How is the far right shaping our future?

ADAM KELWICK: So the burgers and the chips were ready. And me and a couple of other people from the mosque, we walked over. And I'll never forget, the first person who I walked towards with this bag of food looked straight through me as if I didn't exist. And I thought, "OK. Keep smiling. Keep positive. It will work…."

VOICEOVER: That’s Imam Adam Kelwick - describing the night his Liverpool mosque was surrounded by an angry mob. Three young girls had been murdered at a dance class in nearby Southport - and fake claims were flooding social media that the killer was a Muslim asylum-seeker.

Across the UK, mosques and hotels housing asylum-seekers were being attacked and set on fire. But instead of hiding behind police lines, Adam did something few would dare.

He walked towards the protesters with bags of home-cooked food - hoping a small act of kindness might defuse the threats of violence.

Welcome to LSE iQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. I’m Joanna Bale from the iQ team. We work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas - and talk to people affected by the issues we explore. In this episode I ask: How is the far right shaping our future?

I’ll find out:

Why billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk thinks empathy is destroying Western civilisation.

How the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, is king of TikTok.

And what happened next when Imam Adam Kelwick offered burgers and chips to anti-Muslim protesters.

Let’s start with the basics. The terms ‘far right’, ‘extreme right’ and ‘populist’ or ‘radical right’ are often used quite randomly. But there are subtle differences.

TIM BALE: Far right is an umbrella term, and then beneath that, you have two strains. One is the populist radical right, and the other is the extreme right.

VOICEOVER: That’s Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London.

They are different from each other in the sense that the extreme right normally comes from, if you like, a Nazi subculture or at least a violent subculture. Maybe it's trying to move away from that, but there are still elements of that there.

The populist radical right, I think, doesn't come from that kind of underground subculture. It tends to eschew really, that kind of politics. And indeed you can see, for example, that Nigel Farage wants to keep his distance from Tommy Robinson.

VOICEOVER: Nigel Farage leads Reform UK - a populist radical right party with only four MPs. But it’s surging in popularity.

Tommy Robinson is one of the UK’s most prominent anti-Islam activists. He’s been involved in several extreme right groups - and has served multiple prison sentences.

TIM BALE: So the difference between them, if you like, is Tommy Robinson on the one hand, the extreme right, and Nigel Farage, the populist radical right on the other hand. And the populist radical right is much more committed to democracy. Not necessarily liberal democracy, but at least a democracy as most people would understand it.

JOANNA BALE: Would Nigel Farage call himself far right? Because I think he’s tried to distance himself a bit from the far right, hasn’t he?

TIM BALE: Yes, absolutely. They don't like that label because I think, quite understandably, they regard it as, if you like, de-legitimizing them and placing them outside the mainstream.

But I think most political scientists would say, "actually, that's where they are", if you accept that as the umbrella term, and then say they're populist radical right.

He would like to see himself as just centre right, if you like, because that gives people the impression that they're very much now the mainstream.

VOICEOVER: Both wings of the far right – the populist radical right and the extreme right - share two key ideas - nativism and authoritarianism.

Let’s start with nativism.

MARTA LORIMER: What we mean by this are parties that reject foreign traditions, that reject foreigners and outside influences as negative and who prioritize the nation above all things.

VOICEOVER: That’s Dr Marta Lorimer of LSE’s European Institute and Cardiff University. She analyses the rise of the far right in Europe.

MARTA LORIMER: When we say that these parties are also authoritarian, we are focusing particularly on their views around security and around law-and-order policies.

The strong focus on security is also something that makes them quite distinguishable.

VOICEOVER: Across Europe, the Tommy Robinson-style extreme right is still on the fringes. But populist radical right parties - similar to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK - are now in government in several countries.

And some are starting to dismantle basic pillars of democracy.

