Thread by @StarkNakedBrief

There's a lot of footage circulating of the Unite the Kingdom rally from Saturday.

Political hacks are selectively using clips to push their narratives.

Here’s an attempted honest summary of events.

Thread 🧵

One of the biggest bones of contention has been attendance.

The Guardian estimated 111,000, the Daily Mail estimated between 110,000 to 150,000. The Met said the same. While people on the scene claimed 500,000+.

In 2018, the People’s Vote march, calling for a second Brexit referendum, reportedly drew around 700,000 people.

Visually, the scenes look similar. So the 150,000 figure does appear to be an underestimate. But no one can say with absolute certainty.

Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) held a counter protest. Some claimed the number of attendees exceeded 50,000. But the Met put the number at around 5,000. By the images, 5k looks to be more accurate.

Then there’s the question of who attended the Unite the Kingdom (UTK) rally.

While it’s clear the majority were white men and women, footage also showed plenty of ethnic minorities. Some gave interviews, saying they were there to support free speech and patriotism.

One woman, who looks to be of African or Middle Eastern ancestry, described how she attended the UTK rally on her own, went into the "belly of the beast" and met "polite and good" people:

Put simply, the claim that it was a far-right march was as shallow and lazy a label as it first seemed. An objective look at the evidence makes that clear:

In comparison, the SUTR counter-protest appeared to be mostly attended by white and ethnic minority women, though plenty of men were also seen during the initial march.

UK Courts Live did, however, capture a small contingent of 40 or so masked, militant-looking Antifa activists heading towards the larger UTK rally:

While the vast majority of attendees were peaceful, there were indeed isolated incidents of violence.

In this clip, you can see some UTK supporters attempting to tear down a banner held by SUTR protestors.

There were also chants mocking Islam, including some attendees shouting:

“Allah, Allah, who the f*ck is Allah?"

It looks like a small portion of UTK attendees also urinated in the area:

At one point, some were seen pushing through a police line.

It’s unclear whether this was due to fear of being crushed—a genuine risk at large gatherings—or simply an attempt to march beyond the route police had set.

It was reported that this footage released by the Met was from lockdown, but that's not right.

The video shows some UTK attendees committing clear acts of violence and cowardly throwing bottles as they faced off with some SUTR/Antifa attendees.

The very limited violence was not exclusive to the UTK rally.

Other footage that hasn't been circulated as widely clearly shows SUTR/Antifa dealing in it too:

Despite the very limited violence on both sides, there were good vibes too—"festival like" as some remarked:

To put it into context...

The Notting Hill Carnival, a "fun-loving festival" celebrating Caribbean culture, saw 423 arrests this year.

The UTK rally initially saw 25 arrests, which was subsequently revised down to 24 on Sunday.

It's true Notting Hill Carnival takes a place over two days instead of one but those numbers would be reversed if the UTK rally was a "violent, thuggish"'event.

As for the messages espoused...

The topics of UTK rally ranged from free speech, censorship, mass immigration, Islam, patriotism, MSM bias, Charlie Kirk, etc.

One speaker at the UTK rally did say:

"Islam is our enemy. We have to get rid of it. It's doesn't belong in Europe."

Something that sounded authoritarian.

The topics of the SUTR counter protest ranged from fascism, the far right, colonialism, racism, the Iraq War, etc.

Footage did, however, show some of the SUTR attendees disgustingly mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk:

"Charlie's in a box... in a box!"

"Where's your Charlie gone?"

On a side note: certain commentators pointed to UTK attendees buying foreign food as supposed proof of hypocrisy.

But one could just as easily argue the opposite. It suggests the rally wasn’t about racism at all, but about the scale of immigration, or something more nuanced.

In any case, I hope this provides some value.

The truth of matter seems to be this:

The vast majority of UTK attendees were peaceful and the actions of a very tiny violent few let those other attendees down somewhat. But all in all, it was a tremendous show of public will.