When he saw the video, Luqman Saeed knew what was coming. A lecturer at Ulster University in Belfast, he’s spent more than a decade studying how conflicts start and how people are driven to radical ideologies and violent ends. He moved from Pakistan to the U.K. in 2018, and to Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast, in 2022.

For the past two summers, he’s seen anti-migration protests turn into riots on Northern Irish streets, and listened as the U.K.’s political conversation has drifted rightward. Saeed argues that some mainstream politicians and elements of the media have increasingly normalized the idea that immigration is “a threat, and needs to be tackled,” creating an environment primed for violence. All it takes, says Saeed, is what social scientists call an “information shock,” an incident to trigger an extreme reaction.

“There’s a baseline level of anxiety about immigration,” Saeed says. “In this particular environment, if any tragic incident happens and the perpetrator happens to be somebody of color, that’s the information shock.”