Azealia Banks Deletes Belfast Attack Insults After Backlash

azealia banks sparked backlash this week after posting and then deleting insulting comments about the Belfast knife attack victim and the man who confronted the suspect. The posts landed in a case already tied to riots in Northern Ireland, where violence followed anti-migrant rhetoric.

Stephen Ogilvie and Maitiu Mág Tighearnán

Banks wrote under photos of Stephen Ogilvie, "Like every horrible British gene just combined at once." She also posted about Maitiu Mág Tighearnán: "UK might have the ugliest whites the world over."

Mág Tighearnán used his son's hurling stick to confront the suspect in the Kinnaird Avenue area of North Belfast. He said he did not want to be described as a hero, a line that now sits in sharp contrast to Banks's deleted posts.

Hadi Alodid in Belfast court

Hadi Alodid, 30, was ordered held in jail after appearing by video in Belfast Magistrates' Court. A detective said the Sudanese national blinded Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye during the attack on June 8.

Alodid was also charged with possessing a knife and threatening to kill a radiographer while being treated for a hand injury after the assault. The attack fed into a wider wave of unrest, with homes, cars and trash cans set on fire as protests flared into violence.

January 2019 repeats

Banks has already caused offense in Ireland before. In January 2019, she walked off a flight from London to Dublin after a dispute with Aer Lingus staff, then called airline staff "ugly Irish women," said they treated her "like a wild animal," and mocked the Irish Potato Famine with the phrase "bunch of prideful inbred leprechauns."

That history makes this latest flare-up harder to dismiss as a one-off lapse. Banks deleted the Belfast tweets, but the damage was already public: her comments revived outrage around an attack that had already become a political flashpoint, and the only clean next step is for her to stop turning violent news into racial abuse.