The Rise of Anti-Immigrant Racism Led to Violent Attacks and Silence in London Community

On January 18, a group of South Asian youth from the Malayali community were targeted and attacked in Victoria Park. This racist violence seriously injured four of them, including one suffering a critical eye injury. They are workers in the London community, having recently graduated as international students from local post-secondary education.  

The London Police didn’t release a media statement for public safety. 

Only days after the attacks, upon seeing statements by London Malayali cultural groups raising community safety concerns, did anyone from the wider community respond. 

Both the racist attacks and the following silence are symptoms of anti-immigrant racism.  

We are not being alarmist when we talk about the rise of fascism.

‘Fascism’ originated as a term in Italy to describe Mussolini’s rule. It is not synonymous with an authoritarian state or dictatorship, and while it can get used as short-hand to describe the far-right, it can also be watered down when lobbed without basis. Fascism is a mass movement, but behind the small business owners, underclass, and even workers themselves, the interests of large capitalist powers are ultimately served.

It is only once power is fully consolidated do we end up with a fascist state like Nazi Germany. The United States under Trump with its imperialist aggression abroad and domestic repression at home is making a run for it. We are not even one month into 2026 and already have seen the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, threats of military aggression in Iran, Greenland, Colombia, and Cuba, and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE. But the mass struggles against these also show that the state does not have full control. 

Knowing this, why do we use the word ‘fascism’ in Canada and why claim there’s a growing threat?

Anti-Immigrant Hatred is Building a Fascist Base in Canada

The dollar-store-maple-leaf-merch-lovers of the Canada First Movement who organized in Victoria Park in October vary from calls for ‘responsible’ immigration to ‘remigration’, all with an overarching white nationalist agenda. They call for rallies, rely on police protection and try to take the streets.  

While many of us were shocked not to see London’s hometown ‘knuckledraggers’ we’ve come to know by name in October, at least one felt compelled to make an appearance at the last Toronto ‘Canada First’ rally, proudly holding his ‘Mass Deportations Now’ sign.

We recall the 30 or so Second Sons Canada all-black-ski-mask militaristic frat boys and their snappy banner drop on Wortley Road in November.

All the way back to last December when a small group of men felt emboldened to hold anti-immigrant banners at White Oaks Mall.

A government militia of stormtrooping ICE agents occupying the cold streets of Minnesota might feel like a far cry away from the somewhat ‘polite’ version of Canada fascism we feel accustomed to.     

What’s the big deal, eh?

So, what if the male loneliness epidemic takes a new turn where they join ‘active clubs’ to express discontentment with their material conditions?

If the Canadian far-right only fly their flags threatening to fuck whoever the current Prime Minister is, what harm is really done?

Nobody is storming our Capital, except for the brief time with all the transports a few years ago in a haze that we vaguely recall as pandemic times. Ironically, aligning themselves with the trucking community, but ignoring that huge numbers of the truck drivers in Canada are South Asian immigrants who face abhorrent labour and safety standards, wage theft, and racism.

But there are a lot of Indians here, right? And with the growing crises in health care, housing, education, and the labour market, maybe we should think about responsible immigration policies. Maybe the carrying load of our vast country has reached its limit and we should be more choosy about the immigrants we are letting in. Maybe we should return the minimum wage jobs of Tim Hortons and the precarious gig economy of food delivery and uber drivers to the hard-working, poor, white working-class that could be exploited instead of the browns. ‘Canada Strong’ might just require batten-downed national borders to match the tightened purse strings of the federal government’s austerity proposals in every area except militarization.  

At the very least, shouldn’t we be good liberals who don’t agree with those sentiments but will fight for the right of people to say them? Or something.

Emboldened Fascism Leads to Racist Violence

Those who have been fighting fascism have been sounding alarm bells. They have been identifying patterns of growth.

Groups like Second Sons are using what seem right now like meagre events to recruit. Every time fascists take the street to scapegoat immigrants, police protect them. They are emboldened by this reclamation of public power, combatting the powerlessness as workers and small business owners who feel the deterioration of their material conditions. They are looking for easy explanations and have been told by those in power that brown immigrants are to blame.

The ruling class benefits from this. They get to remain the unseen force – a small minority that would buckle under the unity and collective power of the working class.

We ought to be proud that the labour movement in London responded the way it did in solidarity. We also ought to be appalled that vicious racist attacks might have gone unnoticed and unmentioned if Malayali labour activists had not formed these connections themselves.

This silence is also a symptom of growing social complicity with anti-immigrant hatred. And this hatred isn’t just rhetorical. It has led to the serious injury of the Malayali youth who were attacked. We must confront the plague of anti-immigrant racism every time we encounter it and stand united as workers and allies to fight those actually responsible for the many crises we currently face.

Inqilab zindabaad (Long live the revolution).