Tangle - The riots in the United Kingdom.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

This Friday...

Every now and again, I write a personal essay for our Friday edition. This week, I’m going to be publishing one of the most difficult pieces I’ve ever written: a personal essay on Israel, the latest on the war, and how my feelings on what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank continue to evolve. Keep an eye out for the piece on Friday.

Quick hits.

1. U.S. inflation continued to cool in July, with the consumer price index rising 2.9% from a year earlier, lower than economists expected. The latest numbers increase the likelihood the Federal Reserve will soon cut interest rates. (The numbers)
2. Election officials in Arizona and Missouri announced their states will vote on codifying abortion rights through state constitutional amendments this November. (The amendments)
3. A Kansas police chief was charged with felony obstruction of justice after the raid of a local newspaper's office. (The charge)
4. Iran will reportedly refrain from a promised attack on Israel if a ceasefire deal is reached in Gaza, with talks set to resume on Thursday. (The report)
5. The United Automobile Workers union filed charges against former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, saying they threatened union workers during a live-streamed conversation on Monday. (The allegations)

Today's topic.

The UK riots. On July 29, three girls were killed in a stabbing attack at a dance class in Southport, England. Eight children and two adults were severely injured in the attack, including Leanne Lucas, 35, who organized the event and was stabbed while shielding two girls from the attacker. A 17-year-old suspect, Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, from Banks, England, was arrested for the attack and charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder, and possession of a curved kitchen knife.

Following a vigil on July 30, protests in Southport turned violent. Riots broke out as a wave of anti-immigration fervor was stoked by online misinformation claiming that the attacker was a Muslim immigrant who arrived in the UK by boat. Rudakubana, who is now 18, is not a Muslim or an immigrant but a second-generation British citizen born to Rwandan parents in Cardiff, Wales. He has been a resident of the Southport area since 2013. 

However, the misinformation was picked up by Russian fake news accounts online and went viral, leading to riots in over 20 towns and cities across the country. On July 30, the day after the attack, police clashed with as many as 1,000 rioters at a Southport mosque, resulting in injuries to some 50 officers. Protestors chanting anti-immigration slogans in the government district of London clashed with police, resulting in over 100 arrests for violent disorder and other offenses. In the days that followed, additional violence broke out in northwestern England and Northern Ireland. As of last week, more than 400 people have been arrested, and British police deployed about 6,000 riot officers over the weekend. The government also announced plans to operate UK courts 24/7 to expedite prosecutions of rioters. 

Public dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of immigration has been growing since the pandemic, coinciding with a significant uptick in migration to the UK. Many of these immigrants are asylum-seekers and arrive in the UK via boat, crossing the English Channel; the number of immigrants arriving this way rose from 8,500 in 2020 to 45,000 in 2022. Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spearheaded a plan to send some of these asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed, but the plan failed after accruing huge costs and public pushback. Sunak’s Conservative Party was soundly defeated in the UK’s recent general election, while the Labour Party gained 211 seats in the House of Commons and many conservative voters opted to support the anti-immigration Reform UK party.  

The social media platform X has been accused of allowing for the spread of misinformation that contributed to violence, with many blaming X CEO Elon Mmusk personally. “Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for [UK Prime Minister] Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media,” said Bruce Daisley, former Twitter vice president for Europe, Asia, and Africa. In 2023, the UK passed the Online Safety Act, which gives platform providers a responsibility to ensure the safety of their users. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack, as well as the counter-protests, which he called “far-right thuggery.” A spokesperson for the government added that X has “a responsibility to ensure the safety of their users and online spaces… They shouldn’t be waiting for the Online Safety Act for that. They already have responsibilities in place under the law.” 

Starmer and the British government are now facing backlash for the response to the riots and demonstrations, which critics are calling authoritarian. The think tank Royal United Services Institute says rightwing violence “is often classified as mere thuggery,” condemning the government for what it views as a “two-tier” response to crime that responds more harshly to similar acts of violence from Islamists.

Below, we’ll get into what the left, right, and UK writers are saying about the attack, the riots, and the government response. Then, I’ll give my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left identifies social media as the catalyst of the riots, suggesting these platforms have become dangerous sources of misinformation.
• Some say the UK needs to address its migration crisis regardless of the racism undergirding the riots. 

In CNN, Brian Fung wrote “UK riots show how social media can fuel real-life harm.”

“The widespread anti-immigrant riots in the United Kingdom of the past week, and the false viral claims that fueled them, may be the clearest, most direct example yet of the way unchecked misinformation on social media can produce violence and harm in the real world,” Fung said. “An economist might call these negative externalities – like pollution, they are byproducts of a profit-seeking business that, left unaddressed, everyone else must either learn to live with or mitigate, usually at great collective expense. The consequences tend to play out over long timeframes and with large-scale, systemic effects.

