Gemma McSherry, told The Pat Kenny Show that people become radicalised as they are “groomed into violence.”
Following the stabbing incident in Belfast and the subsequent disorder and far-right mobilisation, questions are being raised about how people are groomed into violence.
On Monday evening, a man in his 40s in North Belfast was attacked with a knife and remains in hospital with serious injuries.
In the aftermath of the attack, there were calls on social media for protests across Northern Ireland.
Gemma McSherry, a writer who has previously worked with Amnesty and The Guardian, told Ciara Doherty on The Pat Kenny Show that people become radicalised as they are “groomed into violence.”
“They are groomed into going out into the street, and they are sort of now given permission to be openly racist, to be openly violent in the street”, she told Newstalk.
“The way that social media is sort of bringing people together is coming now from a different side. In the North, historically, this type of racist violence has generally just been lower on the list.
“We are now seeing people from across the sectarian divide coming out onto the streets and taking part in this. A lot of that is to do with social media.
“People are being taught how to be better at being violent. They are being taught through social media how to organise these gangs and how to go out and make sure that they aren't being caught in what they're doing. That is very, very scary.”
Mrs McSherry explained that the deprivation affecting communities in loyalist areas was at the heart of the violence.
One of many cars firebombed during an anti-immigration protest. (Photo by Alamy). “Deprivation is a tool of control within these communities”, she told Newstalk.
“The deprivation is at the heart of all of this. It's at the heart of why these people want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves, bigger than the communities that they grew up in.
“The unionist politicians have always run on a sort of hatefuelled agenda. And they know rightly that these boys in particular are going to buy into that agenda because it gives them something to belong to.
“The politicians do a good job of coming out after the event and condemning it. But this kind of hatred has been, you know, the flames that have been fanned for a very long time.”
She explained that in order to break the cycle in the North, there needed to be community level intervention and community level support to get young people off their phones and to try and stop “the culture of generational hate.”
Main Image: Belfast youths burn down a grocery store owned by an immigrant. Photo by: ZUMA Press.
