THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Bozo Time
2026, Week 39
It’s been a bad week for anyone with a moral compass or semblance of a commitment to having consistent and coherent principles. In that spirit, here’s two stories about two different groups of pigs, bozos and slobs, presented in the spirit of admiration about what a wonderful and cool world we have built, here, on this planet, together.
Sorry, I wish I could be less pessimistic but it’s been a horrible week and I just can’t stand these people. I’ll be better next week.
(Unless…?)
Far-right activist Daniel Thomas charged over alleged dinghy slashing in Channel
Thirty-seven-year-old charged with one count of criminal damage and failing to disclose his phone pin to police
The Guardian – Sep 24, 2026
Reporting by Amelia Gentleman and Diane Taylor
The far-right agitator and anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas has been charged with criminal damage and failing to disclose his phone pin to police following an incident in the Channel on Tuesday, where he allegedly slashed a dinghy while a French rescuer was on board.
Thomas, 37, of no fixed abode, has been charged with one count of criminal damage along with an offence under section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), for allegedly failing to comply with a notice to disclose a phone pin to police.
He has been remanded in custody to appear via videolink at Basingstoke magistrates court on Friday.
The charge came as the Home Office recorded 781 arrivals in 10 boats on Wednesday, the highest number for a single day so far this year. Responding to the figures, the government said it would “push further and harder” to crack down on the people organising the crossings.
[...]
Hundreds of people gathered outside Basingstoke investigation centre, where Thomas was believed to be held, on Thursday evening.
They included scores of mainly men dressed all in black, though the vast majority were not covering their faces. One person said he had come from Manchester to take part in the protest.
Some chanted: “Free DT” and “Oh, Danny, Danny”. One person had brought a sign reading: “Get Danny out.”
Extra police were drafted in from forces as far away as Kent, and a police drone hovered above the protest.
[...]
Thomas’s livestreamed footage appeared to show him approaching one of the dinghies, which was empty, shouting: “Let’s get rid of that boat.” After the rescue worker got onboard, Thomas shouted: “Get off the boat. You’ve got time to get off the boat.” His footage shows his boat speeding away before the rescue worker climbed back on to a larger boat.
Thomas, who goes by the name Danny Tommo, had spent the afternoon in a boat, filming himself as he tracked two dinghies carrying asylum seekers from France to the UK. The livestreamed footage was watched by more than 200,000 people.
A longtime associate of fellow far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, Thomas this summer gathered dozens of nationalist protest groups under the umbrella anti-immigration movement Patriot Platform.
The organisation was behind marches this month in Dover and Portsmouth, when masked men in black gathered and protested over immigration and asylum policy. Thomas repeatedly told his followers they should march silently, without violence, and avoid doing anything that could lead to arrests.
[...]
The latest Home Office figures put renewed focus on the government’s handling of small boat arrivals in the UK. A government spokesperson said: “Our progress this year in tackling small boats is indisputable, with crossings down by 42% and the lowest recorded over the summer months since 2020.
“But this week’s events show that while the peaks we are seeing are far below those of previous years, we need to push further and harder in order to eradicate this vile trade.”
[...]
This week ministers have also been concerned by two uncontrolled landings from the Channel in two days. Most small boats carrying asylum seekers to the UK are escorted to shore by rescue services or Border Force vessels, and no unescorted small boats had been recorded since 6 September 2025.
[...]
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has ordered an urgent review by Border Security Command, describing the failure to intercept the two boats as “not acceptable”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Powell said: “Of course, it’s a concern. That’s why the home secretary has demanded and ordered this urgent review, because this is not what we want to see. This is not acceptable.”
Listeners outside of the UK may not be aware that this country has pretty stringent restrictions regarding commentary on open and ongoing legal proceedings. These are typically enforced to protect the identities of defendants under the age of eighteen, as well as victims of crimes like sexual violence, but they also serve to maintain presumption of innocence and to ensure a fair trial by avoiding prejudicing potential jurors.
