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    ...in Northern Ireland?!? 📂 Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 11, 2025, 1:53 pm, in reply to "They burned a boat full of effigies. Of people. Migrants. Refugees. On purpose."

    wtf is wrong with those people - are they not far enough up the arse of the worst aspects of british empire-nostalgic right-wing psychosis that they need to pretend that they, too have a 'small boat crisis?'

    Full article worth a read:

    *****

    https://www.bearlypolitics.co.uk/p/hate-but-make-it-heritage

    Hate, But Make It Heritage
    The Moygashel bonfire wasn’t about frustration - it was about dehumanisation. And the justifications are getting bolder.
    The Bear
    Jul 11, 2025

    First off - yes, it's me. Again. For the fifth time this week.

    Since I no longer post long-form rants on Musk’s hellsite, those thoughts have to go somewhere - and sadly for you, that "somewhere" is now your inbox. My sincerest apologies to anyone here just trying to get to the weekend without another sociopolitical dissection.

    With that apology duly logged and timestamped, let’s talk about bonfires.
    Image Credit: Kevin Scott via X

    Late last night, I posted about the burning of a large effigy in Moygashel, Northern Ireland - one that featured a boat full of silhouetted migrant figures, perched atop pallets and torched under banners reading "STOP THE BOATS" and "VETERANS BEFORE REFUGEES." This happened as part of an Eleventh Night bonfire - an annual Protestant loyalist tradition where towering bonfires are lit on 11 July to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne and usher in the Twelfth of July celebrations. I shared it on X, Bluesky, Threads, and even here on Substack.

    The responses could not have been more different.

    On Threads, Bluesky, and Substack, the reaction was clear: horror, sadness, anger. A general consensus that this wasn’t just “a bit much,” but a grotesque display of dehumanisation made literal.

    On X? A fiery cesspit exploded into being.

    At the time of writing, I've had over 1,400 replies ranging from "Why weren't you this angry when they burned Thatcher?" to "You just hate white working-class traditions" to one man earnestly informing me that Vladimir Putin was probably laughing at the Royal Navy for doing the YMCA at Pride. (Which, to be fair, was a different post, but honestly, the overlap in energy is striking.)

    There were accusations that George Soros is secretly funding me (I can assure you, he is not), demands that I "go back where I came from" (South Africa, apparently), and at least three people who seemed convinced that criticising a bonfire was somehow equivalent to supporting Hamas. The usual suspects emerged from their digital caves: Union Jack avatars, accounts with 13 followers and opinions about "indigenous British culture," and that special breed of person who thinks adding "just asking questions" to the end of a racist rant makes it intellectual discourse.

    So, in the spirit of doing public service and keeping my blood pressure in the midrange, I’ve compiled an FAQ. Nine questions. All frequently asked, all confidently wrong.
    1. Why is it okay to burn effigies of Thatcher, Trump, or Guy Fawkes, but not migrants? Isn’t that hypocritical?

    Because there’s a difference between critiquing power and targeting the powerless. Burning effigies of political leaders is a symbolic protest against those with enormous institutional authority - people who governed, made decisions, waged wars, enacted austerity, or (in Fawkes’ case) tried to blow up Parliament. Burning effigies of migrants - who have no power, wealth, or protection - isn’t punching up, it’s a hate ritual. If you can’t spot the moral gap between roasting Guy Fawkes and torching the cardboard likeness of someone who fled a war zone, I honestly don’t quite know how to help you.

    (And for the record: I’d mostly shrug at someone burning an effigy of a politician I support. That’s protest. This isn’t.)
    2. Aren’t you just being hysterical? It’s a tradition. People burn things every year. Why are you acting like it’s a hate crime?

    You know what else used to be a tradition? Bear-baiting. Witch trials. Sending kids up chimneys. Tradition is not a moral force - it’s a habit. The fact that this happened as part of a “cultural event” doesn’t soften the blow. It makes it worse. Because it wasn’t spontaneous - it was deliberate, organised, and designed to make a spectacle of hate. And when your community tradition involves publicly setting fire to a depiction of desperate people in a boat, you might want to reconsider what, exactly, you’re celebrating.
    3. What about illegal immigration? Why aren’t you angry about that instead?

    This is the rhetorical equivalent of responding to a house fire with “What about littering?” Of course migration policy is a valid area of debate. But what’s happening here isn’t debate. It’s dehumanisation. If you want to talk about policy, fine - let’s talk about detention centres, safe routes, and labour exploitation. But don’t pretend that a bonfire effigy of migrants is a serious policy intervention. It’s not. It’s a threat dressed up as performance. You don’t get to scapegoat people and then act surprised when someone calls it out.
    4. Isn’t this actually the fault of liberals who refuse to talk honestly about migration? You created this backlash.

