Police in the northern English city of Rotherham struggled to hold back a group of far-right activists on Sunday, who broke into a hotel believed to be housing asylum seekers.
The disturbance is the latest in a series of violent protests by anti-immigration groups in British towns and cities this week after three girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport in northwest England on Monday.
Footage aired on British TV showed officers with shields targeted by a barrage of projectiles outside the Holiday Inn Express hotel in Rotherham, near Sheffield.
A few minutes later, the protesters can be seen storming the building and removing chairs from inside to use as weapons.
A small fire was also visible while windows in the hotel were smashed.
At least one officer was injured in the confrontation.
Excluding that fact is in and of itself is racism. If the assailant was white (even if coming from immigrant background), the British far-right would have looked the other way. But the assailant is British-horn and black; and the far-right lapped it up.
I’m not trying to downplay the crime of the assailant; but this is one of those moments of “no, he’s one of us” and the response would have been mild if the perpetrator is white. But the assailant is a black British and people immediately went “immigrants are all bad!” The experience of many persons of colour living in majority white European countries is that they are seen as perpetual foreigners even if born and raised there.