EXTREME-RIGHT disorder hit the streets of Belfast as well as in Scotland – Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Ayr – on Tuesday night after a stabbing attack in the Northern Irish capital.
Video and images of the attack spread across social media and anti‑immigration and far-right figures – including Tommy Robinson – pounced, demanding details of the suspect’s background.
It turned out that the suspect is a Sudanese man – Hadi Alodid – who is accused of attacking 44-year-old victim, Stephen Ogilvie.
As unrest spread on Tuesday evening, masked mobs in Belfast set vehicles and homes ablaze and targeted people of foreign origin.
Meanwhile, a large group of rioters also took to the streets in Glasgow’s city centre, where videos shared on social media appeared to show violent clashes between those involved against people of colour.
Two police officers and three others were injured.
Three men, one aged 31 and the others aged 18, were arrested on Wednesday in Glasgow.
The Sunday National has spoken with Alexander Ritzmann, a senior advisor with the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) – which monitors far-right extremist and terrorist networks in Europe.
While it is difficult to pinpoint who exactly participated in the riots – many were wearing balaclavas – Ritzmann first highlighted an article on Substack from the extreme-right Active Club´s “main propaganda channel” that was published the day afterwards which appeared to be looking at the Belfast riots as a case study and inspiration.
First promoted in 2017 by American extreme-right activist Robert Rundo, there are Active Club chapters across the United States and worldwide – including in Scotland.
The idea with the Active Club movement is to combine physical exercise with extreme-right beliefs, with members often pictured training in martial arts and going on hikes.
A report by anti-racism campaign group Hope not Hate in 2024 found that the Scottish chapter’s members include those who have made bomb threats and marched with National Action, a terror group that is banned in the UK.
“My assessment is that Active Clubs pursue a dual-track approach. Publicly, Active Clubs present themselves as harmless nationalist sports and self-improvement groups,” he said.
“Communication towards violent extreme-right milieus, however, is a clear militia framing. Active Clubs frequently reference Nazi Germany’s Hitler Youth, SA, and SS, as well as Italian Fascist Blackshirts, as historical role models. This does not mean that every Active Club is a militia, but that they need to be monitored and investigated.”
He then added: “And of course this would be the perfect environment to practice violence, coordinated violence, targeted violence and coordination in surveillance, intelligence without getting caught, and this is basically what they were saying in the article.”
Ritzmann also said that these riots come at a time in which there has been a clear shift in extreme-right groups – particularly since the killing of the French far-right activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon earlier this year.
“Until February, the strategic messaging was: we need to be more mainstream, we need to appeal more mainstream so we get more members. We need to start businesses so our people can work together. We need infrastructure,” he explained.
“Then this killing in Lyon happened and suddenly there was more militant rhetoric. Then there were other events since then, obviously Henry Nowak, and then we have the incident in Belfast.”
From that perspective, he said, Belfast and Glasgow “are the perfect environment” for any group that wants to develop street‑fighting capacity without drawing early police attention.
Ritzmann stressed that the people he monitors do not need the encouragement of mainstream right‑wing politicians to use such moments.
“It’s definitely possible that some of the violent extreme‑right milieus that I’m looking into feel emboldened, that they feel there’s more possible support based on these murders and attacks by foreigners or perceived foreigners,” he said.
“But they have been doing this forever. They are very critical of Donald Trump, and they’re also critical of mainstream politicians. Nigel Farage is a system politician. He’s not outside the system to many of them.
“They might appreciate the opportunity, but they would have rioted anyway. They don’t need Nigel Farage or some other right‑wing politician to say something.
“The people I look at, they don’t need Tommy Robinson. They don’t need Nigel Farage. They might be happy if there is an overlap in support, but they are looking for a race war. They are looking for violently attacking or expelling people they consider enemies.”
He added that interviews with people on recent marches in London suggested many participants did not even know who Robinson was and had turned out because they were “upset” or “concerned” about crime and immigration – making it easier for organised extremists to hide in the crowd.
One of the most disturbing elements in Belfast were reports that mobs went to specific addresses in diverse areas and tried to force non‑white residents out of their homes as properties burned.
“If this is what happened, this could be categorised as terrorism,” Ritzmann said. “Some of these houses were set on fire or caught fire – I’m not sure which. This is very, very, very serious, definitely.”
He said that in more organised violent far‑right milieus it is “common practice” to maintain “enemy lists”, but these usually focus on organisers, financiers or prominent community figures rather than “average foreigners”.
Ritzmann added: “It would be interesting to find out if the addresses that have been attacked – maybe there’s a mosque association or a community association or a specific minority immigrant group associated with that. That is possible. We’ve seen that in past targeted attacks.”
Asked whether the Glasgow and Belfast events looked more decentralised or coordinated, Ritzmann cautioned that he is “not an expert on the dynamics in England or Scotland or Ireland”, but he drew on patterns seen elsewhere.
He cited the 2024 Southport unrest, where there were “a week or two of rioting” and competing explanations – some analysts pointing to online incitement, others to “hooligan and other violence‑oriented racist structures who just wait for the incident to then go out on the street and start trashing things and attack the police”.
From his perspective, events like those in Belfast and Glasgow are likely to involve a mix of people.
“There will always be free‑riders, people who spontaneously get involved in rioting,” he said. “But often there are people who professionally organise parts of it.”
By “professional extremists”, he means individuals who organise the group and make sure everybody has what they need when they go out rioting.
Ritzmann believes the recent unrest will be read as encouragement by the most hard‑line actors.
“It is possible that these riots are being understood as opportunities for the future to produce more riots, to take this further, by some of the violent extremist groups,” he said.
At the same time, he argues that Belfast and the Scottish scenes also represent “a risk” for those networks precisely because of the media and police attention they attract.
“These riots are an opportunity for these groups, but they’re also a risk – the risk to get exposed and to get investigated,” he said.
For that reason, he thinks the UK needs to move beyond simply arresting the most visible rioters.
“I think it would be useful to establish a specific task force that looks into who was active on the organising front of the violent riots, especially those targeting, for example, immigrants or police or others,” he said.
“The objective would be not just to arrest the individual rioter who is throwing something at someone or something, but really to try to find out if someone organized parts of it, who did this, and what is the organizational network behind it. Can we then investigate this network and maybe prosecute it?
“This would be, I think, an opportunity for law enforcement in the UK.”