All lawyers are Blood Workers, but not all Blood Workers are lawyers. For that reason, I’m going to begin by reiterating that the individual concerned, Daniel Thomas, has been arrested and charged but not convicted, and then keep my comments brief and general.
In a separate article published on Wednesday, September 23, The Guardian reported the incident leading to Tommo’s arrest as follows:
Thomas, who styles himself as Danny Tommo, spent Tuesday afternoon in a small boat on the Channel, filming himself as he tracked two dinghies carrying asylum seekers from France to the UK.
As rescue workers assisted them on to rescue boats, Thomas approached one of the dinghies, shouting: “Let’s get rid of that boat.”
The black inflatable dinghy was full of dozens of lifejackets, recently left by the passengers. As Thomas drew close to the vessel, a rescue worker wearing an orange hi-vis outfit and yellow helmet stepped into the boat from the larger rescue boat.
In footage livestreamed to 100,000 viewers, Thomas filmed himself stabbing a knife into the inflatable dinghy several times and slashing its side. The noise of escaping air was audible, and Thomas shouted: “This is England. This is not France any more.”
Spotting that there was a rescue worker onboard, Thomas shouted: “Get off the boat. You’ve got time to get off the boat.” Thomas shouted to his colleagues: “Let’s go lads. Let’s go” and his boat motored away before the rescue worker climbed back on to the larger boat.
In a thread posted on Bluesky, ChrisO_wiki, who bills himself as a military historian and researcher and has a large following on numerous platforms, explained that Tommo’s actions left him vulnerable to charges on numerous offences, many carrying hefty penalties and custodial sentences:
Criminal Damage – s.1(1) Criminal Damage Act 1971
Criminal Damage with Intent to Endanger Life – s.1(2) Criminal Damage Act 1971
Section 58, Merchant Shipping Act 1995 – Conduct Endangering Ships, Structures or Individuals
Of these charges, the most serious, Conduct Endangering Ships, Structures or Individuals, can incur a practically unlimited fine, or a prison sentence of up to two years. Individuals found guilty of Criminal Damage with Intent to Endanger Life, an aggravated offence, can receive a life sentence.
That, in the event, Thomas was charged only with a single count of criminal damage, which can incur a 3-month custodial sentence or a fine up to £2,500, and failure to provide a pin password for a phone, which will most likely result in a fine, has perplexed some onlookers.
A former ally of Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League, Tommo has made a name for himself in recent weeks as the leader of Patriot Platform. Over the past few weeks, the far-right xenophobic and Islamophobic street gang has performed several disruptive and confrontational actions across the country involving large numbers of men dressed in black uniforms and wearing balaclavas.
That the rise of Tommo’s outfit has coincided with the potential cresting of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in public opinion polls is unlikely to be coincidental. As Reform rose in the polls over the past few years, Farage has endeavoured to strike a tone which plays well with both radical far-right voters and more moderate conservatives; to hoot for decorous owls and vulgar swine in one voice, so to speak.
This, quite uncoincidentally, is the same cynical balancing act which led the post-Brexit Conservative Party into oblivion and has done immense damage to the Labour Party while achieving zero political or electoral upswing. Go figure.
Tommo’s rapid and forthright agitation for organised street activists to abandon the drunken city centre assemblies of the Tommy Robinson crowd and participate in more strategic, coordinated actions against key infrastructure has been interpreted as the British far-right becoming disillusioned with the limits of electoral avenues for their political project. If the price of admission for their political ideology, which has been endlessly indulged by mainstream politicians and the press, is to moderate, then they will take their business to the streets.
Last year, Mike Higgins, a 62-year-old man who is totally blind, hearing impaired, and uses a wheelchair, was arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for displaying a placard expressing support for Palestine Action.
According to that act, Terrorism is defined as “the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public.” Specific actions include serious violence against a person, serious damage to property; endangering a person's life, and creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public.
