Simple answer is power, look at how things have changed since Musk bought the largest communication platform on the planet. Look at who's backing him and what they want.
The UK's stance goes right against the values and goals these billionaires want and that's basically to do whatever they want without recourse. What better way to sow diversion than to stoke civil unrest and cause change to the systems that stand in their way.
I'm sure it's about power. I am also sure that having that much wealth, that little accountability, being surrounded by people who've a vested interest in telling you you're a genius, would make anyone go a little insane. Call it Roman Emperor syndrome. Not many people can be Marcus Aurelius.
Don't capitalise black, don't capitalise white, write like we used to do before the identity politicos started messing things up. Even by capitalising white you're falling into their trap of raising identity as a political factor. Dump the lot of those identity politicos in the bin where they belong and let's get to the actual issues no matter what they say.
Please just flag egregious comments or email us (hn@ycombinator.com) if it seems like something needs moderator attention. We've had bad stuff on HN since the start. We can deal with it easily if we know about it.
That capitalization convention is included in the Associated Press Stylebook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Stylebook); the author's use of that convention is not evidence of any broader "allegiance." (Maybe some feel that adhering to the AP's guidelines is enough evidence of bias, but I think it is imprecise to judge the author specifically for following that convention.)
(I am not expressing any opinion on the broader topic(s). I only wanted to call out that the author's writing conventions may have less significance than OP implies.)
> The author could not find the elusive videos of maniacal Whites stabbing, beheading, assaulting, machete-ing or raping non-White strangers in the streets because they do not exist
The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it. Then the government got Brexit, and then Boris Johnson more than tripled immigration, chasing away EU immigration and getting all the immigrants from the (very coincidentally very low-wage Pakistan, I mean there aren't very many countries anywhere that have lower average wages than Greece)
Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on. And the central UK government forced small towns, cities and the like into bankruptcy. Now, in the UK, things like social support are financed by municipalities EXCEPT when it comes to immigrants. So, effectively, the government massively increased immigration, reduced social support and raised taxes on everybody except immigrants.
Then the government blamed very large youth services scandals, like the Rotherham scandal, on immigrants. This, despite the fact that these children had been taken from their homes by youth services and were under their custody AND despite the fact that youth services AND the police have been credibly accused of taking payoffs. Those people were definitely not immigrants, but they did not feature in the court proceedings "for some reason".
So government causes, to varying extents, large social problems. It ostensibly saves immigrants from these problems, and then the government itself blames immigrants for problems the government caused.
The problem here is not Twitter. I mean, they're not helping. But they're not the problem.
>The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it.
>Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on.
These two things might be connected. It's almost like Brexit caused a series of large social problems.
you are right, although i would point out that when you use the word “government” you’re mostly referring to a series of conservative party governments.
at the same time. two things can be true. everything you mentioned plays a large part in why we’re in a bit of a mess as a country.
this is being exacerbated by big tech firms, especially social media ones. the fact that a lie from some tech bro with a large soapbox can travel all the way around the world in less than a second makes it very hard to have a reasoned discussion or debate about the problem.
Billionaires can't have the UK passing sensible taxation policies to curtail the influence of the super-rich. If the UK achieves success in preventing the collapse of their society into a form of feudal poverty, Americans might catch on that there are other options. The Musk-types enjoy playing god and would rather risk systemic collapse than shed some part of their power.
There's being fed up with something and there's fomenting civil war. The huge wave of immigration, which has since subsided, happened under the Tories.
I think the real problem people are having is that a large amount of those immigrants are now no longer from the EU. But you have Brexit to blame for that.
If they are fed up with immigration they are stupid. “Gee we have declining birth rates and we want to deny this pool of labor that might correct course because they are brown.” The american empire was built on easy immigration. Turns out the tired and poor that we took in can build empires and win europe’s major wars for them.
well, first, you need to filter out the foreign influence before you tell people "Brits" and then you also need to adjust your history of brits importing immigrants from their colonies.
After you do that, then people might listen to you.
That’s on you to prove. Is this an “obvious” truth? Or is it just the narrative spun by the fascists and fear-mongers who, incidentally, own some of the biggest media platforms in existence?
