https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/12/the-right-is-trying-to-rewrite-history-with-its-toxic-rhetoric-on-britains-gangsWith the risk of being called ''repetitive'', I thought I'd take a look at this piece by Kenan Malik again.
Long before Musk started lobbing X-shaped bricks across the Atlantic, journalists and campaigners, often women on the left such as Julie Bindel, Anna Hall, Suzanne Moore and Samira Ahmed , had turned the spotlight on “grooming gangs” – better described as rape gangs and sex traffickers – and called out the failures of the authorities.
''turned the spotlight''. No mention of how much resistance the likes of Bindel faced amongst her own profession:
https://unherd.com/2018/04/many-left-wing-progressives-protest-pope-silent-islams-totalitarian-tendencies-victims-cowardice-overwhelmingly-women/But easy to blame only the right for re-writing history. Also no word about police and local officials covering the rape up in part by fear of upsetting community cohesion (where have I heard that one lately?)
It may be that disproportionate numbers of such men are involved nationally in these crimes. Whether or not that is the case, what is undeniable is that a high proportion of grooming gangs comprise white offenders, too. Any analysis would have to account for both.
Pretty shitty that in the 2020s data collecting is still piss poor. Whilst Quilliam's report was methodically scrutinised, people were still quick to jump to the comfortable guardian headline of the 2020 home office report, itself based on incomplete data.
''whether or not that is the case''.
Yet so fixated has the right become with the question of race, and race alone, that when writers like Moore make such points, they are castigated for “minimising the racial aspect of this horror”.
The same can be flipped towards the left ''but muh cLaAsSiM!!!'' And only classism. Something something night time economy that explains torture and rape on a huge scale. As for my own interest in ''focusing'' on the Pakistani aspect, I make no apologies given my own background and knowing a bit more than pseudo leftists
In 2013, the Muslim Women’s Network UK published Unheard Voices, a report that showed how Muslim girls were trapped, tortured and raped by men from their own communities in a fashion that, as Alexis Jay’s Rotherham inquiry acknowledged, “mirrors the abuse” faced by white girls in the town.
Would love a full breakdown of data on this .
One of Kenan's more piss poor pieces if you ask me. Still at least he seems to support a national inquiry which is better than some.