MARTA LORIMER: Another term that has started to come up more frequently when we're talking about these parties is illiberalism. So these are political parties that while being broadly accepting of democracy, so the idea that we have elections, that we have elections every few years, and that there is a mandate for the elected officials to represent the people, but they reject the liberal aspect of democracy.

And this refers to all those constraints that we put on democracy to prevent it becoming a rule of the majority with no respect for minorities. Think about courts. Think about central banks. Think about provisions such as the protection of minorities being enshrined in constitutions. Constitutions are also part of this liberal democratic order, and this is a part of democracy that these parties do not support quite as a strongly.

VOICEOVER: A striking example is Hungary. Viktor Orban has been Prime Minister since 2010 - and has won four elections in a row.

MARTA LORIMER: One of the very first things that Viktor Orban did when he arrived in power was create electoral system that made it basically impossible for him to ever lose. So it's not necessarily the fact that Hungarians are particularly right wing. It is also the case that they haven't been holding really free and fair elections for a while.

JOANNA BALE: Oh, I didn't know that. I just thought he was just very popular!

MARTA LORIMER: No, no. He's still popular. But some of this is also down to the fact that he's sort of gerrymandered the system in such a way that rural constituencies, that tend to be more conservative, count a lot more than the more progressive ones, places like Budapest.

VOICEOVER: And it’s not just Hungary that’s challenging the basics of liberal democracy.

MARTA LORIMER: One of the things we do know about these parties is that when they do get in power, they will tend to push for measures that make it very difficult for them to lose that power or for others to counter what has happened.

VOICEOVER: We’ve defined the far right as an umbrella term for extreme right and populist radical right - and how their central focus is restricting immigration. They also share a strong belief in imposing law and order - and reject the parts of democracy that protect minorities.

Now let’s meet some of the key players.

It’s a cast of characters as colourful and as polarising as any HBO drama. We’ve already spotlighted Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. But one man has recently taken centre stage - Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.

Musk has been a big supporter of Donald Trump – but they’ve now fallen out. He’s also backed far-right political movements across Europe, South America and beyond.

Here’s Dr Michael Vaughan, an expert on digital political communication at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. He’s been analysing Musk’s activity on X – the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought back in 2022.

MICHAEL VAUGHAN: There are a set of choices that Elon Musk is directly responsible for. So, obviously, when he bought Twitter and took over the platform, one of the key decisions that he made a large fanfare about was re-platforming a set of actors who had been de-platformed over the years on Twitter.

So, he was welcoming some people back onto the platform who had been kicked out for various kinds of unpleasant or hateful speech. And so those effects are obvious to anyone checking the platform today.

You have people like Tommy Robinson, was deplatformed, now has over a million followers.

You have Andrew Tate, was deplatformed, now more than 10 million followers.

VOICEOVER: Andrew Tate is a far right, misogynistic online influencer – currently facing allegations of rape and human trafficking.

MICHAEL VAUGHAN: And of course you have Donald Trump who was deplatformed after the events of January 6th, now over 100 million followers.

VOICEOVER: Trump was banned from Twitter after the storming of the US Capitol building by his supporters. This followed his false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged against him.

MICHAEL VAUGHAN: So, there are some very concrete choices around who is on Twitter and the platform that they're able to access. But once they're on there, Elon Musk actually is more directly involved in engaging with those actors, with amplifying the content that they put out, and with legitimizing their contributions.

And so you see that certainly in the case of, obviously, Donald Trump, although that bromance seems to have hit rocky waters more recently, and Tommy Robinson, which is a key case in his motivations for getting embroiled in UK politics.

And I'd say more generally that these choices, who is allowed on the platform, how Musk engages with people who are on the platform, it also contributes to setting an overall tone for how users see what is permissible on the platform.

JOANNA BALE: Are we seeing a deliberate political project here - or is this more about the unintended consequences of an unmoderated tech platform?

MICHAEL VAUGHAN: I think that there is absolutely a deliberate political project here, and one of the advantages of doing a media discourse analysis is that you only have to look closely at what people say to try and understand the politics that they are supporting.

