The Heaton Park attack and the politics of division

By Mhikaella Renee Narciso

On October 2nd, 2025, during Yom Kippur - the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a man drove his car into pedestrians and carried out a knife attack outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester. The attacker, named Jihad Al-Shamie, aged 35, subsequently phoned emergency services pledging allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State before being shot dead by armed police at the scene.

To many British Jews, this was not just a singular terror attack – it felt unavoidable. Members of the community have expressed their frustration with rising antisemitic behaviour becoming normalised, particularly in recent years due to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. There is clear discontent with how the government has dealt with this issue, riding on promises of “never again”, with no real action taken, leaving little confidence with national politicians in the UK. This level of disillusionment is significant – when the government fails to protect their citizens, minorities begin to feel like targets in their own communities, not citizens. One man at the vigil for the attack commented “I worry that more and more we’re getting rising extremism and there isn’t anything being done to deal with it other than thoughts and prayers being given from the government.”

Beneath the surface, there are significant practical effects: increased security at synagogues nationwide, more anxiety around attending worship and a further push on schools to do more on spreading awareness on antisemitism. This pressure has also affected higher education, with the government urging universities to take “practical and proportionate steps” to ensure campuses are safe from antisemitism following the attack.

Situations such as these open conversations around the politics of blame – who is responsible? In this case, many claimed this was a counterterrorism failure – how could a man, already under investigation for rape, out on bail, slip though the cracks? However, others turned eyes to the government’s foreign policy failures, claiming that the failure to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza and the recognition of Palestine as a state provoked this immense backlash turned violence. This “blame game” is not free of fault either – it changes loss into ideological ammunition. Deputy Prime Minister and former Foreign Secretary David Lammy was heckled as he spoke at a vigil for the victims of the attack, with the crowd accusing the Labour party of allowing antisemitism to increase during their time in government and being “weak on terror” due to “double standards on violence."

The rush to put assign blame simply highlights that scapegoating is far easier than recognising the fragmentation of identity politics, institutional failure and the issue of online radicalisation – all of which creates a breeding ground for extremism. We need to start critiquing the entire system, not just one failure.

Furthermore, the Heaton Park attack reveals how populism and culture wars are the deeper culprits to Britain’s toxic political discourse. Both have deteriorated rational policy making on extremism and transformed personal identity into an all or nothing game - “Britishness” vs “minorities”, which is the discursive animosity that extremism festers in. This was not a singular event — it occurred in a space that was already a culture war battleground. Identity has become a conflict zone in recent years: pro-Palestine vs pro-Israel, "woke" vs "traditional", secular British people vs Muslim migrants. Every tragedy is run through these two-hat spectacles. Extremist players were quick to influence the narrative of the attack online: conspiracy theories were shared (e.g. "false flag"), antisemitic narratives circulated, and violence was justified or glorified on certain accounts. Across the days following the attack, antisemitic language on X increased ~28%, with more than 6,000 conspiracy-themed posts uncovered. Moreover, these narratives intersect with populist ideals that flourish in the us-vs-them grievance. This contemporary culture war has become a breeding ground for radicalism, demonising the “other” and legitimising violence as an acceptable method of political speech.

Through the permissive escalation of extremism through polarisation, Britain’s political landscape has inadvertently become complicit.

The Heaton Park attack is much more than a standalone act of terror – it is consequence of Britain’s fragmented political landscape. Terror attacks are unfortunately not foreign in the UK, with each tragedy stemming from both individual radicalisation and national division in a country where identity is heavily politicised. Until Britain confronts its culture wars and populist spectacles, it simply will not be prepared for similar situations in the future.

Image: PA/Creative commons