Belfast erupted into race-related violence on Monday 8 June, following a brutal knife attack that was immediately weaponised by far-right agitators to incite anti-migrant hatred. Crowds gathered, homes and vehicles were set ablaze, and families from several minority backgrounds fled their neighbourhoods. The unrest, which unfolded across Belfast, was closely monitored by far-right allies in England and the United States.
Shortly after 10.30pm on 8 June, footage circulated widely showing a man repeatedly stabbing another figure. Police identified a suspect, initially as a refugee from Somalia and later corrected to Sudan. Despite the correction, outrage spread, with commentators focusing on the assailant being black and the victim white. Messages quickly proliferated, questioning the vetting of "foreign men of military age" in Northern Ireland and the "alien culture" they supposedly imported.
By 9.30am the following day, a message was being shared, instructing people to close businesses and gather at 25 locations across Northern Ireland at 7pm, urging men aged 18 and over to "be prepared to fight or be arrested." The Guardian described this as "an invitation to a pogrom." Far-right figures, including Elon Musk and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, amplified these calls to protest.
Weaponising Fear and Division
The unrest intensified throughout the day. Schools sent children home, public transport halted, and steel shutters came down over foreign-owned businesses. At about 7.30pm on the Shankill Road, a woman with a megaphone led several hundred people, some draped in union flags, to the home of a Romanian family. This family's windows had been "put out" twice before, but they had refused to leave. A nearby Black family had already fled, asking neighbours to move their car. Dozens of masked men surged forward, throwing bricks, pushing fireworks through the letterbox, and setting the family’s car on fire before breaking down the door. Women and children in the mob watched, with one person noting, “There’s wee girls inside.”
Similar scenes unfolded across the city. Families from Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Sudan left their homes in east Belfast. Properties and vehicles, including a Glider bus, were torched. On arterial roads, crowds lit bins and set up roadblocks, intimidating suspected foreigners. Ethiopian and Chinese residents fled Sandy Row, where arsonists burned a Syrian supermarket. Ugandan health workers and Nigerian families sought refuge on Crumlin Road. In some areas, police were absent, leaving community volunteers to escort families to safety.
Daniel Holder, director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, stated, “We could see it coming. It wasn’t unprecedented, it was an escalation of an existing pattern.” He noted that agitators drew lessons from previous unrest in August 2024, the second anniversary of which is approaching, and June 2025, its first anniversary, to hit more targets and reduce arrests. Enrique Tarrio, former head of the militant US group Proud Boys, recently visited Belfast, interviewing activists for a documentary. Last month, Advance UK-affiliated YouTuber Sarah White streamed multiple events in Northern Ireland, including an anti-migrant protest.
Fortress Europe's Internal Front
Stephen Millar, an academic, observed that “Loyalism has always been a reactionary ideology based on keeping out ‘foreign’ influence.” He added that the pivot from opposing Irish nationalism to anti-migrant rhetoric is internally consistent, serving to keep loyalism relevant by trading one form of racism for another. Sporadic attacks against minority ethnic families, including paint bombs and smashed windows, have proliferated over the past decade, particularly in County Antrim, where African healthcare workers were targeted. This violence culminated in a full-scale riot in Belfast in August 2024, a copycat response to events in England, and then in June 2025 in Ballymena, after two Roma teenagers were charged with rape, charges later dropped.
Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the Police Service Northern Ireland, described paramilitary involvement as “inconsistent” but confirmed their presence. Holder said police were slow to publicly acknowledge the role of paramilitary groups in controlling the violence. Independent observers noted that some UDA and UVF factions urged restraint, while others orchestrated much of the violence. Firefighters sought permission from paramilitary leaders before tackling blazes. Chris Quinn, Northern Ireland’s children’s commissioner, cited the ferrying of teenagers to flashpoints as evidence of orchestration, noting a “long history of child criminal coercion and child criminal exploitation.” A youth worker reported paramilitary groups paid boys £100 to join the rioting.
Michaela Rafferty of Anaka, a women’s group, observed, “Now that focus has kind of moved to brown and black people.” AI-generated anti-Islam murals appeared in loyalist strongholds. Dessie Donnelly of rabble.coop, a Belfast-based tech cooperative, noted a far-right network emerging online after Ballymena, with posts about dark-skinned men and foreigners moving into houses of multiple occupation proliferating before the June riots. A Portadown-based Facebook group circulated screenshots of council-owned HMO properties, which rioters used.
State Complicity and Systemic Failure
The year to 31 March, 4 months ago, saw police record 2,367 race incidents and 1,507 race crimes, the highest on record. Naomi Green, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said, “We thought it was going to get quite scary very quickly, and it did.” A week before the riot, anti-racism organisations held an emergency meeting, fearing trouble. Mohammed Mahmoud, 39, shared messages with his community on 9 June: “go home early, stay inside, don’t go out.”
The next day, a mob tried to march on the Chimney Corner hotel in Glengormley, 7 miles north of Belfast, which housed asylum seekers. They fought police in riot gear, hurling bricks and rocks, lighting bonfires, and torching a vacant house. Police used water cannon and plastic bullets to drive them back. Suleiman Abdulahi, founder of Horn of Africa People’s Aid Northern Ireland, reported enduring many attacks, with none resulting in prosecution, most recently on 26 June, 1 month ago.
A More in Common poll revealed that 8% of people in Northern Ireland believed it was justified to burn migrants out of their homes, and 11% agreed with intimidating them out of an area. Forty-one per cent felt like strangers in their own country, and three-quarters worried about asylum seekers entering Northern Ireland. Conleth Burns, associate director for More in Common, noted similar results in England, showing that even small numbers of foreigners can have an outsized impact. He added that people often do not see concern about immigration, racism, and violence as contradictory.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reported that the unrest turbo-charged far-right activism online, with posts promoting claims of anti-white police bias surging to over 200,000 in the first two weeks of June, compared to 104,000 in the whole of May. Main parties at Stormont condemned the violence, but critics argued the executive failed to prepare. Donnelly stated, “This was the third time in two years. They should have known something would happen.” Holder criticised Stormont’s downplaying of the crisis, saying, “You’d expect a racist pogrom to be the key issue for the institutions to deal with over the summer.” Liz Griffith, head of migration justice at the Northern Ireland Law Centre, highlighted the devolved government’s failure to update anti-racism legislation and its focus on “race relations,” a “discredited term now.” She noted that hate crime and race equality laws are antiquated compared to the rest of the UK, remaining stuck despite constant talk of consultation. Naomi Green called for Westminster intervention to ensure protections and accountability, warning that without it, the violence would continue. The state’s inaction reinforces the racist logic of Fortress Europe, allowing the criminalisation of movement to fester at a local level.