Last month’s images of racist violence in Northern Ireland are shocking. Far-right groups made up of masked white men carried out serious riots, setting fire to the homes of racialised families who were forced to flee with their children. These racist hunts have a name: pogrom, a term derived from the Russian погром, pogrom: ‘devastation’, which was coined in the 19th century to describe acts of violence against Jews in the Russian Empire.
Pogroms occur when a group of white, non-Roma neighbours organise themselves to go and kill and rob a group of racialised people, or migrants, or Muslims, or Roma, simply because of who they are. The pretext is usually a crime committed by a member of that ethnic or religious group – which may or may not be a hoax – leading to collective punishment for an individual act, resulting in the dehumanisation of the entire group.
These lynchings date back at least to the time of the Crusades, with the persecution of Jews in 1180 and 1190 in England and in 1391 in Spain. More recently, there have been documented pogroms against the Roma community in Spain since the 1970s, and although they are incited by the far right, they recur under governments of all political persuasions: they are a consequence of structural and institutional racism.
In the United Kingdom, there has been a resurgence of pogroms following Brexit. The most notable occurred in the summer of 2024, when large-scale riots broke out across England, involving racist attacks, looting and the burning of shops and cars, following the murder of three children in Southport, which was falsely attributed to a Muslim asylum seeker.
In Spain, there have been notable pogroms against the Romani community from the 1990s to the present day in various towns in Jaén, Granada, Seville and Almería, linked to agribusiness, as well as, more recently, attacks on youth centres in Madrid and the Canary Islands. In the summer of 2025, racist violence filled the streets of Torre Pacheco, in Murcia: armed residents, beatings, racist chants in the streets, migrant hunts and attacks on children and youth centres.
These migrant hunts are often incited on social media by far-right politicians or agitators such as Vito Quiles in Spain or Tommy Robinson in the UK, and even by tech oligarchs such as Elon Musk, who also encourages racist hate speech on his social media platform X.
When the authorities do take action, they usually do so after the event, leaving hatred and racism on social media to go completely unpunished. In the UK, two people who threw incendiary objects at the police during recent racist riots in Southampton were sentenced to between two and three years in prison, with the judge stating that “a hate crime, born of hatred of the police and, in some cases, of racist ideas”.
This verdict contrasts with the recent sentencing of activists from Palestine Action UK, who received prison sentences of between 4 and 8 years for causing damage to a factory belonging to Elbit Systems, a company complicit in Israel’s genocide. In yet another exercise in mental gymnastics, the judge declared that the case was linked to terrorism because “the activists sought to influence the Israeli government by restricting its access to weaponry.”
In Spain, sentences relating to hate speech on social media tend to be for left-wing political content, not for far-right content. The impunity enjoyed by fascism stands in stark contrast to the persecution of anti-fascism: one example is the recent police charges against five anti-fascists from Granada for disorderly conduct and assaulting a public official for taking part in a protest against a rally by the far-right Vox party on 16 April, where Abascal and his security team were seen breaking through the police cordon and using violence against the protesters.
The response to pogroms and the far right must be forceful: in Belfast, a large anti-racist demonstration was organised days after the riots. Organising into anti-fascist brigades to confront the Nazis and protect the most vulnerable communities is often effective. The anti-capitalist struggle must recognise the anti-racist struggle and understand the relationship between exploitation, colonialism, racism and capitalism.
Sources
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Eislund, S. (s. f.). The Pogroms of 1189 and 1190. Historic UK. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Pogroms-1189-1190/
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historiaeweb.com. (2016, 28 de junio). El pogromo de 1391: el odio a los judíos en la España medieval. historiaeweb.com. https://historiaeweb.com/2016/06/28/el-pogromo-de-1391/
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Kar, S. (Ed.). (2026, 13 de junio). Palestine Action Trial: Four Members Jailed as Terrorists After Attacking Israeli Firm in UK. Times Now News.
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Middle East Eye. (2026, 12 de junio). Palestine Action activists sentenced as terrorists. Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/judge-sentences-palestine-action-protestors-terrorists
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The Guardian. (2026, 13 de junio). Riots and racism: why is the UK burning? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/13/belfast-southampton-riots-racism-why-is-the-uk-burning
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Wikipedia. (s. f.). Pogromo. En Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogromo
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Diario Red. (2025, 24 de septiembre). Cacerías racistas en España: esto se llama pogromo. Diario Red. https://www.diario-red.com/articulo/canal-red/cacerias-racistas-espana-llama-pogromo-lio/20250923195332054895.html