And so when Elon Musk says, for example, that Western civilization is under threat from low birth rates or empathy, then we can read that as keying into and reproducing a racist and sexist politics.

VOICEOVER: Musk has claimed that empathy is a threat to Western civilisation – because he thinks it drives policies aimed at helping minorities. Let’s take a moment to unpack this.

Here he is on the Joe Rogan podcast:

MUSK: The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy, the empathy exploit. They are exploiting a bug in Western civilisation which is the empathy response. Empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.

VOICEOVER: Musk’s lack of empathy is a theme in his recent authorised biography. It details how he is quick to fire people - and his companies have been sued for racist and sexist discrimination. But he was obsessed with superheroes as a child and says he is driven by a desire to save humanity. Here’s the book’s author Walter Isaacson in an interview with CNN:

ISAACSON: As a child he’d sit there in the corner of the bookstore for hours reading these comics and he’s developed a role which is: ‘If Ukraine gets invaded by Russia, I’m going to send stuff in, I’m going to come help.’ A cave in Thailand has kids stuck in it: ‘I’m going to send in a submarine to help.’ He likes this notion of helping humanity. In fact, he has more empathy for humanity in general than he often has for the 20 people around him.

VOICEOVER: According to Michael Vaughan’s analysis of Musk’s activity on X, he also promotes conspiracy theories. This includes claims that Democrats were allowing illegal immigrants into the US - to gain more supporters and secure lasting political power.

MICHAEL VAUGHAN: When he repeatedly, during the US election campaign, talks about the Democrats’ so-called strategy to import voters, we can see that again as invoking xenophobic conspiracy theorist politics.

He really does increasingly push a very specific set of far-right political agendas. So, more recently, I've been looking at the way that Elon Musk has been intervening in European politics. So, his threats to donate $100 million to UK's Reform Party or his campaigning for Germany's AfD.

VOICEOVER: Germany’s AfD, or Alternative for Germany, has been labelled an extremist group by German intelligence - one that spreads hatred against Muslims and migrants - and poses a threat to democracy. But it’s now the country’s largest opposition party. It’s also topped several recent opinion polls.

As for Reform UK, Musk’s enormous donation never materialised. He and Farage fell out - over Musk’s support for Tommy Robinson.

But even without that money, the party has been booming in popularity - and currently claims to have over 200,000 members. That’s significantly more than the Conservative Party - the official opposition party in the House of Commons. It has just 123,000 members. Like many populist radical right parties across Europe, Reform UK is riding high.

It began in 2018 as the Brexit Party - pushing for a no-deal Brexit – and changed its name to Reform UK in 2021. Farage stepped down as leader shortly after - but took over again last year.

I asked Tim Bale – the political scientist who we heard from earlier - whether this comeback could be an historic turning point in British politics.

TIM BALE: There's no doubt that the 2024 election was completely disrupted by Nigel Farage deciding to stand in Clacton and reassume the leadership of Reform UK. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that without him doing that, there might not be a parliamentary presence for Reform UK right now.

It clearly hit the Conservative Party very badly, in the sense that there probably are maybe 50, 60 seats that the Conservatives might manage to have rescued, had it not been for some of their voters going over to Reform and therefore causing them to lose to Labour candidates. And I think given that people suddenly saw that Reform was a parliamentary option, given that they've got five seats, that I think has helped Reform UK take off.

VOICEOVER: The party won five seats at last year’s general election and another in a recent byelection. But they currently have only four - as two MPs have recently left. Despite internal disputes, opinion polls show that their popularity has soared since the election.

TIM BALE: Although they were getting around 17%, 18%, then, we are now talking 30 odd percent. So I think his decision really was momentous. And of course, if it leads to Reform doing even better in '28, '29, I think we will look back at it and say, "That was a moment of history."

JOANNA BALE: Do you think his appeal is more about cultural grievance or economic disillusionment? And how sustainable is that appeal?

