UK Race Riots - Creativity as Counter-Terrorist Resistance
How culture and creativity can offer a mode of resistance to the UK race riots - and why we need it now, more than ever.
What is happening?
The UK has always been flavoured by dystopia. Only this year we have seen a worrying influx of voters for far-right political party Reform, shortly after the Tories refusal to stop trading in Israel, and shortly before Starmer’s cosying up to Donald Trump. On Monday 29th July, the shameful mood of Britain deepened further as three young girls were killed by stabbing, and ten other people were injured, during a summer vacation dance workshop.
Instead of focusing on the cruel injustice of this blatant act of femicide, Sunder Katwala, director of the think-tank British Future, said a fake news channel seemed to have invented a false name and story for the murderer only hours after the tragedy. This disinformation spread like wildfire and fuelled the mobilisation of far-right groups. Over a week of riots, violence and damage has and continues to ensue up and down the country as a result. In Liverpool, an area around which I was raised, the riots are especially ferocious, the initial attacking happening not 20 miles away. Just one of these countless acts of violence resulted in the trashing of a library, torched during violent disorder. The list in endless. Our safe spaces, so important to cultural and creative growth, are facing attack.
Of course, we all know the name for the use or threat of damage or violence targeted towards a section of the public as an intimidation tactic: terrorism.
How to fight the weaponisation of disinformation with creativity
The weaponisation of disinformation has lead to injury, death and violence in this very instance, with fake claims on social media claiming that the 17-year-old unnamed suspect was an asylum seeker.
Where does this originate? Online forums, echo chambers aptly named to signify the circulation of the same ideas and beliefs held between charged members of a group who believe their own, usually unjustified behaviour, because they are not presented with alternative modes of thinking.
I work in data. Data, to all, are hard facts. But data is getting less and less reliable with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, and with the job of data professionals increasingly left to average workers, like nurses, accountants, social workers, with no training. Alongside this AI boom has been a raise in cyber-security attacks. Socio-politically, this has lead to the dominant belief that cold, hard facts are not safe any more. Only 0.18% of the population are asylum seekers, says Sky News, but to these violent hate groups, it may as well be 100%. When we believe that numbers lie, those marching hatefully on the streets naturally turn towards internalised rage at a system built on racism and the radicalisation of those at the top, in power.
Where do we turn, then, if we can no longer point at the truth and uphold it, if the numbers are shallow and transparent to seemingly only reveal the viewers' pre-disposed cognitive mechanisms behind?
The importance of creativity
First, to be clear: creativity can never be enough to act as a fully-fledged form of retribution, excuse or apology for the groups impacted, or to the families suffering a devastating amount of grief. To demonstrate my point, I point towards examples from my corner of the internet that are already making a difference, detailing instances in which creatives across all industries have been weighing in on the situation to offer their perspective.
Crack, a music magazine, shared a lengthy infographic on Instagram urging “musicians, artists, friends and readers” alike to join together in anti-racist resistance and “remind the perpetrators of violence this weekend that they are not welcoming in our towns and cities”. Their suggestions included: emailing your local MP; donating to British Red Cross, the UK’s largest independent provider of services for asylum seekers; emailing photos of perpetrators of violence to rightresponse@hopenothate.org.uk; join marches on Saturday 10th August; read Runny Mede Trust’s report (link here) on the mainstreaming of far-right values following the 2024 election. The intersection of using data to resist disinformation via creativity has never been so clear.
Author and activist Sheena Patel wrote a charged message on her Instagram story on August 6th, which explained that these riots are testament to the atrocity and xenophobia that has always defined British culture and has been insidiously exacerbated by press and populist politics, looking closely at Nigel Farage and the EDF.
Patel used the word ‘necropolitics’ (a framework to express how governments assign differential value to human life) in this now-deleted post, which @theblack.project on Instagram expressed this same thought, bringing the Terrorism Act of 2000 into the discussion. “There’s an unwritten rule – unspoken but we all know it. You have to meet all of that but also, must be of colour.”
“You can meet every single bit of criteria laid out in the Terrorism Act 2000 and still the press will call you protestors, demonstrators, maybe thugs or rioters if they’re feeling bold, but not terrorists.”
@theblack.project
Instagram is fast becoming the go-to platform for creatives to share their art and platform their politics. Patel’s story which tracks over 7500 followers is, itself, a testament to the late capitalist experience of trend cycles and digital doom we receive information from; her story is filled often with memes, colliding with news reports from Gaza, heart-wrenching videos pleading for help in war-torn territories. It’s a panic-inducing, cataclysmic collision. No wonder that meaning made in this context is always hazy, allowing for polarisation when context is so void.
Creativity is how we learn to identify politically, by understanding our nuances, feelings and passions that allow us to become agents of change. There is nothing more political than art, than music. Creativity, historically, is how we break dominant modes of thinking - why else are books banned, but for their progressive re-thinking of structures that uphold, or even encourage, hate? We’ve seen that this year with many bands taking up the technique of boycotting festivals in reaction to funding by arms trade in the Middle East.
Physical resistance, simply by operating safely and non-violently in the impacted areas, is a first point-of-call. For many of us though, this may be too dangerous. Creativity is often overlooked as a mode of resistance. But we see it in the infographics so important to our collective knowledge. If our government is unwilling to prosecute and to protect our communities even when the law clearly states their need to, we must push back. We must continue to use creativity to call the rioters, the terrorists, into alternative modes of thought. Continue to platform the right data, the right message, so credibility is re-gained. Creativity as a means of platforming intersectional resistance is all we might have left. There are enough of us. It is enough.
Please note that the image of the burning car is used to indicate violence and is not taken from the happenings of the last two weeks.