The elephant has raised its head once again.

The sound of the dog whistles brought the pogromists back on to our streets this week to visit misery on innocent people, confirming that a new annual tradition has been established in loyal Ulster.

There are people in some communities raised on a culture of suspicion and loathing towards ‘Others’ in this state.

Those ‘Others’ were once easily identified as Catholics, but now come in different forms in a variety of religions and skin colours.

Chris Donnelly: A new annual tradition has been established in parts of loyal Ulster

Aoife Moore: The hatred was always there in Belfast – it’s just the target that has moved

Only days ago, this paper was leading with the disturbing story of an obscenely racist banner erected beside a play park in loyalist Moygashel.

The video footage of a marauding mob menacingly making their way down an east Belfast street on Tuesday night, before a small group broke away to kick windows and the front door of a family home, brought echoes from earlier pogroms visited upon bewildered minority communities in Belfast.

Families across the city were purged from their homes by baying mobs capitalising on the dreadful knife attack on a white man by a Sudanese national in a republican area of north Belfast to act on base racist desires to cleanse loyalist communities of people who visibly do not confirm to their vision of ‘the people’.

Rioters in east Belfast set........

© The Irish News