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As someone who covers breaking stories under deadline, this much I know to be true: News travels fast online, much of it untrue.

England has seen a spate of riots over the past couple days. The most unusual thing is that most of the rioters appear to be white. From what I can tell, many of them seem to have been causing a ruckus based on false information. From what I can sense, their rage is genuine and based on what appears to be a ruling class that is entirely hostile toward not only their interests, but their continued existence.

The match that lit the fire this time around was Monday morning’s mass stabbing at what Wikipedia calls “a children’s Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop at The Hart Space, a dance school on Hart Street in Southport,” a seaside town north of Liverpool. As of this writing, three girls are confirmed dead: Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine. Five girls remain in critical condition as well as two adults—dance instructor Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, who was stabbed while trying to intervene.

When I heard the words “England” alongside “stabbing” and “young girls,” my brain immediately leapt to “immigrant perp,” but that’s because I’m a white racist thug.

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Then again, it was only last November that Dublin erupted into flames after a homeless Algerian immigrant stabbed three young girls and a police commissioner blamed the riots on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology” rather than on a “lunatic Algerian immigrant” and “lunatic political leaders who are swarming Ireland with hooligan immigrants.”

Just like mushrooms, rumors started popping up on Twitter/X and elsewhere that the suspect in Monday’s stabbing was a 17-year-old named Ali Al-Shakati, a mentally ill asylum-seeker who’d arrived to Blighty by boat last year and had been on the MI6 watch list.

On Tuesday evening as locals in Southport conducted a vigil in memory of the victims, further rumors spread that very close to the vigil, police apprehended a swarthy man who’d been wielding a machete.

It didn’t take long for the “mostly peaceful” vigil to turn into a full-scale riot, much of it clustered around a mosque in Southport. Bottles were thrown, vehicles were set on fire, hapless elderly white rioters were hit in the head and groin with bricks, dozens of police were injured, and large swaths of the town were destroyed.

Newly christened British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “violence and thuggery” in Southport and vowed that the violent thugs would “feel the full force of the law.” Southport lawmaker Patrick Hurley blamed the riots on “beered-up thugs” who eagerly swallowed “propaganda and lies” on social media.

Recently resigned Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf weighed in:

Attacking mosques and chanting Islamaphobic [sic] abuse. Let’s not pretend the far-right care one jot about children murdered in Southport. These thugs are scum who are exploiting the killing of children for their own bigoted ends…. This is what happens when you appease the far-right.”

On Wednesday afternoon in London, a protest titled “Enough is Enough” was staged outside government buildings. As crowds chanted “Enough is Enough!,” “Stop the Boats!,” “We Want Our Country Back!,” and “England ‘Til I Die!” protestors turned to rioters as police began pushing them back. One video shows a 73-year-old white woman being handcuffed as she screams that she wears a pacemaker and had never been arrested before.

London rioters allegedly chanted, “Where the fuck were you in Leeds?” at police, referring to the recent anti-cop rioting, arson, and assault that happened on July 18 in response to police removing four Gypsy kids from their family and placing them in the care of social services.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had referred to the Gypsy rioters in Leeds as “individuals,” whereas her tone was much harsher regarding the Southport rioters, whom she smeared as “thugs on the streets who have no respect from a grieving community.”

Last night in the town of Hartlepool, rioters set a police car on fire and hurled “missiles, glass bottles, and eggs” at cops.

Despite the presence of police in riot gear, protestors  in Aldershot appeared to remain peaceful as they demanded that migrants get evicted from a local hotel.

A likeminded gathering happened in Manchester, as locals surrounded a Holiday Inn that housed migrants. John Flanagan, a local councilor in Manchester, sharted the following message on social media:

I’d like to condemn these mindless thugs, attacking innocent men who are asylum seekers. They have been there for months and we have not had any issues or problems. They have been in a place of safety….It’s sickening to think they are being targeted because of their race or their religion, and I hope this isn’t tied with the disgraceful scenes in Southport where a mosque was attacked last night. These idiots are attacking innocent people. My initial reaction is to contact GMP and support them. The whole of the city and reasonable thinking people will be horrified and sickened by these actions. Idiots is too soft of a word – I hope the police use the full force of the law.

As it turns out, the riots were partially based on misinformation. Today the suspect in the deadly Southport stabbing was arraigned. The Liverpool judge allowed him to be named because even though he is technically a minor, he turns 18 next week. For reasons that are yet unknown, Axel Rudakubana, a full-blown sub-Saharan black, allegedly took a taxi from his home in Banks—about four miles from Southport—and stabbed all those white people on Monday. He was born in Cardiff, Wales to parents who’d immigrated from Rwanda in 1996 in the wake of the Hutu/Tutsi bloodbaths. There is speculation that either his  father or his uncle was a Hutu war criminal, but for now it’s only speculation. Rwanda is overwhelmingly Christian and only 2% Muslim, so the odds are that young Axel was not a Muslim.

The swarthy-looking bearded man in a beanie seen wielding a machete near the Southport vigil on Tuesday has been identified as 32-year-old Jordan Davies, who appears to be white. Also, he’d been apprehended for carrying a switchblade rather than a machete.

England appears to be, as the saying goes, on the knife-edge. But is it because all those beer-bellied, loutish, right-wing yobs are racist? Or is it because their overlords clearly place them a rung below the dark-skinned, hostile interlopers who rape and stab their children?