Most who entered Ceuta had returned to Morocco within two days. Online, the event was becoming something much larger: proof of replacement, civilisational collapse and the coming war for Europe.

By Saturday, the invasion of Ceuta had almost entirely left Ceuta.

Practically all of the estimated 60,000 people who entered the Spanish territory had returned to Morocco. Not one had reached mainland Spain or travelled onwards into the European Union. Some were escorted back by soldiers. Others returned because they were hungry, exhausted and sleeping in the street. The route they had imagined opening before them ended a few miles from where it began.

Sixty-seven people had died.

That should have changed the story. It did not. While the migrants were walking back towards Morocco, the invasion was moving in the other direction. It reached Washington and London, then spread through the online networks that have spent years waiting for exactly these images.

The people went home. The invaders stayed.

How Trump used Ceuta

Donald Trump introduced it at a cabinet meeting. He had watched the “catastrophe” in Spain. It looked, he said, like “an invasion of a country”. Then came the number: “Hundreds of thousands of people.”

The estimate was 60,000, which was already quite enough. Trump enlarged it because the number had ceased to describe an event. It had become atmosphere.

He then brought the invasion across the Atlantic. The same thing would happen in America, only worse, if Republicans lost the midterm elections. JD Vance called the scenes proof of “radical left-wing globalist policies” and the “Invasion of the West”. Mike Johnson called it “Marxism in practice”. The State Department blamed the Spanish government and announced that Spain would not have this problem if it had its own President Trump.

The geography troubled many. Ceuta is separated from mainland Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar. A nine mile swim on a good day. It is also outside the normal arrangements of the Schengen travel area. Reaching Ceuta does not provide an open ticket to Europe. By the time you read this, the Spanish authorities will have returned nearly everyone.

The Independent called Trump’s intervention a distraction from the serious issue of migration. That is not quite right. Trump was showing how the crisis would be used for a domestic audience.

He looked at Ceuta and saw the American midterms. Vance saw the fall of the West. Elon Musk saw World War Z. British commentators saw the chance to settle arguments they had been having for years. (…)

Far right commentators here weigh in

Brendan O’Neill declared that Spain had been invaded and that there was “no other way to put it”. The migrants had “swarmed”, “stormed” and “colonised” Spanish territory. They were “cocky, often hostile men from afar”. The real breakthrough, for O’Neill, was linguistic. Ceuta had finally freed him to say “invasion” without being reprimanded by the left.

Much of his article was not about Spain. It was about Nigel Farage being criticised for saying “swarm”, Jim Ratcliffe being criticised for saying Britain was being colonised, and the alleged persecution of anyone who had ever used the phrase “illegal immigrant”. The deaths in Ceuta became a vindication for British men who believe they have been unfairly corrected.

O’Neill began with an event in North Africa and ended with Pakistani grooming gangs, the small boats in the Channel and the safety of British women. Ceuta did not lead him there. He brought all that with him.

David Goodhart was more restrained, though he too began with Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints, the 1973 novel in which France, and then Europe, collapses before a mass arrival from the Global South. Perhaps he was one of the “chuds” Vauban Books had in mind in a later post on X. Goodhart called the resemblance “eerie”. Others were less cautious. (…)

Each article arrived with its conclusion already packed.

Spain’s migrant amnesty was to blame. Liberal judges were to blame. The ECHR was to blame. Sánchez was to blame. Open borders were to blame, although the border was closed again within hours and almost everyone who crossed it was returned.

Morocco government role

The possibility that Morocco had allowed or encouraged the crossing received much less attention. That explanation is inconvenient because it turns the migrants from invaders into instruments.

The Financial Times reported evidence pointing towards some official Moroccan role. Migrants said Moroccan guards had waved them forward. Some claimed police had told them to go to Spain. Riccardo Fabiani of the International Crisis Group said the evidence suggested “some sort of Moroccan official role” intended to send a message.

Morocco disputes Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta. It has also learned, as have other states on Europe’s borders, that migration control creates political leverage. Stop people and you are a useful partner. Allow them through and European governments panic.

Spain knows this. Its interior minister was careful not to accuse Rabat, calling Morocco an “absolutely reliable partner”. Dependence requires tact.

The immediate trigger may have been false claims about a Spanish Supreme Court ruling. Messages spread online saying the border was open and that people entering by sea could not be returned. Some of those who crossed appear to have believed they could pass through Ceuta and into Europe. They found soldiers, closed shops and no route onwards.

One Moroccan man told the FT that he had wanted to emigrate for years. After two days in Ceuta, he had changed his mind. “We were exploited,” he said.

That sentence does more to explain the crisis than all the references to The Camp of the Saints. (…)

How the far right joined up its racist arguments

The far right had little interest in why the system failed. Ceuta offered something more useful. It joined several of its favourite arguments in one place.

There was the “Great Replacement”. Not forgetting the civilisational struggle between Christianity and Islam. And the the claim that human rights law had made national defence impossible. Anotight her favourite was the cowardly liberal elite, unwilling to protect its own people. There was even a demographic post declaring that overpopulation was not a global problem but an African and South Asian one.

London Voice@LondonVoice_

There are 550 million more Indians living in India alone than there are White people on the entire planet. Africa’s population is set to rise to 3.8 billion by the year 2100, per UN data Overpopulation is not a global issue. It’s an African/South Asian issue.

Daily Mail @DailyMail

Scientists say we need to HALVE Earth’s population to just 4 billion to save the planet https://t.co/u4GSsocEjC

9:16 PM · Aug 1, 2026 · 860 Views

This is where the migration argument is heading. It is no longer confined to numbers, or the pressures on housing or public services. Those remain the public-facing case. Behind them sits a harsher account in which population itself has become a weapon and millions of people are treated as surplus humanity pressing against Europe’s walls.

Even Richard Tice’s attack on the Archbishop of Canterbury belongs somewhere in this landscape. The Archbishop had visited Cape Coast Castle and spoken of the Church’s involvement in the slave trade. Tice replied by praising Britain for abolishing slavery and accused the Church of wasting money on “woke virtue signalling”.

Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧@TiceRichard

Did you thank Jesus for giving great courage and vision to the British for abolishing the slave trade, spending vast amounts of money and sacrificing brave Royal Naval sailors in the process? As a Christian, you don’t speak for me, nor millions of other Christians in the UK

Archbishop of Canterbury @ArchbishopSarah

Today I visited Cape Coast Castle. Seeing the horrific conditions that thousands of people were kept in, it is impossible not to feel the weight of the immense evil that drove the transatlantic slave trade. I pray not only in lament for the Church’s involvement in the slave

6:55 PM · Aug 1, 2026 · 91.8K Views

It was not about Ceuta, but the logic was the same. Empire becomes a story of British virtue, while migration becomes a story of invasion. Christianity is left guarding the border, with little interest in why anyone tried to cross it.

By Saturday, the people presented as an invading force were queuing to return through the same border they had crossed. Some had been in Spanish territory for less than two days. They had not conquered Ceuta. They had not reached mainland Europe. Many had barely eaten. (…)

The online right had already moved beyond them. It had found Raspail’s armada, Camus’s replacement, Sellner’s hidden migrants and Parry’s Islamic raid. The men on the beach were no longer needed.

The images came first. The route, the intention and the war were added afterwards.

Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧@TRobinsonNewEra

Get to Spain patriots

Then the migrants went home, leaving the war behind.

This is a shortened version of Simon’ article on his Substack at Anticapitalist musings. (Eds)