TIM BALE: Most political scientists, even on either side of that debate, would recognize that it's actually the interweaving of those two that makes it such a potent force.

It's true that many people who haven't done as well out of, for example, globalisation, feel resentful and they take that resentment out on the other. Very often immigrants, for example. So the two things are connected.

Having said that, I think it's also important to recognise that a lot of the people who vote for the populist radical right are actually quite comfortably off, just as many people who voted to leave in 2016 are quite comfortably off. And I wouldn't want to give the impression, as many commentators I think unfortunately do, that everybody who votes for Reform is some kind of economic loser or who lives in some kind of left behind area. That's not true at all.

VOICEOVER: So Tim has exploded the myth that the populist radical right appeals mainly to low-income people living in deprived areas. I wanted to know what this means for mainstream centre-right politics.

JOANNA BALE: Do you see the Conservative Party now drifting towards radical right positions in response to electoral pressure? And do you think it's in danger of being eclipsed by Reform?

TIM BALE: Well, I think the Conservative Party is in severe danger of becoming what I've called an ersatz populist radical right party. In other words, in seeking to combat the appeal of the populist radical right, the various vehicles that Nigel Farage has driven over the years, they've actually, in some senses, become a populist radical right party themselves.

I don't think that development is complete yet. I think there is perhaps a way back for the Conservative Party, but I think it's becoming quite a narrow and steep path for it.

I think if you look at some of the things that, for example, Robert Jenrick is proposing, even some of the things that Kemi Badenoch is proposing, so leaving the ECHR, taking an even tougher line on migration, the obsession, if you like, with the trans issue, the walking away from commitments on net zero, it's beginning to be quite difficult to tell the difference between Reform UK on the one hand, and the Conservatives on the other.

VOICEOVER: The ECHR is the European Convention on Human Rights – and a cornerstone of UK law. It's often used to protect people’s rights in deportation cases. But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and senior shadow cabinet member Robert Jenrick want the UK to leave it. Nigel Farage says it’s the first thing he would scrap if he became Prime Minister.

I asked Tim about Farage’s tactics for connecting with voters.

JOANNA BALE: How important is his media strategy - GB News, his social media, his public appearances - to his political staying power?

TIM BALE: I think Nigel Farage recognises that we are these days in what you might call an attention economy, and therefore, he's got to be out there across a range of channels. And one thing I think that in some ways distinguishes him from some of his rivals, if you like, in other parties, is that he's very media savvy.

Not just in terms of his ability to connect with what some people refer to as a mainstream media, so we're talking about the Telegraph, the Express and the Mail for example, but also his ability to use social media and particularly platforms that other politicians don't really understand, like TikTok. And the fact that he has jumped on the GB News bandwagon very effectively, I think has helped him as well.

So I think this media ecosystem we live in now is ideally suited to someone with his communication talents.

JOANNA BALE: What does he do on TikTok? I haven't seen that!

TIM BALE: Nigel Farage has got more followers on TikTok than every other MP put together. He has 1.3 million followers. So he does a lot of short video. Sometimes they're filmed by the kind of assistants around him. Sometimes there'll be pieces he does direct to camera. They can be sort of 20, 30 second, little clips, and they do get a very big audience.

VOICEOVER: A recent review of Farage’s TikTok account by The Guardian newspaper found a video which had been seen 4.9 million times in four months. It was titled "Isn’t it about time we started looking after our own people?" The video was one of just five posted by an MP in that period to have been viewed at least a million times.

The other four were also by Farage.

A separate TikTok account for Farage’s party, Reform UK, has achieved almost 14 times the engagement per post as Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats – another major political party in the UK.

TIM BALE: Now, whether obviously you can convert that audience into actually turning up at the ballot box and voting for you is another matter. But there's no doubt that he is, compared to most MPs, I think a master of the social media form.

