Racist thugs have carried out a wave of pogroms in Belfast and nearby towns, setting fire to homes belonging to people of colour. The rioters also attacked businesses that they thought were the property of ‘foreigners’, ignited vehicles, and blocked roads.
The hate crimes followed an attack carried out in North Belfast, allegedly by a Sudanese man on the evening of Monday June 8. Footage shows the assailant on top of another man, with the attacker using a large knife to stab his victim. Police have charged the alleged perpetrator with attempted murder. The BBC reported on the status of the victim, saying:
A man in his 40s remains in hospital with serious injuries to his eyes, neck and back…
Since the attack, racist groups across social media have attempted to whip up a frenzy, using sensationalised imagery of the attack to exacerbate outrage. The Official Protestant Coalition page, notorious for attempting to incite riots, has subsequently celebrated the carnage. They have posted numerous scenes of destruction alongside heart emojis.
Concerned Parents Newtownabbey (CPN), whose racist and Islamophobic displays are responsible for creating a climate in which hate flourishes, sought to aid the destruction by urging people to turn off Ring doorbells and CCTV. This was to ensure hooligans would be less likely to be caught on camera.
Belfast: vile racists burn homes
Spurred on by this climate, mobs of masked white men set about wrecking the city and driving innocent families from their homes. In the area where CPN have put their hateful AI-generated abominations, hundreds of masked men roamed the area and set fire to vehicles.
On the Newtownards Road in East Belfast, thugs set a bus on fire. Footage on the X account BreakinNewz shows criminals entering a terraced house and setting the property on fire. One shouts “fuck the foreigners!”.
#Breaking
#Ireland Footage showing multiple houses holding migrants have been set on fire in Belfast. pic.twitter.com/XztgrogOLF
— BreakinNewz (@BreakinNewz01) June 9, 2026
In a reply to the same tweet, drone footage shows houses burning in what may be the aftermath of the first attack shown, or one of the other numerous acts of ethnic cleansing carried out by racist mobs. The Canary spoke to local activists working in migrant support networks, who said thugs torched at least ten homes. Countless more have fled their homes in terror.
The worst violence took place in loyalist locales, though there were also reports of small groups from nationalist areas taking part in the disorder.
The Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) said they had:
…managed 256 calls resulting in attendance at 62 incidents.
NIFRS brought in “21 fire appliances” (usually meaning fire trucks) from across the north of Ireland to deal with the chaos.
DUP and TUV stir up mob
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politicians have performed their usual cynical dance of calling for calm, while simultaneously inciting a febrile atmosphere by emphasising a link between immigration and violence. Party leader Gavin Robinson did both in the Commons. He connected fictional “uncontrolled immigration” to the North Belfast attack, while warning about potential violent disorder in response.
DUP education minister Paul Givan did likewise on TalkTV. This is, of course, the same man who celebrates the horrors carried out by his favourite ethnostate, so-called ‘Israel’.
Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister went further still, complaining to hatemongers GB News about “people of violent disposition” with an “alien culture”. He suggested such violence is alien to “British culture”.
Far from being alien, extreme violence has been central to British culture for centuries. It was what enabled its empire to murder millions of people, and British brutality continues to this very day through their participation in the Gaza genocide.
The north of Ireland had thirty years of violence carried out almost exclusively by white men. The island as a whole endured 800 years of intermittent conflict, with British colonialism at the root. Hundreds of white men now carry out yearly violent pogroms against other ethnic groups. The north of Ireland has appalling gender violence rates, again perpetrated almost entirely by white men. Yet Allister and co expect us to believe that this Eden, a paradise of uninterrupted pacifism, has been robbed of its innocence by one Sudanese interloper.
In reality, the above politicians practice selective outrage when certain acts of violence have particular political use. That is, to convince the constituents they routinely fail that the problems in their lives are the result of immigrants, rather than useless politicians.
Ethnic cleansing now routine event in north of Ireland
People Before Profit’s Fiona Ferguson had a more sensible take, highlighting how:
…defence of workers’ rights, the fight for better living conditions, the fight for housing, the fight for public services and the fight against racism are one and the same.
She was calling on trade unions to recognise the scale of racist violence in Ireland and get more involved to stop it. The reality is stark: in the Six Counties, white thugs carrying out ethnic cleansing based on race has become a routine occurrence. It has happened three summers in a row, and all indicators are that racists and Islamophobes are becoming emboldened rather than deterred.
Inspired by a global far-right acting with impunity, and motivated by short-term political gain that distracts from their own incompetence, the worst of the unionist political class are happy to see their own towns and cities burn rather than confront this dystopian reality.
Featured image via Getty/Charles McQuillan
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