Do a Third of Brits Endorse Violence Against Immigrants?
Yesterday evening, a rather shocking poll went viral on Twitter/X. It found that at least a third of Brits endorse violence towards immigrants. 39% of the respondents agreed that “when it comes to the refugee problem, violence is sometimes the only means that citizens have to get the attention of British politicians”. And 34% agreed that “attacks against refugee homes are sometimes necessary to make it clear to politicians that we have a refugee problem”.
These findings seem to suggest that, rather than being confined to a small minority of hooligans, troublemakers and career criminals, support for political violence is widespread. However, there are reasons for scepticism. In fact, the true portion of Britons who endorse political violence is likely much lower than a third.
As several pollsters have noted, the relevant questions suffer from two quite serious problems. First, they asked people whether they agree or disagree with particular statements. This may sound innocuous, but there is a well-known ‘acquiescence bias’ whereby respondents are more likely to agree than disagree with statements in polls.
For example, if you ask people whether they agree “the NHS needs reform more than it needs extra money”, they agree by 43% to 23%. But if you ask them whether they agree “the NHS needs extra money more than it needs reform”, they also agree – by 53% to 20%. The typical way to get around this is by giving respondents mutually exclusive options. You ask, “Which does the NHS need more: reform, or extra money?”
The second problem is that the questions only presented one side of the argument. The statement, “when it comes to the refugee problem, violence is sometimes the only means that citizens have to get the attention of British politicians” only considers one potential benefit of violence, namely getting politicians’ attention. A more neutral formulation would either not mention this benefit, or would mention a potential cost as well. Say: “violence is sometimes the only means that citizens have to get the attention of British politicians, even though it could result in innocent people dying”.
Incidentally, the company that carried out the poll has said that the questions were taken from an academic paper, and that they (the company) were asked to run them by a client.
We can see the findings are implausible by comparing them to findings from other recent polls that phrased questions more appropriately.
YouGov asked people whether “the unrest at protests” was justified or unjustified, and found that only 12% thought it was justified. (They asked separately about whether the protests themselves were justified.) Likewise, More in Common asked people whether “violent protests outside the accommodation refugees live in” would be justified or unjustified, and found that only 8% thought they would be justified.
In addition to issues with how the questions were phrased, there may also have been some inattentive responding – that is, respondents clicking through the survey without paying proper attention.
According to tables provided by the polling company, the questions were asked as part of an online poll that had several dozen in total (which may have led to boredom and thus inattentive responding). Indeed, they show that even a sizeable percentage of Liberal Democrat voters endorse violence against immigrants. Do 26% of Lib Dems really agree that “attacks against refugee homes are sometimes necessary”? I don’t buy it.
So what percentage of Britons do endorse violence against immigrants? The YouGov and More in Common polls suggest it’s closer to 10% – which seems altogether more plausible than a third.
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I certain endorse the use of proportionate and necessary force to repel and remove illegal immigrants – they are surely criminals and invaders. “Violence against immigrants” sounds like a generally bad idea to me – much like violence against any arbitrary group – and morally wrong. We should be angry with the people who engineered this situation, but also with all the people who supported and continue to support mass immigration. It also depends what is meant by “violence against immigrants”. If for example you are protesting against immigration and your protest is confronted by a group of people who may be mainly “immigrants” and they block your path or threaten you, I think it’s fine to stand your ground and stand up for yourself. Is that “violence against immigrants”? Technically yes but I don’t think it’s what the question intended. Or perhaps you live in a place where groups of people who may be mainly/all immigrants behave antisocially or worse and you’re faced with moments where you need to stand up for yourself and those around you, which may end in violence. Same thing – technically yes but really not. Do many people support just randomly punching people because… Read more »
Well speaking of civil unrest and violence, this must really be a tiny community, presumably out in the sticks, if there’s only 200 inhabitants. So what better way to aid social cohesion than ‘culturally enriching’ these people with 280 migrants in their midst? If this is accurate then it’s just plain insanity. I’m fairly confident the migrants also won’t appreciate being stuck some place so remote either, if this is indeed the case. It’s not fair on anybody, this;
”Dundrum, Tipperary.
This tiny Irish village of 200 people was forcibly planted this morning. 280 ‘asylum seekers’ are to be housed in this hotel, replacing the local population overnight.
Ireland is ground zero for population replacement.”
https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1823329085541564586
I can’t find words for this self destruction.