“This week, it is hard to avoid wondering whether politically motivated violence based on nothing more than bad-faith, evidence-free speculation has become a permanent fixture among social media’s various externalities, and if we are being asked to make peace with it as a condition of living in a digitally connected world,” Fung wrote. “It may be tempting to dismiss social media’s role in the UK riots as merely a reflection of latent political trends or the result of activism that would have happened on other platforms anyway. But that distracts from the calculation that some platforms appear to have made: At least some of the time, some amount of misinformation-fueled violence is a reasonable cost for society to pay.”

In The Atlantic, Robert F. Worth said “Keir Starmer needs to address immigration, not because of Britain’s riots, but in spite of them.”

“The lawlessness on display in recent days doesn’t change the fact that the British government has been mishandling immigration for years. It allowed in record numbers of migrants entering legally and illegally, year after year, in the teeth of popular opposition, and then introduced flawed schemes, such as the aborted effort to fly them to Rwanda for processing. The number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats—some of them drowning in the attempt—continues to rise and is a source of shame and anguish across the political spectrum.”

“The riots followed a long string of other clashes, including anti-immigrant protests in Ireland and violent confrontations involving Roma migrants in Leeds last month. If all of this were happening in another part of the world, it might be described—as some pundits have observed—as ethnic conflict,” Worth wrote. “A more focused policy would reform the U.K.’s chaotic asylum system and maybe even its approach to assimilating new arrivals… Greater transparency about just what the government’s policies really are could help mitigate the power of conspiracy theories about plots to crowd out the native-born.”

What the right is saying.

• The right worries that the UK riots foreshadow similar unrest in the U.S. over migration.
• Some say that the response to the riots should not be social media censorship but more speech. 

In The Washington Examiner, Ian Haworth wrote “anti-immigration riots are coming here if we don’t speak up.”

“Race riots have taken hold of cities throughout the nation, with Brits witnessing the worst public disorder in recent memory. And while it seems so far away, we must understand that this is coming to a city near you unless we are willing to stand up and speak the truth about immigration despite the ever-looming threat of being called ‘racist,’” Haworth said. “Here’s the uncomfortable truth you won’t hear: This explosion of violence isn’t one-sided, and it didn’t come out of nowhere… While far-right attacks motivated by bigotry are disgusting and deserve condemnation, we must also zoom out to understand the full picture.”

“This attack was incorrectly used to justify deplorable violence. But it’s also important to understand that it is one of many attacks across many days, months, and years, forming a pattern of violence linked with open immigration policies that are being ignored or downplayed,” Haworth wrote. “In today’s U.K., you’ll spend more time in prison for racist tweets than for raping a child. And politicians are surprised people are upset? This was allowed to happen because they let British culture be slowly hijacked from within under the banner of tolerance and abandoned the act of protest to people who want to choose violence. And make no mistake: This inevitable tipping point is coming to the United States soon if we follow the U.K.’s lead and fail to stand up, say what is true, and protect Western values.”

In National Review, Andrew Stuttaford wrote about “riots, social media, and the ‘opinion corridor.’”

“It didn’t take long after the recent wave of riots in England began for there to be demands for tighter regulation (or, to call it what it is, censorship) of social media… In this case, the would-be censors were fortified by the fact a major trigger for the riots were online ‘reports’ that the individual responsible for the appalling knife attack that left three little girls dead, and other victims injured, was Muslim, an asylum-seeker, or both. This was simply untrue,” Stuttaford said. “Even if most of those rioting were thugs looking for an excuse to make trouble, the fact remains that many people sitting at home were prepared to believe the claims that were made.”

“Something else has also emerged… an ‘opinion corridor’... not dissimilar to that of the Overton Window, which basically defines the outer limits of what may or may not be said in polite society, including on the media. To deny that the setting of such boundaries in the U.K. is influenced by ideology as well as a basic need to keep the peace is either naïve or dishonest,” Stuttaford wrote. “If further steps, beyond the existing law, are taken to limit what may be posted on social media they will only increase the distrust of information generated by government sources or the MSM… And the answer is not to turn to the often spurious objectivity of ‘fact-checkers,’ a rightly discredited caste, but to argue back.”

What UK writers are saying.

• UK writers on the left argue the riots were a product of years of racist rhetoric from the country’s right flank. 
• Conservative writers from the UK condemn the riots but say concerns over migration are still legitimate.

In The Guardian, David Olusoga said “the UK riots were violent racism fomented by populism.”

“Riots are not protests and there is a difference between motivations and excuses. Despite much that has been said, the riots of 2024 were not born of ‘legitimate grievances’ about poverty, underinvestment and the breakdown of basic services, all supposedly deepened by mass immigration. The people attacked on the streets, those who had to defend their places of worship or their homes, are the neighbours of the rioters. They live in the same towns and suffer the consequences of the exact same poverty and underinvestment.”

