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Growth of far right networks 'fuelled by toxic political rhetoric'
Experts say extremists respond to mainstream use of words such as ‘traitors’ or ‘betrayal’
English Defence League and Britain First supporters participating in an anti-Islam march in central London. Photograph: Janine Wiedel/Alamy
An expanding far right has transformed itself into loose networks of online sympathisers who share and produce extremist material fuelled by toxic mainstream political rhetoric, experts have warned.
These networks attempt to generate interest using messaging apps, social media and platforms such as Telegram, 8chan and Gab, with some openly supportive of Boris Johnson and his stated aim of taking the UK out of the European Union by the end of October.
James Goddard, a self-styled yellow vest protester, encouraged people to join him outside the Conservative party conference in Manchester this week, in opposition to what he called the “unwashed, anti-democratic fanatical remainers” before signing off with the hashtag #BackBoris
A rambling video on his Telegram and YouTube channels, which have a combined total of 17,000 subscribed accounts, shows him repeatedly harangue pro-EU protesters, calling them “traitors” and accusing them of “surrender” and “betrayal” – a language reflecting recent debates in the Commons.
The so-called Tommy Robinson News channel on Telegram endorsed Johnson in early September, praising him for stripping the Conservative whip from 21 MPs for refusing to back no deal.
“It is refreshing to see someone have a pair and stand up for British democracy,” the posting begins, referring to the “21 Tory traitors” who voted with Labour. “We back Boris, now get us out of the EU”.
Researcher Jacob Davey, at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue thinktank, said: “There’s clearly been a response to Boris Johnson and some of the rhetoric from his government in far right circles. It has stimulated them.”
Johnson was embroiled in heated exchanges in the Commons last week, when he dismissed as “humbug” pleas from Labour MP Paula Sherriff to stop describing the Benn act as the “surrender bill”.
Sherriff had said that death threats to MPs often quoted Johnson’s words, such as “‘surrender act’, ‘betrayal’, ‘traitor’” and she had called on him to “moderate his language”.
Pro-remain MP Dominic Grieve said that he had received a death threat this weekend, after the Mail on Sunday quoted a government spokesman saying that he and the two other MPs who had drawn up the bill to prevent a no deal Brexit were under investigation over whether they had been “engaged in collusion with foreign powers”.
“The direct consequence,” Grieve said, “was a death threat as I came up on the train [to Conservative party conference]. There is a direct causal link between the two, indeed the death threat came accompanied by the Mail on Sunday article.”
Joe Mulhall, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, which monitors the far right, described the model as “post-organisational” and said he believed one goal was to expand what is known as the “Overton window”, the range of ideas tolerated in public debate.
“Some of the language we see more widely now, such as ‘traitors’ and ‘betrayal’, this is absolutely the language of the far right,” he said.
Entry-level groups, such as the Tommy Robinson channel, which has 50,700 subscribed accounts, act as gateways for like-minded individuals to connect online, with the next step for some being to join closed chat groups and sharing material.
Brexit is not the only issue to interest far-right supporters: other dominant themes are anti-Muslim hatred, white supremacism or cultural nationalism.
Ideas are spread internationally, most notably the conspiracy theory of the “great replacement”, which is based on the false claim that so-called indigenous European people will be outnumbered by Muslims.
Typically people are asked to prove their belief in order to join a closed group by photographing themselves with Nazi regalia or far-right texts, or asked to undertake a simple task such as distributing fascistic or anti-Muslim leaflets.
Individuals joining such groups tend to be male, aged 15 to 25, and show some level of technological sophistication, using encrypted communications and trying to hide their true identities online.
Direct incitement is rare but a pressing concern is whether individuals could become radicalised, “lone actors” such as Thomas Mair, the reclusive, white supremacist who assassinated Labour MP Jo Cox, or Darren Osborne, who was found guilty of murder after driving a van into a crowd of Muslims near a London mosque.
One UK based neo-Nazi group, National Action, was proscribed in 2016, becoming the first far-right group to be banned since the second world war. One of its members, who was also a convicted paedophile, was found guilty of a plot to murder Labour MP Rosie Cooper with a machete in May.
However, a cluster of offshoots are not banned and remain active in the UK: the Sonnenkrieg Division, System Resistance Network and the Feuerkrieg Division, the last of which last month posted an image of the West Midlands chief constable with a gun pointed to his head.
MI5 became the lead intelligence agency in investigating far-right networks last year. Until then, far-right subjects of interest did not form part of the agency’s files, covering a little over 20,000 people, but since then intelligence officers have been surprised by how often such individuals have been included in the highest category of potential threat.
Last month, police said that the fastest growing terrorist threat in the UK came from the far right, which accounted for a third of all disrupted terror plots since the Westminster attack in 2017. A particular concern is that some people on the far right are able to gain access to firearms, which Islamist terrorists traditionally find difficult to do.
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