    This is the classic "look what you made me do" school of politics. Liberals spoke too nicely, so now we're burning effigies of migrants in public squares.

    Grow up.

    If you hadn’t noticed, the whole of the UK constantly discusses migration. We talk about it at the border, in the budget, in every manifesto, and on every tabloid front page. Politicians have made entire careers out of talking about migration. What people mean when they say "liberals won't talk about it" is "liberals won't say the cruel, sweeping, dehumanising things I really want them to say." They want permission to call people "invaders" and "cockroaches" without being called out for it. And no, that's not censorship, that’s literally just other people having a conscience. Meanwhile, this endless scapegoating actively prevents us from having the serious conversations we actually need about safe routes, labour exploitation, and integration support. But those discussions require nuance, and nuance doesn't burn as brightly as a bonfire.
    5. Isn’t this just frustration boiling over? Ordinary people feeling ignored and expressing themselves the only way they know how?

    Frustration is real. But targeting the powerless isn’t “expression” - it’s projection. Everyone is struggling right now. Wages are stagnant, public services are crumbling, and politicians have turned accountability into performance art. But none of that is the fault of the terrified family clinging to a rubber dinghy in the Channel. Blaming migrants for broken housing policy or NHS waiting times is like shouting at a fire alarm because you can’t afford home insurance. It might feel cathartic, but it won’t fix a damn thing - and it’ll make everything worse for those already clinging to the bottom rung.
    6. You’re always banging on about rights - what about their right to free expression?

    Sure. You absolutely have the legal right to do a lot of things. That doesn't make those things morally defensible though. And I would add that I also have the right to call it what it is: performative bigotry with a side of pyrotechnics. "Free speech" doesn't mean freedom from consequences, and it definitely doesn't mean everyone else has to play along with the pantomime that this is a noble cultural tradition. The actual meaning of Free Speech (or more accurately, Freedom of Expression in the UK) is that the government can't arrest you for your opinions - it doesn't mean everyone else has to nod along respectfully while you set fire to representations of desperate people.
    7. Isn’t this just performance art? Edgy, provocative symbolism? Maybe you’re just offended because it hit a nerve.

    Yes, it hit a nerve. Because some of us think "symbolically torching representations of refugees" might just say something about your politics. Edgy art punches up, challenges norms, and questions the powerful. This? This is Poundland Leni Riefenstahl. When your creative expression involves dehumanising the most vulnerable people in society, you're not pushing boundaries - you're reinforcing the ugliest ones. Real provocative art makes people uncomfortable about systems of power, not about the humanity of desperate people fleeing war zones.
    8. Why does this even matter? It’s just wood and cardboard. Nobody actually got hurt.

    If you think the bar for concern is "someone has to physically bleed," you've missed the entire point. Dehumanisation starts with symbolism. With jokes. With metaphors. With the gradual stripping away of empathy, one headline and effigy at a time. No one gets rounded up without first being rendered invisible. And if you’re out there defending this as just harmless symbolism, remember what happened in Southport last year - where rioters actually tried to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. The line between burning effigies and burning buildings with people inside them is thinner than we’d all like to think. This stuff matters because it conditions people to see refugees not as human beings, but as threats. And once that perception sets in, the rest (cruelty, neglect, policy brutality) flows that much more easily.
    9. This is just how working-class communities express political frustration. Stop being so middle-class about it.

    This argument is deeply insulting to working-class people. It suggests they're incapable of political expression that doesn't involve setting fire to representations of vulnerable humans. Bullshit. Working-class communities have a rich history of sophisticated political organising - from the Suffragettes to the miners' strikes to the anti-poll tax campaigns. They didn't need to burn effigies of refugees to make their point. Using class as a shield for bigotry is both patronising and dishonest. It assumes working-class people can't distinguish between legitimate targets of anger (politicians, systems, employers) and scapegoats (migrants, minorities, the powerless). And it's always worth remembering that many working-class communities are diverse. They include migrants, Muslims, and people of colour. So when you defend this as "working-class expression," you're really defending one group's right to intimidate another.
    The Point of my Spamming

    And that’s my bit.

    Once again, apologies for cluttering your Friday inbox with another deep dive into the darker corners of modern Britain. I know it’s not exactly light reading before the weekend, but thank you for sticking with it.

    Because this is how change happens. Not through viral takedowns or rousing speeches, but in the slow, stubborn accumulation of conversations. A bookmarked post. A quiet pushback at a family dinner. A moment where someone says, “Hang on. That doesn’t sound right.” And maybe they stay long enough to hear the answer.

    The people who built that bonfire won’t read this. But someone who quietly nodded along might. And if it plants even the smallest seed of doubt, that’s worth the word count.

    Right. I’m off to lie down in a darkened room and pretend Twitter is just a collective hallucination. Enjoy your weekend - and try not to let the nonsense win.

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