“A defining characteristic of the populist right – both politicians and their enablers at the tabloids and online – is an absolute, ironclad, unwavering refusal to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. They scuttled away from the wreckage of Brexit… pointing accusatory fingers at others as their most cherished political project decimated Britain’s trade,” Olusoga said. “A nation that was led for three years by a prime minister who used ethnic and racial slurs against Muslim women and African children, in which newspaper columnists were allowed to describe asylum seekers as ‘vermin’ and in which those same papers constantly and deliberately conflated the separate issues of immigration and asylum: such a nation, sooner or later, was always going to face consequences.”

In The Daily Express, Sir John Hayes wrote “we must uphold lawful order – only then can we discuss ending mass immigration.”

“From Belfast to Bristol, our streets have been scarred by violent protest following the shocking knife attack on young girls in Southport at the end of July. Thuggery and crime should be condemned, without question, as the full force of the law is brought to bear on those who flout it,” Hayes said. “The current violence powerfully demonstrates how dangerous it is to pander to elements that operate beyond lawfulness. The enforced order on which public safety depends relies on the authority of the police who must now reclaim our streets.”

“Nevertheless, searching questions about the impact of mass immigration warrant a fair hearing. So, the Government must reach out beyond its narrow base and demonstrate that it can govern for all the people of the United Kingdom, not just for the metropolitan liberal elite and vested public sector interests,” Hayes wrote. “Lawful order must be upheld for the common good. Once it has been, politicians of good faith should encourage and welcome a considered national conversation about ending the days of mass immigration and, in doing so, promote new steps to create an elevating and enduring shared sense of Britishness.”

My take.

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• Bigotry and xenophobia are obviously at play here, but ending the story there is too simple.
• The UK government’s inclination to limit speech will only make the problem worse.
• If the government is looking for a lasting solution, it should start by addressing the widespread concerns many UK residents have.

These riots — and the government response — are disturbing, and I don’t think the UK’s issues are going to be resolved any time soon.

This story has a lot of important elements, but to me, three core themes emerged in the commentary we cited above: disagreement about the root causes of the riots, unease over the government’s response, and fears that the violence in the UK could foreshadow similar unrest here in the U.S. I’ll address each point in turn, but overall, the scale of the riots, videos of the chaos on social media, and comments from British leaders about what should happen add to my sense of unease.

The killing of the three girls in Southport was obviously a horrific event, and I’m not surprised at the community’s outrage when it couldn’t get immediate answers about the perpetrator due to laws that protect the identity of minors accused of crimes. Those are generally good laws, but in this case, they created an information vacuum that bad actors were willing and able to exploit on social media. However, blaming misinformation as the sole cause of the riots is lazy, and misses a ton of context. As British writer Eliot Wilson wrote, “Far-right groups organizing the riots draw a straightforward line from immigration, especially Muslim immigration, to violent crime. Rudakubana’s supposed identity was never more than a useful prompt, so his actual identity has been no brake on their activities.”

Commentators like David Olusoga (under “What UK writers are saying”) also make a compelling case that those who seek to ascribe motives other than racism or xenophobia to the riots are missing the long history of racial resentment that is tied to these kinds of incidents in the UK. The rioters’ choice of targets, local Mosques in Southport and a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham, plainly show that much of the violence is founded in bigotry. Furthermore, many Brits seem tolerant of violence toward refugees and immigrants — a poll released this week found 32% of the British public agree that hostility against refugees is sometimes justified even if it ends in violence, while 36% agree that xenophobic acts of violence are defensible if they result in fewer refugees being settled in one’s town. It’s just one poll, but those are not small minorities. 

While calling out genuine racism and bigotry is a good thing, it would be narrow-minded to end the story there. Many rioters targeted Muslims or presumed migrants, but others torched libraries, looted grocery stores, and attacked nurses on their way to hospital shifts. Writers from across the political spectrum have highlighted a litany of issues that foreshadowed this month’s riots: severe wealth inequality, loss of trust in the police, deteriorating public services, high youth unemployment, and social isolation. Migration has become the focal point for all these problems, especially after a historic surge of new arrivals during the pandemic further strained public resources. That’s all to say: We can simultaneously condemn the rioters’ actions and acknowledge the issues that are fueling broader agitation in British society. 

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been in office barely a month, but I suspect addressing these tensions will be the defining challenge of his term. And let’s just say I’m skeptical of his (and other British law enforcement and politicians’) approach so far. I don’t think anyone should take seriously the London police chief’s threat to extradite and jail U.S. citizens for violating UK rules about political speech online, but other measures being floated give me pause. Last year, the UK passed the Online Safety Act, which — when it goes into effect in 2025 — will fine social media companies if they fail to moderate calls to violence or hate speech on their platforms. Now Prime Minister Starmer and other lawmakers are suggesting it could be amended to add penalties for spreading “misinformation” on social media, reportedly including “legal but harmful” content.