One might be inclined to ask why it is that after an individual with a growing public profile has engaged in numerous forceful and violent actions intended to interfere with crucial infrastructure and public services, the UK government and specifically the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood insist on implicitly affirming the group’s political motivations and attempting to placate them with statistics.
An individual might also be forgiven for looking at the overall landscape of British politics right now and inferring that there is little logical consistency between the UK’s political, legal and media environments. One might even reasonably infer that recent events demonstrate that the actual currency of power and authority in Britain is not legitimacy, but fear.
They might then look at the inconsistent application of law to individuals of different political motivations and deduce that the normative position of the British political and legal system is that there are groups who should be made to fear the state, and those whom the state should fear. And the government has been making very clear, for some time now, which political factions it fears, and which it believes should be made to tremble.
How that sad and troubling state of affairs might ultimately be altered is anyone’s guess.
Netanyahu rages against critics, including Mamdani, at the U.N. General Assembly
NPR – Sep 25, 2026
Reporting by Kat Lonsdorf and Kate Bartlett
Protesters rallied outside the United Nations building in New York and many delegates inside walked out of the room as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a fiery address to the General Assembly, denying allegations of genocide and slamming his critics, including the city's mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
He called allegations of Israeli genocide in Gaza "the biggest lie of the century" and defended attacking Iran alongside the U.S., calling it "one of the easiest decisions I've ever had to make." He added: "if we hadn't done it, we'd all be dead."
In his Thursday speech, he lashed out against the protesters outside — who included Hollywood stars Susan Sarandon and Hacks actress Hannah Einbinder, both detained during the anti-Netanyahu protest — calling them "phony" and asking why they hadn't all protested when Iranian security forces killed thousands of demonstrators in January.
He also berated the dozens of U.N. delegates who walked out when he started his speech, calling them "moral cowards."
Netanyahu then attacked Mayor Mamdani, who has called him a war criminal and pushed for federal authorities to act on the International Criminal Court-issued arrest warrant for him.
The Israeli leader called Mamdani, New York's first Muslim mayor, "antisemitic."
"Mr. Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here. You tried to silence me. Well, you can't silence me, and you can't silence the truth," Netanyahu said in his speech.
In a statement responding to Netanyahu's criticism, Mamdani dismissed the Israeli leader's speech as "baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide against Palestinians."
When Benjamin Netanyahu took to the podium at the UN General Assembly on Thursday, the immediate response was swift and damning. No sooner had he walked onto the stage, a swarm of delegates and representatives of nations from around the globe stood up and exited the building in protest at his presence.
Before you get too excited, know that the divide between those who stayed and those who left followed a familiar divide between the Global North and South. Of the many who exited the assembly, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey were the only ‘Northern’ states to do so.
The rest of the civilised world—the USA, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Australia, and so on—all stayed to show support to their dear ally and hear what he had to say.
Their rejection of Netanyahu comes at a time when the country he governs has been credibly accused of genocide by countless human rights organisations and NGOs the world over and within Israel itself, and as the International Court of Justice, the main juridical organ of the United Nations, is investigating Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes of genocide.
Applying the signature Israeli nous for communications and public relations, the Israeli delegation attempted to drown out the visual spectacle of half the globe turning its back on them with cacophony. As the delegates flowed out of the room, a small contingent can be heard rapturously applauding and chanting, “Am Yisrael Chai”—”The people of Israel live.”
The Israeli delegates may have stopped to consider whether this particular phrase is the most advisable to use while it stands accused of acts of genocide, in service of the people of Israel, but those are considerations of a world which still makes sense, a world which has long abandoned us.
As for Netanyahu’s speech itself, it was as dull and tedious as any Trump speech has now become, akin to a has-been standup comic performing a twenty-year-old routine which was never funny to begin with.
The Israeli Prime Minister—who, it must be repeated, is currently subject to an arrest warrant overseen by the international body to which he was speaking—railed about the Israeli military being the most moral and humanitarian in the world, smeared his opponents and detractors as Hamas terrorist sympathisers, used a beeper pager as a prop to gloat about the act of indiscriminate terrorism the Israeli military committed ostensibly against Hezbollah militants in 2024, and made a number of statements toward and about other delegates which could reasonably be interpreted as veiled threats to their safety and wellbeing.
