I’m in Belfast.
For the past months I’ve been doing research on legacies of authoritarianism and sectarianism in Northern Ireland / the North of Ireland (I’ll just say NI for short).
Everyone I’ve spoken to - academics, activists, campaigners - expects another pogrom to be imminent.
We’ve already seen the Moygashel pyre and its replica of a mosque. They already lit up. This is the same place that burned a replica of a boat full of brown and black refugees last year.
Here in Belfast I’ve seen a pyre celebrating Israel and Charlie Kirk. They will remove those before the burn of course - that’s reserved for the undesirable.
It is very hard to conclude anything else: this is a city under siege.
The leftovers of empire, largely ignored by the monarchy they profess adoration for, are manifesting their supremacist desires through threats and acts of violence.
It is coming. Everyone knows it’s coming. Activists even knew the latest pogrom was going to happen eight months prior - yes, you read that right - and the police were warned. But the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), when it’s not busy doing a BBC TV series about how hard they have it (this is a rant for another time), seems more preoccupied with ‘managing’ the situation, as if they’re dealing with a coming hurricane. But this hurricane is human, easily identifiable. Activists who do not gain salaries from our tax money figured that information out months prior to the latest pogrom.
And yet, here we are again. The loyalists are flying the UDA flag, a banned group, a terrorist group, recognised as such by the government.
It took me 2h after landing in Belfast to find a UDA flag. I wasn’t even looking for it. It was just there.
I don’t know if it’s been since removed, but I can tell you that there are Belfast locals who have family members who were murdered by the UDA and who still have to see their literal neighbours celebrating their deaths.
This is all out in the open. The murals glorifying mass murderers are easy to be found. I found half a dozen just walking through Shankill Road, a road you won’t see my bearded brown Arab face anywhere near it after dark. I can only play the lost tourist up to a point.
To be clear, some Republican (note to Americans reading this: no, not like your Republicans) neighbourhoods also have murals glorifying murderers. But the Republicans don’t burn effigies of the wrong kind of Christians or foreigners or the wrong flag on a yearly basis. The loyalists do that. The loyalists burn symbols of Catholics, Ireland, LGBTQs, foreigners, migrants and refugees. And - again - it is all out in the open.
The loyalists glorify the genocidal state of Israel. Israeli flags are flown everywhere in those areas in response to the old Republican tradition of supporting Palestine. And this is a trend you’ll see repeated. The Republican side does a thing, and the Loyalist side does its opposite in response. I’m struggling to know - and I’ve been looking hard, I promise you - what, if anything, the loyalist side even have that are theirs besides reminding everyone (or reminding themselves?) that they are British. But that’s also for another article.
Make note of this. It is the 10th of July 2026. Around 10:00am local time. A pogrom is coming. Everyone knows it.
If people of colour, queer people, or anyone else deemed undesirable by the supremacist movement are attacked in any way, know that this was predictable. It was predictable the last time. It’s predictable now. Any (non-tourist) person of colour is walking the streets of Belfast today with that in mind. Some migrant/POC-shops have yet to recover from the previous pogrom. Over 20 people were made homeless. The PSNI was warned. The government knew.
The government seems to operate under the delusion that they can just manage this. The primary tools at their disposal remain separating communities and (sometimes) redirecting marches. This won’t be enough.
Northern Ireland is around 97% white. The supremacists talk of being replaced but they are the only ones seeking to replace the few non-White faces with White faces. They talk of no-go zones but theirs are the only no-go zones - just ask any POC or visibly Queer local. I spent an hour yesterday seeing Christian fanatics yell obscenities about Muslims and LGBTQs. No Muslim responded. This was all them. They’re just spewing hate because they can.
It will never be enough. That’s why they’re latching on to global fascist fantasies in the form of American figures like Charlie Kirk and genocidal ethnosupremacies like Israel. They lost Apartheid South Africa. They lost Rhodesia. As things progress, they may even lose NI. Instead, of seeking to build an alternative NI that is inclusive, they have become the best argument for Irish reunification. After all, whatever obstacles comes with reunification, nothing can be worse than this shit.
We cannot be expected to just expect pogrom season. It is not normal to just accept that orangemen need to march for half the year (yes, they start on Easter and don’t stop until like August) because they insist on celebrating the victory of some Dutch guy centuries ago. It is not normal to simply expect that they need to burn shit down on a yearly basis. Who will develop enough of a spine to tell them to grow the fuck up?
Because here’s something that I can guarantee. If nothing is done to reduce tensions - tackling online fascist radicalisation, economic deprivations, breaking up the paramilitary mafia gangs - this will get worse. People can only be expected to live under a yearly siege for so long.
And no one can say there they were not warned.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be interviewing, locals who are thinking about a different Belfast and NI. I’ll be platforming migrants, refugees, LGBTQs and anyone else working to that goal. I’ll be posting some of it here, some of it for other articles, and others on the podcast. I’ll update here regardless.
To support my work the best way to do so is through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/eliaayoub
Thank you
And a quotation totally incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain in their homage to Red Hand icons. Most of the world is paying zero attention to what's going on in Northern Ireland--yours is an important attention-getter.
I wonder Elia, if you are familiar with Bayo Akomolafe https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/tag/thoughts
He will be in Belfast in August as a guest speaker for people who can do (expensive) retreats. He does other events & I follow his writings. He recently wrote on Frederick Douglass who fled to Belfast and was memorialised there. He wrote of the dissonance of that time & now. Interesting man. As are you.