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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Ilia Kostaoinov Belov

The ID (which identifies his Bulgarian citizenship) says BELOV Mr. Ilia Kostadinov. This straightforwardly means he's Ilia Belov and his father's given name was Kostadin. There seems to be a lot of these guys. Like, here is the youtube of a Bulgarian guy named like this, but it's ancient.

How he can also be Fatos Ali Dumana, is beyond my Slavic knowledge, I guess that's just his nickname on FB. «Fatos is an Albanian masculine given name, which means "daring", "brave" or "valiant"». (Bulgaria and Albania are separated by North Macedonia). The caption on the video means something like "hey ladies, congratulations". He's listening to this crap from a duo of rappers, Turkish and German (I guess also Turkish). The ladies, surprisingly enough, do congratulate him, they seem to be family (at least one is clearly some auntie). The account is low-activity and consists of typical slop you might expect of a young low-IQ Southern Slav with Global Black characteristics trying to show off clothes and shit, or perhaps really just a Gypsy, though neither of his names is Gypsy-coded.

Looking up "Ali Dumana" floods the search with this Ilia. It's a very unusual string of tokens. If I restrict the search to a period before this scandal, I only get nonsense like this (an independent sexual allegation in Dundee, no Dumanas), somehow.

Now theCourier publishes propaganda about our "Dumana":

Bulgarian dad says his life has been shattered since a video of a Dundee street confrontation went viral after being shared by right-wing figures including Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson.

A 12-year-old girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has been charged in connection with the alleged possession of a knife and an axe.

Speaking at his home, with his wife Fetka Fatosh, 19, and eight-month-old son Kostadin beside him, Mr Dumana said the abuse has left him in fear of leaving the house.

Although he speaks good English, his interview with The Courier was carried out in his native tongue and then translated by our journalist, who speaks both languages fluently.

"Fetka" is Slavic, "Fatosh" is some dimunitive in Arabic/Turkic I guess?

I particularly like this detail:

Far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Image: DC Thomson

So we get the name of the irrelevant right-winger, but the Mr Dumana remains an enigma. Brits are quite provincial, this is not exactly Soviet but pretty crude. Did they do any actual investigation?

Anyway, he's a Bulgarian citizen named Ilia Belov, he's got this weird Islamic pseudonym, he looks quite brown (without throwing any shade – that entire region is brown, I can't pin him to a specific country, between Bulgaria/Albania/etc), so I guess the girls could have panicked/reacted racistly even if he is a peaceful "Bulgarian dad" (feels weird to identify someone aged 22 as primarily "dad") and has never hurt a fly.

Very low information situation.

How he can also be Fatos Ali Dumana, is beyond my Slavic knowledge

In the 80s, Bulgaria forced name changes on Muslims/Turks among other things.

Anyway, he's a Bulgarian citizen named Ilia Belov, he's got this weird Islamic pseudonym

Could be convert to Islam. Unthinkable in trad Bulgarian culture, not(yet) common but rather thinkable in British gutter trash street culture.

perhaps really just a Gypsy, though neither of his names is Gypsy-coded.

Is it racist of me (well of course it is) that that's also what I thought when I read "Eastern European, different names in different ethnic groups"? Also, just for your information, 'Gypsy' is now regarded as a slur 😁

If they're Bulgarian, yeah there could well be some Turkish/Muslim in the mix.

feels weird to identify someone aged 22 as primarily "dad"

Be instructed by our friend DeepNeuralNetwork who is arguing that fifteen year old girls are plenty old enough to be having sexual relationships (loving caring ones, of course!) with adult men, and that young men want to be fathers (maybe husbands, funnily enough that hasn't been mentioned yet in all the talk of how getting the fifteen year olds knocked up isn't harmful to their health) with those girls. That's all that is going on there!

'Gypsy' is now regarded as a slur

Confusingly, it's a slur in America but a reclaimed community term in the UK.

Roma and Irish Travelers in the UK are different ethnic groups with similar lifestyles who would prefer not being lumped together, so there isn't a community-preferred term that covers both groups.

Irish Travelers avoid "Gypsy" - the Traveler families featured on British "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" (which featured zero Roma) all referred to themselves as "Travelers" when speaking English on camera. Roma prefer "Roma" but seem perfectly fine with "Gypsy". Thinking "gypsy" is a slur in the UK is pathognomic for Woke Mind Virus.

