A tale of two Hitler salutes

For the peripheral observer, the madness of the past week in the UK might be summed up by a singular image: a group of white men in Leicester performing a full Sieg Heil. But for me, it’s the image of a person of colour making the exact same gesture in London that is far more illuminating. In fact, it’s the different reactions both have elicited across the political spectrum that get us tantalisingly close to understanding how we have arrived at this grim moment. It might even point to how we can exit the swirling whirlpool of community clashes that threaten to drag our society down to the depths.

The first photo is a continuation of a theme, embedded in public consciousness since the 1970s. He is the bad man, the bogeyman, the far-right neo-Nazi. You’ll get no dissent from me there. Then the second comes along to complicate the narrative. Both images were taken on the same day, in the same country. One at a racist protest; the other, well, at a racist protest. Sorry, I mean ‘peace march’ for Gaza.

With England’s riots launching more hot takes than bricks, I hesitate to lob my own, but as someone whose multiple social-media bubbles resemble swiss cheese, I’ve noticed something that is key to all this. There is a near-universal unwillingness to call out the extremes of our own tribes, or when doing so complicates our own favoured narrative. To deny is to tolerate is to justify is to embolden.

When rioters initially gathered in Southport last week, some sections of the right went into overdrive to dismiss the presence and impact of the far right. These thugs were just the white working class, many insisted. They were shocked and scared and angry by the terrible murder of three girls, apparently. Or merely frustrated by unfettered immigration.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with being angry about mass migration, let alone the murder of children. I’m sure some originally took to the streets to protest out of sheer frustration. But come on, there were a lot of proper, actual hardcore racists on the streets last week. Rocks were thrown at Filipino nurses on their way to helping people. A hotel believed to be housing asylum seekers was set alight. An Asian man was assaulted making his way down the road.

You would think the right would be more inured to this behaviour, more aware of the pitfalls of succumbing to self-denial and gaslighting. The right has long criticised the left for wallowing in these tactics. Things were especially bad during Jeremy Corbyn’s reign. If the then Labour leader had just put his hands up at the first accusations of anti-Semitism and said, ‘Yeah, the left’s not perfect, I’m not perfect, I’ll work on it’, history might have played out differently.

Keir Starmer’s disastrous public responses to the riots this time around threaten to make a bad situation worse. Shutting down this racist violence is, of course, the immediate priority. But in Labour’s narrative, everyone concerned about migration is just a few untrue social-media posts away from being a far-right rioter. There are no legitimate concerns that people across the country, who would never dream of rioting, might be feeling or that might be worth addressing.

Most damaging of all, Starmer is attempting to dismiss concerns about ‘two-tier policing’ as the stuff of far-right fantasies. Here he is taking an axe to what is ironically the most unifying British value: our sense of fairness. Lock away the violent. Great. Set the police on them. Lovely stuff. But please, do it to all of them. The British people are not stupid. We have eyes. For all the misinformation on social media, there is also information on those platforms that the mainstream media consciously choose not to disseminate.

When a police car was overturned and a bus set alight in Harehills last month? No police. When gangs of Muslim youths roamed around Birmingham with weapons this week? No police. When a man was beaten up outside a pub, his liver lacerated? No police. When journalists were chased away to chants of ‘Fuck the Jews’ and their tires were slashed? No police. No finger pointing from Starmer. No use of the term ‘far right’, either.

Which brings us back to the Sieg Heil photo at the Gaza march. The man raises his arm proud and straight at a group of Jews. In the background, two young women, two ‘anti-racists’, allies of the same cause, giggle. In the video from which the image is taken, other self-professed anti-racists saunter by. No one challenges him. No one is concerned. That the police later did arrest the man was almost certainly at the insistence of those he targeted with his gesture. No doubt they will have had to collect the evidence themselves. Certainly, it won’t have been the doing of the protest’s organisers. Those same organisers have assiduously turned a blind eye to the continuous and multiple examples of racism that plague their marches.

Clearly, different rules apply here. When a man performs a Hitler salute on a Palestine demo, there is no soul-searching. When cranks and Islamists smash the windows of businesses because of some vague connection to Israel, they are said to be ‘protesters’, not rioters. For 10 months, left-wingers have failed to call out the hatred and racism in their midst. And thus the extremes of their group have become emboldened.

The superpower of being British is spotting bullshit and calling it out. It’s why we have been the first country to emerge blinking into reality from the madness of gender ideology. We can usually spot hypocrisy a mile away, from whichever group it’s coming from.

When the police attempt to justify their different levels of policing criminal behaviour, we should all call bullshit. When a procession of cars full of Islamists drives through a Jewish neighbourhood in London, chanting that they’ll ‘rape their daughters’, and they do not get charged, we should call it out. When two men, one white, one not, proudly partake in a Nazi salute at separate demonstrations, we should be outraged. If only we could be just as outraged by both.

Josh Howie is a stand-up comedian. Follow him on X: @joshxhowie.