone white people, setting fire to hotels because white people live there.

There was a poster on a different thread who said the other side was just as bad - they were a group of Asian men who surrounded a mosque to stop it being set alight.
It just goes to show how racist some people are that they think these men were just as bad as the thugs rioting.

Nigel Farage likened these riots to the BLM protests because a person during the BLM protests defaced a statue - how the 2 compare is beyond me.

A huge problem with our society is people with different views unable to have a civil conversation and share their concerns without immediately being labelled, cancelled, ignored at best. We live in echo chambers fuelled by personalised, effectively censored, social media feed that tells us we are always right and people who disagree are from the devil.

You can’t raise concerns about women’s changing rooms or fair sport without being bashed as a transphobe.
It’s okay to threaten and assault Jews as part of pro~Palestine protests - even major US universities effectively condoned that - but god forbid you bring up anti-semitism, you obviously enjoy seeing dead Palestinian babies.
Activism for racial minorities can’t put you in the wrong but bringing up the fact one of the PPs mentioned - that white working class low income boys/men are having it extremely hard while being told they are extremely privileged, well, you’re clearly racists and anit-feminist.
It goes on and on and on.

Unfortunately self righteousness, especially the type you can display on SM, feels much nicer than considering that complex issues rarely have a simple one sided answer and entertaining the possibility (!) that you might not be 100% right all the time.

No you're not. Not at all. Lest we forget, there are images all over the news this week of these people making Nazi salutes, shouting Nazi slogans, attacking mosques, perpetrating two pogroms that I know of yesterday, and installing 'check points' in British cities which were only letting white drivers through.

This doesn't even deserve the weaselly-worded 'label' of far right. It's exactly the ideology our grandfathers fought against and in some cases died to repel. It is undisguised, undiluted Nazism.

Daniel Goldhagen's 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' quoted four key conditions necessary for the Holocaust to take place. Without even one of these, it simply couldn't have happened. And as his title suggests, the most important of the four conditions was the consent and complicity of ordinary Germans.

If we sympathise in any way with the thugs perpetrating the current national disgrace then we are now the complicit populace.

I don't want Britain to end up in that place. Fuck 'sympathy'. Fuck 'they are trying to make a point (what point?), fuck thuggery, and fuck Nazism. It has no place here. None.

The only people being called far right by a Starmer are the ones violently rioting, not people who have concerns. You know this.
Plus women and children do come on boats…

Edit: you know universities are in trouble at least in part because of the previous government’s stance on the families of international students?

Not being over dramatic or anything. 🙄

A lot of people are being very dramatic OP.

I doubt any of these “pack yer bags” advocates would actually be leaving their otherwise good marriages over something like this.

I’m a liberal, totally against the riots, and if someone close to me took a different view I’d probably argue with them a bit, or ultimately ban the topic, but wouldn’t be going no contact. People can be basically decent but say some weird stuff and have some weird ideas sometimes.

Now, if he was actually taking part in the riots… obviously a different story.

I don’t agree with ANYONE who riots, or causes fear, but there’s no point in falling out with people. Especially a partner, with arm chair advocates advising you to leave? Not really lol 🙄

Other people have varying views.

And then watching / hearing those disenfranchised people being cast as' Far Right' by our PM?

They call themselves far-right.

They are proud of it.

Have you not seen them proudly showing off their Nazi salutes and Swastika tattoos.

How can you deny they are anything but.

Would you fall out with someone who attended a riot? Surely there's a line for you when it comes to when it is 'worth' falling out over?

I think he's right in what he is saying.

I am brown btw and suffered a lot of racism growing up in the 1970s.

What your husband is saying is not racist.

What a load of rubbish - people aren't being branded racist because they are simply worried about immigration. If that was the case our own Prime Minister would be branded a racist

Labour’s immigration and border policy: How we’ll create a fair system and stop the small boat crossings – The Labour Party
Under the Tories, migration has hit record highs. Small boat crossings so far in 2024 are higher than ever recorded at this point in the year. Labour will act to bring down migration, strengthening wages and conditions for Britain’s workers, linking our skills plans for young people with the jobs our businesses need to fill, and implementing a practical plan to tackle the small boat chaos

The narrative is rapidly changing to we 'shouldn't have had immigration following the war' that was supported on a thread here recently.

If we stopped all immigration tomorrow some still wont be happy - we know the reason why !

We’ve had Conservative governments for years with Home Secretaries from the right of the party. Do you not think they would have fixed this already if there were an easy solution? I think Suella Braverman would have been out there in the Channel with a loud hailer and a harpoon gun herself if she could’ve gotten away with it. The problem hasn’t been a lack of will to stop the small boats. There just isn’t a legal, cost effective way to do it.

No one wants migrants handing cash to violent, criminal gangs and coming into the U.K. by dingy. No one, from the left wing to the right - though for different reasons. It’s dangerous, it funds serious crime and it’s linked to the smuggling of drugs nd weapons. How on earth is setting fire to bins and harassing Muslims supposed to change things?

Exactly this.

I have suffered racism and what your husband is saying is not racist.

What did you think about the Brixton riots where black people were rioting about the way they were being treated?

Were they racist?

I don’t know. Back in the day, I knew people that attended the poll tax riots, and in 2012, I knew people that rioted because of the Mark Duggan shooting.

Do I agree with rioting? No.

Do I need to fall out with them? No.

Everyone has opinions.🤷‍♀️

Yep. I am also angry about the violence against women and girls.

And what happens? Men then highjack a tragedy for their own agenda. Sure there's some women on these protests, some of whom have acted violently but it is overwhelmingly men who are being the most violent, smashing and setting fire to things.

VAWG is not a race issue at all. It's sadly a problem in every race, every religion, every nationality. It's something where we need to unite to tackle it, not divide.

However, I don't think it's helpful to label every protester a "far right thug" because I think that just fuels the flames. It almost forces people to "pick a side" like the OPs DH, that then end up feeling a level of "sympathy" with the rioters. He won't be the only one by far. We can't pretend he is. That's worrying.

As for OP, if it's an otherwise good marriage and you can agree to disagree, I wouldn't LTB over this. But obviously that's your call.

Eastern Europe is white and Christian. Why exactly they are targeting people of colour/Muslims? Who mostly came from the commonwealth INVITED by the government several generations ago so nothing to do with the EU?

Because in reality for
these thugs it is not about logical explanations, it’s about racism and xenophobia and convenient excuse to let them out.