Most notable about Netanyahu’s speech—not interesting, simply notable—were the prime targets for his ire. Despite being a gathering of foreign leaders from around the globe, Netanyahu dedicated a considerable portion of his speaking time to attacking New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, and their friendship (and, by association, their connections to Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, whoever else, for entirely non-Islamophobic reasons).
Why the Israeli Prime Minister would trouble himself with such trivial complaints at the General Assembly is perplexing unless you understand that the audience for his speech was not in the room. Rather, Netanyahu was speaking to two groups: American lawmakers, and domestic audiences back home.
Remember that both the US and Israel have important elections coming up. In the US, the midterms, where the GOP are projected to potentially lose control of both Houses of Congress. Such a development would hamstring the Trump administration from passing any legislation for his remaining two years in office (not that they’ve been particularly proactive on that front to begin with), rendering him a lame duck with few accomplishments, poised to be replaced by a Democratic administration which, public opinion polling indicates, will be the first to begin cooling its relationship with Israel—for electoral expediency, not morality or principles. Baby steps.
Israel’s general elections, scheduled for the end of next month, are unlikely to change the political landscape in that country so drastically. In a manner quite uncharacteristic of settler-colonial states, Israeli politics over the past few years has devolved into a lively debate regarding what, precisely, should be done with the natives. All of the most likely successors to Netanyahu are largely in agreement; it’s simply a quibbling over degrees.
Netanyahu himself, however, continues to be dogged by investigations and potential prosecutions over corruption allegations spanning back years now, and so it is very much in his personal interest to not get booted out of the seat. (To be clear, the man very much enjoys being in a position to orchestrate the killing of Palestinians and Arabs, but he likes not being in prison more, personally.)
As discussed in our episode on Mbembe, the politics and society of the settler-colony are plagued by the schism between the settler and the native and lurid fantasies about what must be done to the hordes at the gates, because of what the hordes would do to us, because the same, only worse. Standing on stage intoning darkly about well-liked Muslim politicians and public figures in the United States is just an easy way for Netanyahu to play to two audiences at once, separated by thousands of miles of ocean, but by very little in the way of mentality.
It was the behaviour of another member of the Israeli delegation which gave the game away. At some point during the proceedings, Israel’s UN representative, Danny Danon, approached a member of the Iranian delegation at their desk, carrying a satellite for Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Danon offered the satellite to the Iranian delegate, explaining that Israel loves the Iranian people, and wants them to be free, and to have access to the Internet so that they can overthrow the Iranian regime. The Iranian delegate, with the characteristic dignity and self-respect Iran’s political representatives have demonstrated consistently on the world stage throughout this conflict, ignored Danon, who nevertheless mugged for the cameraman following him around.
This pretty much gets to the heart of what’s going on. Like Ciarán said of European far-right members hamming it up at the EU to farm content for audiences back home, this is all the UN functionally is now; a place for thugs and vandals to produce the diplomatic equivalent of the types of videos you see teenage boys filming on busy commercial streets and outside of shopping malls, asking girls what their body count is and whether a man is sus if he drinks strawberry milkshake.
With any luck, by the next General Assembly Danon will have been gifted a pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses so he can shoot his rancid Radio Rwanda TikToks from a first-person perspective. It’s all so cheap and tacky, isn’t it. And these are the good guys, remember.
On a last note, new Prime Minister Andy Burnham made an impressive debut on the world stage in a speech in which he criticised Israel for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank while reaffirming the UK’s commitment to standing by it, including against aggression from Iran, the country against which Israel launched an illegal war of aggression while continuing to carry out a genocide. We’re very mad at you, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to functionally alter our stance or relationship toward you whatsoever.
Like I said, it’s all so cheap and tacky, isn’t it?