And look how all the police just stand there like automatons. Totally detached. They can’t be local! Imagine being so devoid of emotion and loyalty to your fellow countrymen that you’d stand there and just allow this to happen, like a total and utter traitor. I couldn’t do it. It seems to me now that being a police officer entails more and more of just policing and punishing your fellow citizens. They all may as well be aliens from outer space, this isn’t effecting them at all, is it? Maybe someone from Ireland might know more details about this particular case.
Quite. And if the question is “Do you support a level of proportionate violence in retaliation to a threat to you, your family, your job, and your way of life, when TPTB ignore all these threats and all other courses of action have proven fruitless?”, then my answer is yes. 100% yes. These communities have been left with no other choice.
“Remember, while you are training for diversity and inclusion, someone else is training for war.”
I think the problem is that mass immigration, at least the legal kind, seems to have wide support among probably a majority of people.
It has support, yes, but I very much doubt it’s a majority support. It has support amongst the ‘intellectual’ class and some support amongst the virtue signallers of all classes i.e. support amongst the class that low skilled immigration doesn’t affect and support amongst weak-minded people whose opinions move with the current thing. That almost certainly will not be a real majority; the vital trick the elites have played is their careful control of the overton window – move that slightly to the right and the train is derailed.
I think it’s tricky to say. 86% of those who voted supported parties other than Reform, who were the only party credibly* committed to significantly reducing immigration, legal or otherwise (whether they would have done is another matter). I took the election as a referendum on net zero and immigration (and health fascism). Probably others voted on other grounds – for me, little else is important.
*Anyone who voted Tory surely didn’t believe they would reduce immigration.
We vote for people, a prospective government. I did not vote Reform. I see them as incompetent. I voted for someone I did not want in the hope of keeping out someone I wanted even less. Unless one knows how many voted similarly there is no way an election can honestly be taken as a referendum on anything.
What I meant was that I cast my vote primarily on the basis of the two/three criteria I mentioned, which are red lines for me and way more important than everything else. Reform were the only credible party offering a real alternative in those areas. All the other mainstream parties are well beyond the pail for me. To be fair I actually voted ADF not Reform because of ADF’s clear message on health fascism.
Examples please?
The Archbishop of sanctimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLchhyYRO3Y
Wow !!! That was absolutely brilliant !!! And I say that as a Christian.
No decent person who wishes to live in a civilized society should endorse violence against immigrants, or anyone else for that matter. We should be directing our anger at the people responsible, the governments and the behind the scenes ‘string-pullers’, because they’re the ones that make it possible for these migrants to continually come over here in the first place. Using violence only plays into the hands of ‘TPTB’ anyway, and it gives them exactly what they want: justification of increased powers of control and censorship, to tar us all with the same ”far right extremist” brush so we can be demoralized and persecuted further, an increase in general civil unrest and the fragmentation of society etc. This is an interesting essay which goes into what a civilized society should look like, and violence with ever-increasing multiculturalism forced upon us, along with the constant presence of the toxic woke ideology targeting our kids, doesn’t factor in to it; ”There is a word that keeps cropping up in our attempt to describe the moment we are living through: civilisation. Something isn’t right at a civilisational level. But what even is civilisation? What makes a civilisation great, lasting, robust, or advanced? In Civilisation… Read more »
It’s decadence – in Nietzsche’s sense of a people or individuals choosing the thing that will destroy them. Every civilisation ends this way. Remember also that our government has made it clear that we the English people are fair game to have violence visited on us – and our children – but that if we respond in kind “the full force of the law” will be used against us. Violence is coming whether we like it or not.
Someone wrote:
Hard Times make Strong Men,
Strong Men make Good Times,
Good Times make Weak Men,
Weak Men make Hard Times.
The hard times have started.
I am ready for it, but don’t like the thought of dragging my girlfriend into all of this!
The decline of scientific advancement matches the increase in government involvement in science which Dwight Eisenhower warned was a bad idea. It also matches a rise in science by committee as opposed to the individual ideas that drove scientific discovery up to World War 2.
