The Huntingdon station stabbings that shocked Britain on 1 November 2025 are not an aberration&mdash;they are a stark reminder of a world descending into hatred, insecurity, and violence. Two men have been arrested after multiple passengers were stabbed aboard a London-bound train from Doncaster, yet political leaders will be quick to call it a lone-wolf act, conveniently ignoring its underlying social and political causes.
From Britain to the United States, India to Germany, and across the European Union, violence&mdash;whether religious, racial, ideological, or xenophobic&mdash;is rising inexorably. More worryingly, authorities are responding with denial, indifference, or political spin. They are eager to criminalise individuals but reluctant to examine the systemic failures pushing societies into hate.
The common global thread? Governments struggling to tackle rising unemployment, inflation, and stagnant growth, are choosing the easier path: to divide rather than to resolve. The old political playbook is back in use&mdash;when you cannot deliver prosperity, you deliver prejudice.
In India, the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism recorded thirteen mob lynchings in 2024, leading to the deaths of eleven people&mdash;nine of them Muslims. In the United States, hate incidents targeting South Asians have surged alongside attacks on Jewish and Muslim communities. Anti-Asian slurs in extremist spaces doubled from 23,000 to 46,000 in just eighteen months, exposing the intensity of digital radicalisation.
Canada, long seen as a multicultural haven, has experienced a 227% spike in police-reported hate crimes against South Asians between 2019 and 2023. Online anti-South Asian hate surged over 1,350% in just one year. Across the EU, 58 terrorist attacks were recorded in 2024&mdash;twenty-four attributed to jihadists, while twenty-one were committed by left-wing or anarchist extremists. In Germany alone, nine Islamist attacks have been executed since 2020.
The United States, for all its global rhetoric on democracy, accounted for 76% of terrorism-related deaths in Western democracies in 2023, with far-right rhetoric and online conspiracy theories fuelling violent extremism.
War is also an amplifier. After Israel&rsquo;s war in Gaza reignited, antisemitic incidents in the US exploded by 270%, while Islamophobic attacks soared by 300% in just two months.
All of this unfolds under the watch of governments more inclined to weaponise identity than address inequality. The far-right and extremist left are capitalising on anger. Terrorists are receiving tacit or direct backing from powerful nation-states when it aligns with their geopolitical goals. The world order is no longer about managing peace&mdash;it's about managing rage.
The stabbing in Huntingdon is only the latest alarm bell. How many more will it take before leaders stop trading in hate and start investing in hope?

Stagnant growth pushes governments to inflame fear, fuelling global hate and violent extremism

Global Hatred Rises as Leaders Fail Economies

Stagnant growth pushes governments to inflame fear, fuelling global hate and violent extremism

November 2, 2025 | 10:32 IST