Far-right protests have surged across the UK in recent months, often targeting hotels housing refugees. On 17 July in Epping, Essex, demonstrators assembled outside a hotel following the arrest of an asylum seeker accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. The protest sparked similar actions in other towns, including London and Manchester. In Altrincham, activists targeted the Cresta Court Hotel, while in London, crowds gathered outside the Britannia Hotel after Reform MP Lee Anderson claimed that refugees from Epping would be relocated there.
On 2 August, Britain First organised a far-right march through Manchester city centre, drawing an estimated 1,500 people waving England and Union flags. Marchers moved from Manchester Piccadilly Station to Central Library, invoking images of patriotism twisted into racist spectacle.
The riots initiated by the far right in the name of the protection of women from sexual violence at the hands of animalistic urges that men of colour exhibit, has also occurred this year in Northern Ireland on 9 June 2025 in the town of Ballymena, where two Roma teenagers were arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a teenage girl. The riots followed a similar pattern of attacking and setting fire to, such as the leisure centre in Larne that served as a shelter for immigrant families.
These protests come almost a year after the racist riots triggered by a mass stabbing on 29 July 2024 at a Taylor Swift–themed yoga and dance workshop. That tragedy provoked widespread anti-immigration protests, civil disobedience, and nationwide riots — marking a chilling eruption of racism. The aftermath left deep scars and revealed the simmering xenophobia that too many Britons refuse to confront.
Hypocrisy will be a central theme in this article, but what also demands attention is the grotesque performance of hypermasculinity. Rioters not only targeted mosques and refugee housing — such as the attempted arson at a hotel in Rotherham — they did so in the name of 'protection'. This violent masculinity exposed the hollowness of Britain's self-image as a multicultural sanctuary. What unfolded was not protection but performative domination, a weaponised narrative to assert control over gendered and racialised others.
At the heart of these protests lies a toxic co-optation of the language of care: the far-right invocation of "protecting women" to justify racism, exclusion, and violence.
In the face of blatant racism increasingly normalised in public discourse, it is imperative to revisit the enduring myth of the Black Rapist – a racist construct that fuelled decades of extrajudicial lynching in the United States. Shockingly, this practice was not formally recognised as a federal crime until 2022, when President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law.
Angela Davis's seminal essay, 'Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist', from Women, Race & Class, offers a foundational critique of this myth, tracing its role in justifying racial terror under the guise of protecting white womanhood. Her analysis remains vital for understanding the contemporary resurgence of far-right mobilisations, which often manifest through reactionary protests and riots cloaked in concern for public safety.
What these movements reveal is not genuine concern for women's safety, but its instrumentalisation for nationalist ends. Empathy is selectively applied — performed rather than felt — serving as a mechanism of control rather than care.
In her essay, Davis exposes the myth as a formidable artifice conceived by racism — meticulously fabricated to incite violence and terror against the Black community, not only without repercussions, but with chilling justification that dignified the act of lynching itself. The most infamous example remains the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy in Mississippi, brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His abduction and killing continue to haunt the American conscience, revealing the enduring violence embedded in this racial myth.
Davis argues that in the aftermath of emancipation — and the subsequent loss of enslavers' profits and control — lynching became a tool to reassert dominance. It was framed as a defender of white womanhood, a narrative often propagated by white women themselves. Figures like Jean MacKellar advanced the theory that Black men were inherently prone to sexual violence, reinforcing the myth's grip on public imagination.
Sound familiar?
The same white men who vilify men of colour as threats to women are themselves far from innocent. Those men are not feminists who are working towards dismantling rape culture and the prevalence of domestic violence, these far-right figures deflect attention from their own abusive histories.
Data obtained through Freedom of Information requests reveals that two out of every five individuals arrested during last year's race riots had previously been reported to police for domestic abuse. In fact, an estimated 41% of the 899 people arrested had records related to intimate partner violence — a primary source of abuse and sexual assault against women in the UK.
Paul Golding, leader of Britain First and organiser of the recent anti-immigration march in Manchester, exemplifies this hypocrisy. In a leaked conversation with his partner, Golding admits to having "laid a finger" on two women — one of whom confronts him directly in the recording. He attempts to justify his actions by claiming his partner was "driving him psychologically crazy," equating emotional distress with physical violence in a disturbing attempt to rationalise abuse.
Lois Shearing's Pink-Pilled powerfully extends Angela Davis's critique by exposing the ideological framework through which far-right men perceive women — particularly white women — not as autonomous individuals, but as property. Within this logic, women are treated as high-value commodities to be guarded, akin to land or wealth. After all, how else can these ideologues pursue their fantasies of racial purity and nationalist rebirth?
In this worldview, assaults committed by men of colour are not framed as violations of women's bodily autonomy, but as transgressions against white male ownership. Punishment is demanded not in pursuit of justice, but to reassert patriarchal and racial control.
Angela Davis identifies a crucial dimension of lynching's function: its economic beneficiaries. Racial terror was not only a tool of white supremacy — it was a mechanism for cementing Black people as the most exploitable labour class, forming the foundation of a working class that sustained capitalist expansion. More insidiously, it fractured the possibility of cross-racial class solidarity. Racial division, Davis argues, is capitalism's most effective deception – obscuring the identity of the true oppressor.
It is no coincidence that far-right riots are intensifying today. Amid economic crisis, austerity, and widespread social discontent, the same mechanisms of scapegoating and division are being revived with renewed ferocity. The recent protests — many of which have coalesced outside refugee centres — are not simply reactions to economic precarity. They are expressions of entitlement, violent assertions of who gets to wield sexual and physical power over women.
In this climate of intensified precarity, whiteness becomes the sole remaining asset for many white men – a fragile currency through which they assert dominance. That assertion is enacted through gendered violence, a symbolic and literal claim to power. It is a symbiotic relationship: economic disenfranchisement fuels racial loyalty, and racial loyalty legitimises violence. Together, they produce fertile ground for extremism.
The true architects behind these eruptions are the capitalist classes – those who have not only tolerated but actively shaped the normalisation of racist narratives in public discourse. Their complicity is not passive. Even centrist-liberal parties have echoed the rhetoric of the far right, legitimising the very narratives that fuel these protests. When Keir Starmer described the UK as an "Island of Strangers," he echoed the spectral tones of Enoch Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech – repackaged for a new era of polite xenophobia.
We live in a perilous world, shaped by systems built on the exploitation of class, race, and gender. These systems are not static – they evolve, often violently, reshaping identities and relationships with disturbing ease. What recent events reveal is not merely the resurgence of nationalism, but a deep fatigue and disillusionment with a country many once hoped could be better.
As previously noted, the assertion of a monopoly on violence against women is not incidental – it is central. And as socio-economic disparity deepens, whiteness becomes increasingly brittle, perhaps the only asset these rioters feel they possess. Coupled with the manipulations of capital, we must brace ourselves for further eruptions — unless meaningful socio-economic transformation is achieved. That transformation must be led not by reactionary forces, but by a revitalised labour movement committed to justice, solidarity, and structural change.
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