UK riots are what happens when immigration debate is driven out of conversation

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Tonight, what happens when you drive anti-immigration viewpoints out of the mainstream conversation? We'll give you a hint from the UK.

We have more work to do on the mass immigration story here in Canada but we’ve covered it pretty well. We believe that looking at how mass immigration is handled — and mishandled — in other countries gives us a sense of how things could go, like laboratory experiments.

In the UK, they’re about five years further down the road than we are here in Canada. Things popped off a few weeks ago in the UK, after a mass stabbing incident and a few other provocations and counter-provocations. It ended in riots — including the burning of a hotel that had been turned into a refugee camp.

We're against riots, in case you’re wondering. We're against arson and stabbing. Although it seems like our democracy is failing, we still believe in it more than we believe in the alternative. But we need to talk about how the left fights the right in 2024: not by arguing but by silencing. There is an almost constant attempt to drive people who have contrary views, or even just grievances, out of the political establishment. They want to make them into pariahs, to send them into exile, to keep the political institutions just for one group, and no one else.

Even though our system, in its brilliance, contemplated an official role for someone called His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition — where we took someone who was supposed to be a leading dissident and gave him a job, resources, and protection — cancel culture is still trying to remove political minorities from the conversation. What's even more perverse is that the people who disagree with mass immigration are not a minority in any Western country. You can call anti-immigration people "extremists" but those who call for open borders are the ones on the fringe.

But let's take a look at what the systemic, repeated, and vicious demoralization and marginalization of people with a grievance does to a country.

A famous UK pollster called YouGov published this research right after the riots.

Respondents were asked, "Thinking about the recent protests and unrest that have taken place, how much sympathy, if any, do you have with the views of the following?"

The first category was "those taking place in recent protests peacefully." And, as it turns out, despite the hurricane of media attacks on the protests, 58% of Brits told pollsters that they sympathize with the anti-immigration protestors.

The pollster then asked if they support "those causing unrest," as in, the rioters.

Only 8% of the general population said yes. However, 25% of Reform UK voters expressed sympathy. We'll get back to that.

They also asked, "Do you think the recent protests and unrest that have taken place are justified or unjustified?”

12% of the general population said the riots were justified. And again, for supporters of Reform UK, that number goes up to 33%.

At the bottom of page 7, 16% of all Brits said the rioters were "people with legitimate concerns," including a solid 49% of Reform UK supporters.

Reform UK is Nigel Farage’s party, the man who successfully led the Brexit referendum campaign to get the UK out of the European Union. He’s pretty much the only mainstream politician against mass immigration. He got more than four million votes but only five seats — he came in second in nearly 100 ridings but that obviously doesn’t count.

The mainstream establishment is trying to drive him out of polite company, just like they’re trying to cancel Tommy Robinson. They’re cancelling any Brits who simply tweet or announce their opposition online.

What if they succeed? What if in the UK they succeed in driving anyone concerned about mass immigration out of politics, the media, and the courts? Well, the poll gives us a hint.

If you are told you don't belong in the system, if the rules are twisted, if there’s two-tier justice, if you no longer believe you can work within the establishment, then what do you have to lose?

That’s what we're worried about. 12% of Brits say the riots were justified, and 16% say the rioters have legitimate concerns. That’s still a small minority, but it’s not nothing.

If you tell everyone you hate that they can’t participate in democracy, they’ll get the message. And it could be a terrible message.

Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, and Sammy Woodhouse didn’t cause the riots. They’re the safety valve, the preferable solution to extreme action. They’re the only people keeping working-class, indigenous Brits hopeful and willing to participate in the system.

But if you cancel Nigel and jail Tommy, why wouldn’t their supporters riot? It’s the only path you’ve left for them.

And after all, isn’t that what the authoritarian left really wants? They want right-wingers to riot. All this time they’ve talked about defunding police and releasing criminals from prisons but only because it's not their preferred type of offender.

They’re emptying the prisons of real criminals because they can hardly wait to fill them up with their political opponents.

GUEST: True North Centre's Cosmin Dzsurdzsa on Canada's state broadcaster and their overwhelming coverage of Kamala Harris and the DNC.