Yes, social media platforms were used to organize the riots, but plenty of arrests tied to individuals’ social media posts are not so clear cut. Some UK citizens have already received multi-year prison sentences for posts that called for violence targeting migrants. Those posts were abhorrent, but I don’t think they merited harsher sentences than some rioters who physically assaulted the police. I’m also troubled by cases like the 55-year-old woman who was arrested for posting inaccurate information about the identity of the suspect in the Southport murders, and the 25-year-old man who received a three-month sentence for making a false claim about being chased by “extreme right-wing rioters" on TikTok. These arrests followed tweets from the official UK government account warning citizens to “think before they post,” and comments from a government prosecutor that suggest a much more aggressive approach to monitoring online activity. 

This response highlights another simple reality: When you limit speech on one platform, that will drive people to other less public, but more extreme and more echo chamber-y, spaces (which is part of this story, too). Limiting speech can also make people feel they have no choice but to act on violent or extreme impulses, precisely because they are being silenced. Allowing speech to proliferate (like we do in the U.S.) is one way to quell people’s desires to turn to political violence.

My takeaway from these cases is similar to conservative writer Brad Polumbo’s, who said, “Arresting people after sharing ‘false’ information requires making the government the ultimate arbiter of truth.” And even if the government could somehow be that arbiter of truth, sending disgruntled British citizens to prison for their social media posts doesn’t address the systemic issues underlying the riots. 

So, what can we learn here in the U.S. from what’s unfolded in the UK? Of course, immigration is front and center in this year’s presidential election, and U.S voters are expressing similar concerns about the level of uncontrolled migration into the country. We’ve also had our share of stories involving crime and migrants that inflame these tensions, with the help of social media. And as in the UK, our immigration debate touches on issues ranging from the economy to public services to social cohesion. Despite those parallels, I don’t think the U.S. is on the verge of widespread tumult like what we’ve just seen across the pond — but it’s not impossible to imagine either. 

As I said at the start, this all leaves me feeling concerned for the future. But my hope is that, rather than trying to crack down on speech they deem inaccurate or misleading, the UK’s leaders will address public unrest by focusing on their citizens’ reasonable concerns over migration and investing in solutions to tackle longstanding problems. And in the U.S., I hope we see these riots as a reminder that we have our own work to do, too. 

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Under the radar.

Benzene, a potent cancer-causing carcinogen, is being used in store-brand cold relief medicine, according to a new Bloomberg report. Generic versions of Mucinex commonly sold at CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart are sometimes made with the chemical, which can cause blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. Consumers, however, would have a hard time knowing Benzene is in the medicine by simply looking at the box, as it is added through an inactive ingredient called carbomer. U.S. regulators have allowed the use of Benzene for decades, even though international authorities say it should be banned. Bloomberg has the story.

Numbers.

• 93,000. The net number of migrants (immigration minus emigration) to the UK in 2020, according to Statista.
• 745,000. The net number of migrants to the UK in 2022, the highest single-year total of the past 59 years. 
• 685,000. The net number of migrants to the UK in 2023, the second-highest single-year total of the past 59 years. 
• 46%. The percentage of Britons who said the recent riots were born out of a desire to engage in violence and criminal damage, according to a More in Common poll.
• 23%. The percentage of Britons who said the recent riots were born out of legitimate concerns from those worried about immigration to the UK.
• 58%. The percentage of Britons who say they have sympathy with those taking part in recent protests peacefully, according to a YouGov poll. 
• 8%. The percentage of Britons who say they have sympathy with those causing unrest at the protests. 
• 86%. The percentage of Britons who say social media platforms are a key driving force of the unrest in the UK.
• 67%. The percentage of Britons who say immigration policy in recent years bears some responsibility for the unrest in the UK.

The extras.

• One year ago today we announced a brief vacation.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the link to the Elon Musk-Donald Trump conversation on X.
• Nothing to do with politics: The annual Seinfeld-inspired Elaine dance competition.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,492 readers responded to our survey asking about the ‘no tax on tips’ policy with 68% opposing it. “I’m all for lower taxes, but I’d prefer it to be across the board, with minimal loopholes. This just adds one more, albeit benefiting lower income people,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

For 400 years, beavers were extinct from Britain. Now, there are around 1,500 beavers in Scotland and 600-800 in England after both licensed and unlicensed releases into the environment. In creating dams, beavers help provide ponds for frogs, dragonflies, and other kinds of wildlife. Further, their dams can improve water quality and reduce flooding. “Beavers are an important animal we once lived alongside,” said Dr. Sean McCormack of the Ealing Beaver Project. “Welcoming them back, even to our towns and cities, is the right thing to do.” The Guardian has the story.