"Gypsy" is also confusing in the British context because it isn't clear if you are referring to just Roma or Roma plus Irish Travelers - this is a point about accuracy and not political correctness. Given the advantage of short words for things that people want to talk about, having "Gypsy" as a generally acceptable word for Roma+Travelers (and thus a different meaning from "Roma") would be useful, but it isn't standard usage.

It is? Most Americans do not know that it is an ethnic group and think it refers to brightly dressed people who travel with circuses to pretend to be fortune tellers.

No reasonable, normal person in America would consider it a slur, in my experience. Only Karens who spend far too much time online.

Unfortunately, Karens who spend far too much time online possess a sort of heckler's veto, in that it's wise to stay abreast of what summons them so you can avoid doing it needlessly or at least be prepared for them when they show up.

Taleb calls it "dictatorship of the most intolerant" (never say he doesn't learn from his own ideas).

Far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

A relative of mine lives in the UK, and when he was last over he said that he always appreciates when media outlets point out that "Tommy Robinson" isn't his legal name. I replied "so you think it's okay to deadname him?"

What's the deal with this? Is "Stephen Yaxley-Lennon" supposed to sound dweebish and "Tommy Robinson" is supposed to be a Britonic "Chad Thundercock" equivalent? To my ears they both sound the same. Or is it just that he goes by a different name? Michael Caine also wasn't born Michael Caine.

The OG Tommy Robinson was the leader of the Luton MIGs, who were the football (soccer for Yanks) hooligan firm in Yaxley-Lennon's hometown of Luton. Organised football hooliganism was not explicitly political, but there was (and still is - there have now been two cases where an anti-terrorist have-a-go heroes in London turned out to have learned to fight with the Millwall Bushwhackers, and the traditionally rival Millwall and Charlton firms joined forces to defend businesses on Eltham High Street in the 2011 London riots) a sufficiently large overlap between organised hooliganism and willingness to engage in political violence in defence of your traditional community that both the far right (I'm talking about the BNP and Combat 18 for those who care about details, not UKIP) and the establishment left saw organised football hooliganism as far-right adjacent.

So using "Tommy Robinson" as a nom de guerre is Yaxley-Lemon's attempt to place himself and the EDL in the native British tradition of organised football hooliganism and Combat 18.

The irony in all this is that Luton is now Islamized (37% "Asian", which in practice means South Asian Muslim, and only 33% British) and the MIGs did not in fact fight this, or even try to. The MIGs main rivals were the Hell's Angels and the Millwall Bushwhackers, both of which are also all-white groups of hardmen. If white nationalist political violence was a Thing in the UK (it wasn't and isn't) then those groups would all be allies.

He changed his name so he could launch a 'political' career without people realising he had a conviction for assaulting a police officer. It worked for years.

Is "Stephen Yaxley-Lennon" supposed to sound dweebish

Hyphenated surname is posh, upper class coded, not the best for someone who stands up as champion of common man against corrupt elite.

I've no idea why he goes by that name, but according to Wikipedia he's been convicted for several crimes, so maybe it has something to do with that. Apparently he also doesn't want people to know he's half-Irish (which would undermine his anti-immigration rhetoric), and I was under the impression that "Lennon" was an Irish surname, but apparently that's the surname of his English stepfather, so I dunno.

Is "Stephen Yaxley-Lennon" supposed to sound dweebish?

To USAian ears, definitely. (Lintorn-Orman, Lloyd[-]George, Erskine-Brown…) I don't know what British people think about such names, though.

Sounds a bit like a caricature British name such as "General Sir Humphrey George Smith-Smythe-Smith, OBE, VC"

If they are gypsies - this all makes sense. And yes ... by the time they are 22 for the poorer and unintegrated part of them - which is the one that tends to flock to the west - it is normal to be on their Xth kid - although thankfully in the last years their birth rates collapse, and they participate more in the society.

My sense is that Bulgarian Gypsies comprise a very strange genetic and cultural soup, and having multiple fake names with some of them being Turkic is not at all out of the ordinary. Consult Wikipedia for the language, and maybe one of the two sources of Skibidi Toilet for vibes.

Wikipedia does not mention Albanian, but in reality they have a quite significant presence there too (some estimates say up to 5%?), so it would not be surprising to see some vocabulary backwash. In a way, there is some curious convergence between their ways and those of another famous class of rootless cosmopolitans, though of course they wind up on different ends of the social hierarchy.