What a fascinating comment, thanks Mogwai. Your first paragraph defines exactly the dilemma of the law-abiding folk who currently feel utterly disenfranchised. What the hell do we have to do to get someone to listen? Violence only begets oppression. Noah’s article too raises some crucial points regarding polls that I hadn’t really appreciated. How easy it is to manipulate the demos. I love DS and its comments column. Always illuminating. Regarding scientific advancement, it seems that so many “new” papers are just rehashed analysis (secondary research) of existing published papers, rather than revolutionary discoveries. Researchers trying to squeeze some unknown factoid into the open. Like a parasitic creature feeding from the detritus of others’ work, but not quite killing the host so that there is always blood to suck. A bit like squeezing a pimple: The action may satisfy, but the result is not always edifying or useful. I came across a quote from a Mirror magazine from the early1800s. Apparently these are the words of someone at a French Revolution Tribunal before he went to the guillotine: “I suffer when the people has lost its reason; You will perish when it has recovered it.” Let’s hope the people recover… Read more »
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Great comment by you and realistic. ——-How do ordinary people mobilise against the Political Class and their absolute refusal to limit the amount of immigration to levels that the economy requires? Under International agreements and law, it seems that anyone has the right to claim “asylum” no matter how they enter the country. This has led a to an astonishing rise in numbers arriving, and it has now turned into a free for all. Then I heard something yesterday that I probably knew already but hadn’t thought of clearly, and it is that when migrants have their asylum claim refused there is often no means to remove them as a return agreement is required with the country they came from and that means they remain here even after their claim has failed. So as each minute goes by more and more refused migrants are piling up. —-“Violence” NO. —–But what can people do when they feel they are being overrun and their towns and cities transformed mostly for the worst?
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No. Directing anger solves nothing.
We need to know exactly who – by name and job – in Whitehall are responsible and have been advising government to promote and implement these policies.
Immigration has been used as a sticking plaster ever since the dreadful Tony B Liar.
The UK has longstanding structural problems including a lack of skills education and an economically active workforce with too many getting benefits.
This is manifest in how the Tories increased borrowing from £900 bn to £2.7 trillion in 14 years.
If my math is right that is an overspend of £128 billion every year.
Where has it all gone? What was it all spent on?
Julian Assange would probably have some ideas on where taxpayers money goes, funnelled off into private hands by Hook or Crook.
These “polls” are just more shameless, despicable attempts to lay a White Guilt Trip on anyone who protests against the Mass Third World Invasion that was FORCED UPON THE BRITISH PEOPLE without their knowledge or consent.
How about asking:
— “Were the protesters right to start attacking hotels housing criminal illegal aliens AFTER the criminal aliens began EXPOSING THEIR GENITALS at the hotel windows?”
— “Do you agree that very few Third World Immigrants have EVER been attacked by Indigenous British citizens?”
— “Have you EVER given your consent to your taxes being used to pay for illegal criminal aliens instead of improving life for Indigenous British citizens?”
— “Have you EVER given your consent to the government importing MILLIONS of Third World immigrants and forcing you to pay for them all, mostly Muslim Men of Military Age?”
Of course all decent brits and let’s face it, we invented decency, deplore violence against immigrants.
However everybody deplores having the piss taken by their elected government. Speculation about purely hypothetical violence against said corrupt and incompetent government seems entirely reasonable.
Speak for yourself.
This confirms what I think will happen as Deputy PM Angela Rayner’s Operation Scatter is put into operation to put migrants into currently empty ordinary residential properties around the country. It will make these houses and flats targets and because there will be so many of them it will be impossible to police them and keep the migrant occupants safe. Indigenous British people will likely think – “if we cannot have these properties as our homes then the migrants can’t have them either”. I believe we are in for a decade of selected targetting and destruction of the properties handed over to Operation Scatter. If this does happen it will also be most difficult to catch the perpetrators unless they are very stupid – which some but not all are likely to be. It will only require very few people or indeed just one person – no need to organise a riot on the streets of the UK. So if only 10% of the population think violence is OK that will be more than enough. Rayner is sadly yet another stupid politician who cannot think further than the end of her nose IMHO. She could well be setting up the… Read more »
You are either stirring, or are promoting the Myth of the White Terrorist, so beloved of the Globalists and the 77th Brigade. All these years that the Christians have been foolishly welcoming the Horde, and preaching tolerance like the Archpillock, the Muslims have been using the mosques for military training and weapons caches, according to some, while at the same time lulling millions of previously strong young British men into a drug-induced stupor, watching porn at home, loathe to work, even if their jobs had not already been taken by hostile aliens.
