When Boris Johnson wrongly accused Keir Starmer of having failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile, many people reacted with a slight sense of bemusement. However, for those of us who research and monitor the far right, it was instantly recognisable. It wasn’t surprising that these comments were soon followed by the Labour leader being heckled by an angry mob repeating the conspiracy theory.
Despite having been around since 2018, the disinformation about Starmer had recirculated in January this year, with major far-right figures such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson) sharing it with his 155,000 subscribers on the secure messaging service Telegram. The post whipped Lennon’s supporters into conniptions, with one simply posting the image of a noose in response.
There has been an increasing creep of far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories into mainstream politics and it is important to understand how this occurs. It is unlikely that Johnson was scrolling through Tommy Robinson’s Telegram channel and came across the Savile slander. Rather, conspiracy theories and talking points circulate within far-right spaces, and the ones that gain the largest traction are spread incrementally via mainstream hosts such as rightwing commentators, until they are picked up by people who often have no idea where they originate.
The best recent example of this has been some of Priti Patel’s rhetoric around cross-Channel migration. In early 2020, the organisation I work for, Hope not Hate, began to closely monitor a small group of far-right activists who spent their days on the beaches and at lookout points around the port of Dover. Their videos, which occasionally showed them chasing and harassing migrants on the beaches and at their accommodation, quickly spread across far-right social media platforms and whipped anti-immigrant activists into a peak of anger.
The daily drip of anti-migrant content into far-right online spaces forced the issue of cross-Channel migration up the agenda within the movement. Started by solo far-right activists – so-called “migrant hunters” – the issue was soon adopted by more formal far-right organisations such as Britain First which began to enthusiastically campaign around the issue.
Nigel Farage then joined in and began to discuss it on his LBC radio show. This was the moment the specific rhetoric around cross-Channel migration by boats escaped the confines of the far right and entered the mainstream once again, having dropped down the news agenda. Dehumanising talk about “floods” of migrants and alarmism about an “invasion” were once again amplified and subsequently picked up widely by rightwing traditional media outlets. The result was dangerous, with Patel, the home secretary, then echoing the language of the far right when she spoke of “activist lawyers” who she said were frustrating the removal of migrants.
Sadly, some far-right conspiracy theories gain such traction that they become widely believed, most notably the “Muslim no- go zones” conspiracy theory. Hope not Hate polling, carried out by YouGov, found that 58% of Tory party members say it is true that there are “no-go zones” in Britain where sharia law dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter. Here we see an unsubstantiated belief, pushed by the far right and subsequently widely believed.
Too often people think of the far right as a tumour on the body politic, something to be cut off an otherwise healthy host. In reality, it is better understood as a gangrenous limb that, if left untreated, poisons the rest of the body. Words have power. The cordon sanitaire that kept the far right “beyond the pale” is crumbling and the results are extremely dangerous.
Joe Mulhall is director of research at the anti-fascism organisation Hope not Hate. He is the author of numerous books on postwar fascism including Drums in the Distance: Journeys into the Global Far Right
