A month on from far right riots and I thought I would check in on Reform/Farage social media and their crazy bad art.
Since the riots Reform and Farage social media has become a lot more careful about posting calls for violence or confrontation. They are, however, convinced that the current Government is illegitimate, and removing it from office by any means necessary is both lawful and essential.
They are particularly angry with King Charles who they believe has the legal power, and responsibility, to remove Starmer from power, and replace him with Nigel Farage. An 8 page letter is being shared, signed and posted to the King demanding he act. It is a mixture of sovereign citizen fantasies, anti-vax conspiracy theories and random quotes from Magna Carta.
There is little regret or remorse for what happened, and a lot of anger about people being arrested for on-line incitement, which they see as an attack on freedom of speech. This is conflated with Facebook removing offensive content that they themselves post. There is a trend for posting oddly worded legal disclaimers which they think will protect them from “Facebook Jail”
They are getting weirder, and they are absorbing a lot more right wing conspiracy theories from the US.
A lot of their anger is about things which haven’t happened yet. A total ban on smoking, 15 minute cities, pay per mile road pricing. 5G conspiracies are crossing over, along with concerns about smart meters and electro-magnetic frequencies. They get angry if you make too many EMF? Thats unbelievable! jokes.
The current favourite themes are generic patriotism, extreme social conservatism. Islamaphobia and xenophobia, the Great Replacement theory (a belief that a globalist (Jewish) cabal is conspiring to replace white Europeans with Muslims), and general antisemitism. The latter appears to mimic the antisemitism that Labour booted out.
There is also lots about protecting the kids which conflates concerns about Muslim grooming gangs with QAnon conspiracy theories about global paedophile rings. They are moving closer and closer to the neo-Nazi 14 words slogan; “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” without realising where it comes from.
Oh and they love Elon Musk. His failed attempts to pick a fight with the UK Government over the coverage of the riots on social media have made him a big hero.
Disturbing stuff Jon. Be careful about spending too much time on their social media – it can take its toll on your well being. I’ve just finished reading James O’Brien’s book – How They Broke Britain and one of the big takeaways for me was how much of the media underplay or indeed ignore such extreme views in such a way as to tacitly support it. I would be interested to hear how you think we as individuals and more generally governments and civic society should tackle it.
Good advice about social media! Most of the Reform/Farage supporters who I encounter are non-digital-natives, ie they grew up before the internet. There are particular personality types too, mostly highly judgemental. That combination makes them incredibly easy to manipulate with button pushing on line content. The younger generation who grew up with the internet aren’t anything like as easy to influence. That doesn’t mean that there are no problems with that generation – a minority of boys are becoming radicalised into extreme misogyny for example.
Would you see the rise of online dating platforms (or perhaps of social media more generally) as a significant factor in the rise of extreme misogyny among boys?
The on-line world in general is a problem for young boys, in particular the way that social media feeds them extreme content. But you should know more about this than me!
I don ‘t know. My (limited) experience of raising kids is that the ones who get radicalised do so long before they are old enough to try dating apps. I am prepared to be corrected.
But it is possible that dating apps have gamified dating and exacerbated lack of respect towards women. And dating companies are probably the source of the myth that 80% of women want to date 20% of men
And it seems a bit glib to tell the story through bad fan art and weird memes but it was the easiest way to illustrate how radicalised and racialised some of the material being shared is becoming. In particular there is a sense that this is an urgent and immediate crisis -unless something radical happens immediately their kids are in danger, or their way of life will vanish forever