Reflections on Epping: not just a community crisis but a content strategy
Like many who marched against the Iraq war (an estimated 36 million across 3,000 protests) only to see the popular turnout ignored by government followed by a devastating, illegal war, I’ve come to question the value of marches. 500,000 marching about Gaza in London each month doesn’t get a photo in the press, but an arrested 83-year old Priest holding a Palestine Action sign – or a Plasticine Action sign – does.
But Epping was something different.
If me – 6ft white guy – felt nervous amidst a crowd of 2,000 anti-fascist marchers, with police everywhere – I was struck by how on earth the asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel must feel, amidst the violence erupting outside their accommodation. And how must Epping’s BAME and migrant residents feel walking about? Unlike other marches I’ve been on, this was about strength in numbers. It was a way of saying to the rest of Epping ‘you’re not alone’ – and judging by the many waves and cheers from windows and doorsteps (some half-hiding for fear), that was welcomed.
By some. But not by others – it’s sobering walking down a street 30 minutes from where you live – even in a crowd of 2000, majority women – to cries of ‘shame on you’ and ‘pedophiles’ from families stood in their drives with their kids.
But it’s not that the marchers didn’t have our share of inflammatory chants – from ‘Nazi scum’ and ‘kill yourself like Adolph Hitler’, this social media-friendly tendency to paint the other side in the extreme worst place struck me as lose-lose for everyone, other than the companies who depend on polarised content to feed to audiences around the world safe at home, screen-stroking. On this level it’s not a community crisis it’s a content strategy – it’s the social media equivalent of premium content – violence on British streets, with something for both sides. It’s not tribes, its not a community story, it’s two different dramas with two different audiences, who each can look at it and say how the other side are a sign of how Britain is doomed.
Campaign groups need to get better at communicate to both two audiences
A danger of these ‘filter bubbles’ is not knowing how to communicate to the other bubble; the strongest messages can be heard by both groups and the majority will agree with it. That’s why ‘save our kids’ works and ‘migrants out’ doesn’t. Organisers Stand up Against Racism have to be better at communications. Take this reasonably balanced report from the BBC of the march –
Carmen Edwards, from the anti-migrant protest, said: “It was all happy, people were dancing, we were singing. There weren’t no far-right.” Sharon Smith, who had travelled from nearby Harlow, said she wanted to attend the protest to “protect my grandkids”. She said: “A lot of people showed up; it was good humoured and [there was] music. Everyone wants the same, [which is to] save our children.”
However, Lewis Nielsen, officer at Stand up to Racism, said: “We think it is a quite dangerous situation in Epping. “They are potentially heading towards the same kind of violence we saw in August last year, so we think it is important that anti-racists and anti-fascists come out and mobilise against them.
“People are right to be angry about the cost-of-living crisis, the NHS, the housing crisis. None of that was caused by the refugees in that hotel.”
Stand up to Racism sound like a politician who’s dodged a question from a journalist. The anti-migrant crowd in Epping aren’t talking about the NHS or housing, they’re talking about ‘protect our kids’. That has to be the first sentence in any response:
“We absolutely agree every community should feel safe, and nothing is more important than keeping all of our children safe. Unfortunately some of the refugees staying at the hostel have been attacked and beaten up while just going to the shops – and we’re here to say they must feel safe too.”
That’s the headline statement. And then they can pivot to the hard truths:
Nigel Farage has tried to split this community over a sexual assault of a teenager, but champions pro-rape figures like Andrew Tate. Some of the loudest voices weaponising the concerns of this community pay no interest when those accused are white. Tommy Robinson planned to come here today – he co-founded the EDL with Richard Price who was convicted for creating and possessing child pornography; Tommy defended him for long after that. The EDL – which he founded – had 20 members charged with child exploitation offences. This has continued for years – dozens of people close to him charged with child sexual abuse material, his spokesman in 2019 convicted for domestic abuse, and what’s key is he NEVER condemned these white supporters when the crimes came to light.”
Of course this isn’t a new story – a horrible attack on a teenager, weaponised by Britain’s newest Nazi group Homeland through a Facebook Group ‘Epping Says No’ (who openly boast of their orchestration), instrumentalised by a click hungry right wing press, conflict-hungry social media platforms and shameless politicians – to divide a community into ‘racists’ vs ‘threats to children’; or at the extremes ‘Nazi scum’ and ‘Pedophiles’.
Is this something new?
Is there anything meaningful to take from all this? From Tulsa to Ballymena – sexual assault is the ignition on an initial furious community backlash against the minority group where the accused comes from; and other forces then mobilise to defend them. In Ballymena 107 police officers were injured; in Tulsa in 1921 35 blocks were burned down and 39 of the local black community were killed. In Epping’s march on Sunday night thankfully no-one was hurt, a week before tho a dozen were – and Nigel Farage spent the week in between complaining that the police had let more get injured.
Reading the press in the aftermath, listening to the chants on the day, looking at the range of people who opposed our march through Epping I think there is. I think what’s new in all this, that’s different to Tulsa or previous such fights was how many of the men lining the streets was how many of them were filming.
Unlike the race battles of the 80s and 90s that we thought we’d left behind, this is also about content production and distribution. It’s both social-capital generating content for the creator, and money-making, attention-grabbing content for the platforms.
This is a relatively new thing. And so a relatively routine far-right weaponised concern for the safety of women and kids and a similarly common concern for the safety of refugees and minorities – is prevented from finding that natural common ground of ‘safety and care for all’ on social media, because this is social media’s version of a football match – choose your side and attack the other. A resolution would be bad for business.
Where once community leaders – from the local church to pub, cabbies and newspaper – would do the work of trying to repair fractured communities, the business model here is the opposite. The attention model is built on conflict, not the calming down and compromises which community peace and restoration is built on. At its worst unregulated extreme, we can picture a full cycle where social media companies –who don’t invest in content production– benefit so much from these conflicts that their algorithms continually reinforce the conditions for conflict, encouraging each ‘side’ to behave in ways that are most triggering to the other, all as a path to generate high-value content.
I began to write a screenplay a few years back about a developer who discovers the algorithm he’d written to grow a newspaper’s engagement and clicks was triggering geopolitical conflicts to meet its objectives of ‘more news’. It was a fun/scary Black Mirror-esque idea, but increasingly it feels like a logical conclusion of the business model of the attention economy, when coupled with the lack of transparency or regulation over the algorithms that decide who sees what.