Today, a man stabbed four people in islamophobic rage: a ghastly crime. Where are the riots in protest of racist UK natives?
Same reason as always: Wealthy people want less taxes, more power, and will lobby for the parties that always promise less taxes: Those on the right.
The problem is that the conservative and traditional right aren't too popular, so they need to go for the far-right. Those parties are in full MAGA-mode, focusing on things like immigration. It is so, so much easier to sway public opinion by blowing up incidents involving immigrants, than to convince the public that they should accept reduction or degradation of services due to tax cuts.
Far-right politicians discovered some time ago that they can straight up lie through their teeth, and face zero consequences. And those lies will propagate through social media, and people will accept them as facts.
It seems like critical thinking among huge parts of the population is considerably down. I've heard seemingly smart people I know regurgitate lies they've picked up on social media, which they could have fact checked in 30 seconds.
Yeah that article is missing a very major point that immigration in the UK hasn't meant assimilation or a coherent mixing of cultures as people want or may have observed at times.
The problems in the UK are actually focused around sticky blobbyness caused by a) lack of integration, b) left vs right flavor of the moment causing further segregation and c) long term socioeconomic factors leading to govt(councils) fixing the problem in the cheapest way possible which is unfortunately high profile in the British high street by the public.
A lot of British are moving out of the city centers themselves (or already have) and into suburbs which leaves the cities hollowed out. Lack of footfall means lack of investment means decay and cheap housing/buildings.
All of this is a predicable recipe for friction but very short term British politics combined with a "not my problem" attitude prevalent in the nhs and public sectors means people doubled down in short term solutions for over a generation.
That combined with more hardship causes people to look at the biggest broken problem which is our immigration system needed reforming over 20yr+ ago and unfortunately this was locked into place by EU laws and policy (such ironically we pushed for, for other political reasons).
It's less of a grand conspiracy and more of the dominoes we're set to fall this way after dragging us out of the 80s without fixing anything and then the post recession being used to fuel boom and growth vs fixing underlying issues at a national level.
I agree with most of what the article has to say, but I feel like it's dancing around the fundamental issue. Like:
> These apparently disparate events all feature one obvious commonality: race. In each case, the riots were sparked by an act of violence in which the victim(s) were white and the attackers were not. The context: these events were focused largely in ethnically diverse working-class neighbourhoods, communities where resources are stretched.
I know the author is smart and informed enough to see the parallels between this and a number of high-profile incidents in the past decade. There's an increasingly widespread idea that this is simply how a wise person should see interracial crime, not as a series of tragic individual incidents but as attacks on the whole of Group X by the whole of Group Y. The idea has achieved enough prominence that it's starting to overcome the hard-fought taboo on white identitarianism, and now for the first time in decades we have to deal with it as an open political force.
I emphasize that white identitarianism is a bad ideology, incompatible with many of the nice things we enjoy about the modern world, and we have to defeat rather than accommodate it. But defeating it requires taking a serious look at the factors that allow it to grow.
"Big Tech" seems to basically be Elon Musk, known for nazi salutes and nazi grandparents who moved out of South Africa because it wasn't racist enough.
37 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 49.4 ms ] threadThe UK's stance goes right against the values and goals these billionaires want and that's basically to do whatever they want without recourse. What better way to sow diversion than to stoke civil unrest and cause change to the systems that stand in their way.
(I am not expressing any opinion on the broader topic(s). I only wanted to call out that the author's writing conventions may have less significance than OP implies.)
> The author could not find the elusive videos of maniacal Whites stabbing, beheading, assaulting, machete-ing or raping non-White strangers in the streets because they do not exist
Literally today - man charged after suspected anti-Muslim attacks in Edinburgh https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2xg6lwz5jo
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/12/30/how-the-take-ba... ( https://archive.ph/krvMU )
Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on. And the central UK government forced small towns, cities and the like into bankruptcy. Now, in the UK, things like social support are financed by municipalities EXCEPT when it comes to immigrants. So, effectively, the government massively increased immigration, reduced social support and raised taxes on everybody except immigrants.
