In Northern Ireland, a horrific crime is being manipulated by right-wing agitators to justify racist violence and the targeting of migrants. Late on June 8, a man was seriously wounded in a knife attack in north Belfast, and graphic footage of the incident began circulating online within hours. Police have since charged a Sudanese man in his 30s, who entered the United Kingdom in 2023, with attempted murder; they say the attack is not being treated as terrorism.
Within a day, masked crowds had taken to the streets, burning homes and vehicles of immigrant families and driving them out of their neighborhoods. A list of addresses where immigrants are believed to live was circulated online, as was a list of lawyers and others who provide services to migrants. The family of the victim, Stephen Ogilvie, condemned the unrest and asked that the crime not be used to divide people. By then, it had already been turned into a pretext for attacks on people who had nothing to do with it.
This kind of violence is not new for Northern Ireland. It has a strong collective memory of people being forced out of their homes in 1969 and into the early 1970s by paramilitary groups at the start of the sectarian conflict between largely Protestant unionists and loyalists, who sought to maintain Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, and largely Catholic nationalists and republicans, many of whom sought Irish reunification. The conflict, often euphemistically called “the Troubles,” engulfed Northern Ireland for nearly three decades. The methods of agitation on display this week were inherited from the 1969-1998 conflict and have been used in some of the same neighborhoods that experienced this type of violence more than 50 years ago. Now, masked men are back, setting up barricades and checkpoints across the city, waving people through or turning them back based on the color of their skin, and forcing families out of their homes.
Although racist violence has been on the rise across Europe, local groups point out that in Northern Ireland the involvement of loyalist paramilitary groups, including the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), makes it particularly dangerous given their long history of violence, intimidation, and coercive control. Members of these groups have long been behind some of the racist violence, a role the police have been slow to acknowledge. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has previously urged the authorities to combat paramilitary violence and intimidation against ethnic minorities and migrants in Northern Ireland. During this week’s riots, well-known paramilitary figures were seen on the streets, watching as masked young men went door to door. Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Jon Boutcher said only that it was “too early” to say whether paramilitaries were orchestrating events.
In August 2024, as disorder spread from England after the Southport killings, where a British teenager killed three young girls at a dance class, Belfast saw migrant-owned shops torched and a mosque attacked. In June 2025, the town of Ballymena erupted after two teenagers described as foreign were charged over an alleged sexual assault, charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. Rioters attacked migrant homes, with the violence spreading to other towns.
Between March 2025 and March 2026, the police recorded 2,367 racially motivated incidents and 1,507 racially motivated crimes in Northern Ireland, the highest annual totals since records began in 2004. For weeks before this most recent attack, local human rights organizations had warned that widespread racist violence was an imminent risk, pointing to a rise in far-right activity online and in public spaces, including murals erected to stir fear and cast migrants as a collective threat. For these groups, this latest series of events did not come as a shock. Far-right groups have been inciting precisely this kind of activity online for months, while some political representatives have legitimized far-right conspiracies such as “the Great Replacement” theory in relation to racist attacks.
A particular pattern is visible in far-right mobilization within some working-class loyalist areas, where local actors connect into wider British far-right networks and receive amplification from the American right, including tech mogul Elon Musk. Recognizing this pattern is not to suggest that racism or far-right views are absent from nationalist areas; rather, the available evidence points to higher levels of coordinated far-right online activity among individuals and groups self-identifying with loyalist culture.
Much of this organizing now happens on Facebook and WhatsApp. The Committee on the Administration of Justice’s (where one of us works) research found that local community Facebook groups have shifted from merely amplifying hostility to organizing it: coordinating protests, sustaining intimidation, and circulating disinformation, with their reach magnified by far-right networks in Britain and the Republic of Ireland. The hostility extends beyond protests. In late May, a banner appeared on the fence of a children’s playpark in the loyalist village of Moygashel, contrasting white families with figures marked out as Muslims under the words “not welcome, not wanted, not here.” Police logged it as a hate incident. Other signs have warned landlords not to rent their houses to migrants, and some who did have been targeted. These incidents are important test cases for the efficacy of the PSNI’s new Service Instruction on removals of hate materials, which recognizes their positive duty under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights to “tackle expression which is racist, including sectarianism.”
Despite past experience and clear warning signs, little has been done to break the cycle of violence. Northern Ireland’s strategy on paramilitary activity still makes no mention of paramilitary involvement in racist intimidation, despite a standing recommendation from the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC), established by the British and Irish governments. The IRC’s December 2025 Report explicitly challenged the PSNI’s position that paramilitary involvement in racist disorder was not “sanctioned by the leadership” and pointed out that “involvement does not have to be organized.” The continued existence of paramilitary structures, it found, itself heightens the danger of members expanding into such activities.
In addition, Northern Ireland’s draft Framework for Race Relations, meant to replace a framework that lapsed in 2025, names neither far-right organizing nor paramilitary intimidation. There is still no real obligation on social media companies to take down content that incites violence or racial hatred.
Many of those affected this week have turned to neighbors, not the police. Organizers and volunteers from community groups, churches, and trade unions have helped people of color across Belfast escape threatened or attacked homes. Chloë Trew, director of Participation and the Practice of Rights, explained that around 300 volunteers provided critical support to families and individuals forcibly expelled from communities “in full knowledge that state institutions would offer no effective support to families affected by racist pogroms.” The same pattern of State inaction toward ethnic cleansing was observed in October 2023 and August 2024 in Sandy Row, Belfast, and in Ballymena in June 2025.
This pattern is now predictable, well-documented, and well-understood. For the third year running, a crime has been converted into a licence for racist violence. The failure now is not one of foresight, but of action. Northern Ireland does not need another cycle of condemnation after the damage is done. It needs an urgent, anti-racist response that treats far-right organizing and paramilitary intimidation as the connected and escalating threats they are.
