Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly. The violence that drove scores of ethnic minorities from their homes earlier this month in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has drawn attention from those who study violent extremism in the U.S.The disorder followed the grisly stabbing of 44-year-old Stephen Ogilvie on June 8, caught on video and widely circulated on social media, by a 30-year old Sudanese man who was seeking asylum in the UK.The victim survived, but was seriously injured; the alleged perpetrator has been charged with attempted murder.
The stabbing set off unruly protests, in which masked, anti-immigrant mobs set fire to vehicles and homes in predominantly ethnic minority neighborhoods.Now, there are questions about how participants organized so quickly, and whether a network of neo-Nazi youth groups, called "active clubs," played a role."Effectively, they saw their model in action," said Michael Colborne, journalist and researcher for Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group based in the Netherlands."They saw masked young men committing political violence and in a model that they … would actually further like to emulate themselves."Active clubs have been on the rise in recent years across Western Europe and the U.S..
Organized locally but with well established transnational ties through digital platforms and conferences, they structure their activities around a shared interest in mixed martial arts training."The whole point of participating in combat sports for them isn't like it is for most other people who might want to just go get fit, taking a kickboxing class or learning self-defense or bettering themselves," said Colborne."Their interest in combat sports is explicitly about preparing for political violence."A social media flurry on active club accounts that preceded and followed the unrest in Belfast has spurred reporting in Wired that they may have helped to orchestrate or instigate the attacks.
If true, this would represent a ...