FOLLOWING days of far-right English nationalist violence with a strong Islamophobic and racist motivation, yesterday had threatened to be the worst day yet.

There were reports that right-wing extremists were planning up to 100 disturbances across England – targeting mosques, immigration lawyers, hotels housing asylum seekers and immigration advice centres.

Thankfully, the far-right riots failed to materialise, doubtless due to a combination of the well-publicised police reaction force that was planned, the arrests of more than 400 of those who had allegedly been involved in the disturbances over the previous days, and last but not least, the deterrent effect of large scale anti-fascist protests organised by trades unions, community and faith groups determined to prove that the far-right does not own our streets.

Across England tens of thousands massed in a show of solidarity and support for the communities which have been the targets of far-right violence and hatred in recent days.

The bully boys of fascism are cowards, happy to attack defenceless mosques and asylum seeker hostels.

But they run away and hide when they know that they will be faced down by a well-prepared police presence and a large and well-organised united community response determined to show them that their racism and hatred are not welcome.

In Walthamstow in London – an area I know well, having lived nearby throughout the 1990s – the far-right were reportedly planning to attack a local hostel housing asylum seekers. However, an enormous community presence of several thousand people turned out to protect the building.

In the end there was no sign of the far-right, but even if they had shown up they would have been massively outnumbered and would not have been able to get anywhere near to the hostel.

There were similar scenes in Brighton and Bristol. In Brighton, a small number of far-right troublemakers put in an appearance only to be faced down by a much larger gathering of anti-fascist protesters determined to show them that Brighton rejects their racism and hate.

In a delicious irony, the would-be rioters had to seek out the police for protection and were escorted away for their own safety.

There are hopes that the back of this wave of far-right British nationalist violence has now been broken and that there will be no more riots or organised attacks on minority ethnic communities and migrants.

However, the underlying causes have not gone away, and the toxic right-wing traditional media and social media ecosystem which has stoked up fear and hatred against migrants, asylum seekers and the Muslim community remains very much intact and unrepentant.

The right-wing media is very well funded and has the backing and reach that the progressive media can only dream of.

There is a plethora of well-funded right-wing think tanks and pressure groups, funnelling reports and papers to a right-wing press which dominates the media landscape. This has the effect of normalising and bringing into the mainstream right-wing views and talking points while those on the left are marginalised and ignored.

It very much suits the wealthy to blame social problems on immigrants and asylum seekers, creating the false narrative that the country is overcrowded. It's a convenient distraction from the failure of those wealthy funders of the right-wing media and think tanks to pay their fair share of taxes.

Although he is in no way involved with the recent outbreak of violent disturbances, a case in point is the billionaire CEO of Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe, a noted supporter of Brexit who recently blamed the breakdown of public services in the UK not on a decade and a half of Tory austerity and tax policies which favour the wealthy like him, but on immigration.

Radcliffe is the wealthiest man in the UK, with a fortune estimated to be approaching £30 billion. In September 2020, Ratcliffe officially changed his tax residence from the UK to the tax haven of Monaco, a move that it is estimated will save him £4bn in tax. That £4bn would more than cover the cost of abolishing the two-child cap on benefits.

It's not immigrants who are the problem. It's the greed of those who already have far more money than they could possibly spend.

There's a similar picture in Scotland, although the issues of interest here are different. In Scotland anti-independence groups are suspiciously well funded and feed a Scottish media which has an overwhelmingly anti-independence bias. Those who do very well out of the status quo are always keen to defend it.

The recent outbreak of riots in England illustrate the dangers to a democracy of a media which has been captured by the rich. Politicians must shoulder a large share of the blame too. Conservative and Reform UK politicians might not themselves have incited violent disorder, but they have legitimised and promoted the false victim narrative of the far-right.

They have platformed and enabled the far-right grievance myth blaming social ills on migrants.

But it is social media – in particular, the toxic cesspit of Elon Musk's Twitter/X – which has the largest share of the blame.

There can be little doubt now that Musk bought Twitter specifically to turn it into a platform for the dissemination of the far-right views he so very obviously shares himself. Musk not only reinstated, in the supposed name of freedom of speech, the accounts of those previously banned for hate speech and misinformation, he also eviscerated content moderation allowing false information to spread unchecked.

Musk is currently actively spreading the right-wing lie that there is two-tier policing in the UK which favours Muslims and minority ethnic communities at the expense of the white population.

This wave of far-right riots may thankfully be coming to an end, but without meaningful media reform in the UK, we remain at risk of new outbreaks in the future.