You have already seen these Armed Muslim Gangs rampaging with total impunity through the streets of England, with Zero Arrests, while British Patriots waving a stick, posting an emoji or saying hurty words online are thrown into prison.
So yes, you are entirely wrong.
Are you seriously suggesting there is not one nutty person in the whole of the UK who might do what I fear may happen?
We have seen only in recent weeks two people committing mindless serious crimes knives in the UK including this week.
We have seen an American attempting to assassinate Trump.
It only takes one nutter.
How many nutters are there is the UK?
What I can forsee might happen could happen.
So don’t accuse me of “stirring” or “promoting the Myth of the White Terrorist”. That is overthinking the issue and frankly would be laughable if these were not such serious issues.
The threat is real. There really are people in the UK crazy enough to do this stuff.
Communist Subversive “Iconoclast”.
Have you taken your Marxist Common Purpose Leadership Course yet? You know, the one where you are taught to “Go Beyond Authority” when the time comes?
What was the name of the Founder of “Common Purpose”— I forget. She was the editor of “Marxism Today”. Julia Middleton, I seem to remember, put in charge of “leadership training” of Conservative civil servants under David Cameron.
A Marxist, like our current PM, put in charge of training civil servants for the Tories, as exposed by retired Royal Navy Lt. Commander Brian Gerrish of the UK Column.
You say that, but the US is awash with weapons but there is exceptionally little political violence. This says something about how peaceful white people (vast majority of legal gun owners) are. I read something, somewhere, sometime, that said that if you look only at the US’s white population, gun violence is no higher than it is in Norway.
If that were so, and I have not looked to find out, there needs only the one successful assassination to make up for it.
The attempt on Trump in recent weeks is enough for me.
Americans keep weapons for protection including against their own government.
Does political violence by the US government not count for you either?
Having just re-read your comments if anyone is ‘stirring it’ it is you.
Military and weapons training in Mosques? I don’t think so. That is you stirring anti-Muslim hate.
Hello, 77th Brigade! Nice try.
Make your mind up – communist subversive or 77th Brigade?
It is as old as the hills – appear more extreme than the most extreme to draw out the extremists.
Well done Heretic. You are more extreme than the most extreme I have seen of anyone commenting on DS.
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
Thomas Sowell
To legitimise the use force to defend civilisation it must be demonstrable it is civilisation you are defending or else you must prevail at all costs and then when writing history legitimise it.
Whitehall protester who sang ‘who the f*** is Allah’ jailed When Spring was arrested on August 8 he told officers: “I didn’t go up to London to riot. I went to complain about people put up in hotels.” Defending Spring, Piers Kiss-Wilson said he was a train driver for 42 years, but had recently retired. He now spends a lot of time for his wife, who has suffered ill-health. Mr Kiss-Wilson said: “The defendant asked me to put forward his apologies to the court and he says he is embarrassed by his behaviour and his is ashamed by it.” He said Spring got caught up in the disorder with much younger men. He added: “He also wants to apologise to his family and friends and his wife who don’t deserve this.” Judge Benedict Kelleher sentenced Spring to 18 months in prison. He told Spring: “What you did could and it seems did encourage others to engage in disorder.” Judge Kelleher said a custodial sentence was appropriate in order to deter others from engaging in similar behaviour. But if whilst wearing a rainbow he chanted ‘from the river to the sea’ which is racist, anti-semitic and calling for genocide of Israelis… Read more »
Who is going to care for his sick wife?
Did his defence lawyers have enough time to get the evidence together to mount the best mitigation possible?
Or was this done so fast justice has not been done?
I was more impressed by the recent YouGov poll which found that 32% of the population thought civil war was quite likely or somewhat likely within 10 years. I am more optimistic. I think it may take 20 years.
If questions are not answered and protests are ignored or suppressed then violence is the last resort.
That’s the plan.
Provoke violence and then crack down on it and remove civil liberties.
Why else ignore and suppress?
No other purpose to it.
There must be some form of selection bias in these results. The people who do these surveys are not representative of the British population. True surveys attempt to sample appropriately.
You cannot extrapolate “… of all Brits” from these results but so many people are unable to interpret stats that they’ll fall for this.
“In fact, the true portion of Britons who endorse political violence is likely much lower than a third.”
A conclusion with no evidence.
Revealed preferences v stated preferences.
Given the reticence many people have in giving answers which they think would put them in a bad light, I would say one-third is on the low side.