Charles posted earlier about the horrific crime in Northern Ireland where a Sudanese migrant nearly beheaded a local. The viral video of the appalling attack shows a bystander trying to confront the assailant with a hurl, the stick used in the Gaelic sport of hurling. That detail alone conveys evokes all sorts of images of Irish manhood and militancy — Irish volunteers in the revolutionary period paramilitary drilled with hurley sticks when they lacked rifles.

By late this morning, Irish WhatsApp groups were encouraging “all white men” in Belfast to get out and cause some ruckus. Far from all of them showed up, but it does look like several homes in which migrants are staying have been firebombed, along with vehicles belonging to the police service.

Wesley Yang offers the following as analysis.

Click through to read the whole thing. It is plausible, grim, and sober.

There’s a lot of jumped-up commentary on social media that seems to want to celebrate the Irish (Protestant and Catholic) for taking matters into their own hands and engaging in a traditional form of native violence. I can’t join in this. The targets of this violence almost certainly don’t deserve this kind of visitation, and extra-legal violence will solve nothing and likely rebuild the crumbling taboo against discussing immigration as a normal policy matter. I find the images of Irish homes burning to be stomach-turning, whoever occupies them. Don’t underestimate the capacity of a night or two of lawlessness to license older and more familiar sectarian violence in these parts.