Then the government blamed very large youth services scandals, like the Rotherham scandal, on immigrants. This, despite the fact that these children had been taken from their homes by youth services and were under their custody AND despite the fact that youth services AND the police have been credibly accused of taking payoffs. Those people were definitely not immigrants, but they did not feature in the court proceedings "for some reason".
So government causes, to varying extents, large social problems. It ostensibly saves immigrants from these problems, and then the government itself blames immigrants for problems the government caused.
The problem here is not Twitter. I mean, they're not helping. But they're not the problem.
>Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on.
These two things might be connected. It's almost like Brexit caused a series of large social problems.
at the same time. two things can be true. everything you mentioned plays a large part in why we’re in a bit of a mess as a country.
this is being exacerbated by big tech firms, especially social media ones. the fact that a lie from some tech bro with a large soapbox can travel all the way around the world in less than a second makes it very hard to have a reasoned discussion or debate about the problem.
People voted for Brexit for a lot of reasons. The leaders of both Vote Leave and Leave.EU said they wanted more skilled immigration.
> raised taxes on everybody except immigrants.
immigrants pay the same taxes as everyone else plus extra taxes such as the NHS surcharge and huge visa renewal fees.
Your comment is unnecessary, unsubstantiated, doesn't add anything to the discussion and is just going to cause arguments in its current form.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo... (figure 2)
I think the real problem people are having is that a large amount of those immigrants are now no longer from the EU. But you have Brexit to blame for that.
After you do that, then people might listen to you.
Today, a man stabbed four people in islamophobic rage: a ghastly crime. Where are the riots in protest of racist UK natives?
How many Brits do you know?
The problem is that the conservative and traditional right aren't too popular, so they need to go for the far-right. Those parties are in full MAGA-mode, focusing on things like immigration. It is so, so much easier to sway public opinion by blowing up incidents involving immigrants, than to convince the public that they should accept reduction or degradation of services due to tax cuts.
Far-right politicians discovered some time ago that they can straight up lie through their teeth, and face zero consequences. And those lies will propagate through social media, and people will accept them as facts.
It seems like critical thinking among huge parts of the population is considerably down. I've heard seemingly smart people I know regurgitate lies they've picked up on social media, which they could have fact checked in 30 seconds.
The problems in the UK are actually focused around sticky blobbyness caused by a) lack of integration, b) left vs right flavor of the moment causing further segregation and c) long term socioeconomic factors leading to govt(councils) fixing the problem in the cheapest way possible which is unfortunately high profile in the British high street by the public.
A lot of British are moving out of the city centers themselves (or already have) and into suburbs which leaves the cities hollowed out. Lack of footfall means lack of investment means decay and cheap housing/buildings.
All of this is a predicable recipe for friction but very short term British politics combined with a "not my problem" attitude prevalent in the nhs and public sectors means people doubled down in short term solutions for over a generation.
That combined with more hardship causes people to look at the biggest broken problem which is our immigration system needed reforming over 20yr+ ago and unfortunately this was locked into place by EU laws and policy (such ironically we pushed for, for other political reasons).
It's less of a grand conspiracy and more of the dominoes we're set to fall this way after dragging us out of the 80s without fixing anything and then the post recession being used to fuel boom and growth vs fixing underlying issues at a national level.
> These apparently disparate events all feature one obvious commonality: race. In each case, the riots were sparked by an act of violence in which the victim(s) were white and the attackers were not. The context: these events were focused largely in ethnically diverse working-class neighbourhoods, communities where resources are stretched.
I know the author is smart and informed enough to see the parallels between this and a number of high-profile incidents in the past decade. There's an increasingly widespread idea that this is simply how a wise person should see interracial crime, not as a series of tragic individual incidents but as attacks on the whole of Group X by the whole of Group Y. The idea has achieved enough prominence that it's starting to overcome the hard-fought taboo on white identitarianism, and now for the first time in decades we have to deal with it as an open political force.
I emphasize that white identitarianism is a bad ideology, incompatible with many of the nice things we enjoy about the modern world, and we have to defeat rather than accommodate it. But defeating it requires taking a serious look at the factors that allow it to grow.
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