How the global far right is attacking your mind

The riot – in which masked men threw bricks, bottles, kicks, paint, punches and wheelie bins at the police – came after Nigel Farage called on Britons to express “pure, cold rage” at the murder.

But this is not just home-grown hate. Elon Musk has tweeted obsessively about the Nowak murder; his AI model Grok falsely identified a former police officer as one of those whose conduct during the arrest of Nowak is now under investigation, forcing her into hiding. 

Musk’s ally, the livestreamer Mario Nawfal, told his three million followers on X that Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, had made “no comment” on the conduct of the arresting officers.

Next, the US state itself piled in, with vice president JD Vance posting on X that Nowak’s murder was caused by a “mass invasion of migrants” to which the only response is “righteous anger”.

Let’s be clear about what’s going on: this is a cognitive onslaught on UK society and democracy, cheered on and funded by MAGA billionaires and their allies. Farage, the relentless panhandler for US cash, cranked up the rhetoric, as did Robinson, whose whole operation seems awash with foreign cash.

And in the process, a significant change is happening within far-right politics. Over the past ten years, as I pointed out in my book How to Stop Fascism, right-wing populism has converged on the language and agenda of fascism. 

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Our ‘pure cold rage’ should be at Farage and Robinson

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In the 1990s, when it first appeared, we were told by some academics that right-wing populism was a firewall against fascism: a subtle mix of nationalism, xenophobia and racism that could be contained within the democratic system because, at root, it would respect the rule of law and never embrace the street tactics or genocidal intent of classic fascism.

But since the MAGA riot of 6 January 2021, the firewall is well and truly on fire. The thought architecture of modern fascism turns out to be stronger and more coherent than the bricolage of folksy prejudices spun by figures like Farage.

It consists of five basic propositions. First, that immigration, and the multi-ethnic society it has created, is a plot by liberals to undermine white society and to “replace” white Christians and their DNA. That is the Great Replacement Theory, echoed overtly in Vance’s comments.

Second, that the “collaborators” with the invading force are liberals, human rights lawyers and feminists: the liberals for their tolerance, the lawyers for their defence of asylum rights and racial equality, and feminists for suppressing the birth rate.

Third, that the whole thing has been triggered by Marxism’s conquest of academia and public discourse, in the form of a “woke mind virus”. Fourth, that for now violence must be symbolic only: its aim is to scare minorities, destabilise democracies and above all tell a story about what happens next. Fifth, and finally, there is the myth of “Day X” – the moment when western society ends with a global ethnic civil war.

As with the myth of the general strike that would end capitalism, spread among workers in late 19^th century France, the anarchist-turned-fascist author Georges Sorel pointed out: it does not matter whether the big event actually happens. It becomes the animating cause in people’s lives.

You can see the myth at work in video footage of the Southampton riots. In full view of cameras, men incriminate themselves by assaulting police officers and inciting violence, because they have come to believe that they are existentially threatened by violent, male, foreign sexual predators and that they are in a fight for the future of the white race.

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Nigel Farage and the politics of murder

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That perfectly ordinary, and indeed largely uneducated people should be stirred up to the point of self-sacrifice by the coming civil war myth is logical once you consider that the most powerful politician on earth (Trump), the richest man on earth (Musk) and the most popular politician in the UK (Farage) have begun to dog-whistle its major themes in counterpoint.

With the US State Department publicly accusing Britain of “two-tier policing” it’s time to apply the term we would use if Russia or Iran were doing this (which they are). It is Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, or FIMI, and it is no Cinderella concept. In February 2024, the Biden and Sunak administrations signed a joint declaration to define and combat it, together with Canada. Unfortunately, though the UK remains signed up, the Trump administration has expunged the document from the White House website.

The EU Disinformation Lab defines FIMI as: “a mostly non-illegal pattern of behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes. Such activity is manipulative in character, conducted in an intentional and coordinated manner. Actors of such activity can be state or non-state actors, including their proxies inside and outside of their own territory.”

When Musk calls for the overthrow of the elected government, when Rubio’s State Department slanders UK policing, and when figures like Nawfal issue straight falsehoods with the aim of stirring up anger against the state, that’s what is going on. 

It is about more than just disinformation – though disinformation played a part in stirring both the post-Southport riots and the Southampton mob – it is about a pattern of behaviour.

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So the time is ripe for the UK to erect more formal institutional defences. Sweden has a Psychological Defence Agency, whose job it is to counter foreign interference. France has something similar and Nato itself has a “centre of excellence” in countering Hybrid Warfare.

In Britain we tend to leave these matters to the secret state – GCHQ for surveillance, MI5 and the police for counter-terror. But with this mixture of disinformation, sabotage and constant low-level public order breakdowns being used to undermine our democracy, I would like to see the government set up a UK Hybrid Self Defence unit, based in the civilian state, not the military.

It would do three things: monitor disinformation narratives and trace the sources of amplification; build up resilience by educating the public, schools, universities, councils and businesses about the information and influence threats from abroad; and prioritise shutdowns and fines under the existing Online Harms Act – which of course Musk, Robinson, Farage and their ilk hate.

The Southampton riot is a clear warning. Two years on from the post-Southport riots we have a far right moving towards even more extreme rhetoric, and a Reform leadership stepping close to the boundaries of incitement (for what is “cold rage” to a coked-up football hooligan on a summer evening?) We have the richest man in the world funding and promoting extreme right wing views inside our country.

And a large majority of decent, law abiding, non-racist people who have had just about enough.