VOICEOVER: Last year one of Farage’s social media videos made headlines - after the tragic murders of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. Police had arrested a suspect - but initially released no details about him. Fabricated claims spread on social media that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker. Amid widespread anger and confusion, Farage stared into a camera lens and accused the police of ‘withholding the truth’:

FARAGE: The police say it’s a non-terror incident, just as they said the stabbing of an army lieutenant colonel in uniform on the streets of Kent the other day was a non-terror incident. I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that. I think it is a fair and legitimate question. What I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country.

Shortly after, Neil Basu - Britain’s former head of counter-terrorism policing - accused Farage of helping to incite the seven days of riots that followed.

Farage condemned the violence but maintained that it was legitimate to ask questions.

Britain’s oldest mosque, the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque established in Liverpool in 1889, was among the targets. Here’s Adam Kelwick, an imam at the mosque. We heard from him earlier, trying to calm an angry mob with burgers and chips.

He recalled how it began with a terrifying scene at a different mosque nearby.

ADAM KELWICK: A good friend of mine, Imam Ibrahim, was stuck inside the mosque with his congregation while it was being pelted with bricks and police vehicles were being burnt down outside. And the way that community described things to me is they didn't know if they were coming out of that building alive or not. So yeah, things, after the tragic stabbings in Southport, really went to a dark place.

Then I was sent flyers online with a list of future targets for protests. Our mosque, the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque was number one on that list.

We were also receiving announcements that there's going to be a counter protest from anti-racism demonstrators.

And so, I put this video out.

KELWICK VIDEO: We have a history of opening our doors and welcoming people in, so just to let you know, anybody who attends the protest tomorrow, we’re going to be handing out free cold drinks to you, we’re going to be handing out burgers and chips, and also an invitation, if you would be so kind, to come into the mosque, bring your concerns in. Let’s have a discussion about issues which are affecting our communities and how we can work together to solve them.

VOICEOVER: The idea was met with fear and incredulity.

ADAM KELWICK: Some people within the Muslim community were a little uncomfortable with this. I think they were worried. I think they were scared. Not that they didn't want to have a positive response to negativity, it's just that for several reasons, they felt, I think, scared to kind of go over that line. But that's what happened in the end, we got the kitchen preparing food.

So now, all of a sudden, we've got these people coming to our mosque, and I'm quite excited because this is an opportunity for me now with all the cameras from all around the world to show people that this is possible. You can speak to people on the other side. You don't have to just stay in your own corner and shout at each other. Let's come together, let's discuss. We might not agree on everything, but what you will realize is that you are a human, I'm a human, you've got issues in your life, I've got issues in my life, maybe some of those issues, we can come together and solve them together.

JOANNA BALE: So were the police and the police helicopters there waiting for the protesters, or had they already turned up?

ADAM KELWICK: Yes. The police presence was there well in advance. It was quite intense with these planes flying over and these helicopters flying over and lines of the police.

The counter-protesters started to arrive in numbers even before the protesters. And at the peak of the kind of events, I'd say there were about 50 people who were protesting, which, again, is not the biggest number. Maybe my message the day before saying, we're going to cook burgers and chips for you, maybe that worked as a kind of, who knows, a preventative, because some people might have thought, "No, we're going to look stupid, aren’t we, if we turn up shouting at the Muslims and they start feeding us food?" So who knows?

VOICEOVER: At first, Adam was told that it was too dangerous for him to cross the lines of riot police with his burgers.

ADAM KELWICK: We were waiting on standby, as it were, for three hours till 10:00 p.m., which is when I went over again and spoke to the head of the operations from the police side and I explained to her that this is really, really important for me and my community to at least invite these people and show some goodwill gesture towards them in terms of offering them food. And three hours later at 10:00 p.m., she said, "Okay, then take a small number over and just be very careful."

VOICEOVER: The reaction was initially hostile - as we heard from Adam at the start of this episode.

ADAM KELWICK: The next person I went to after the people who just looked straight through me, I said, "Would you like some food?" And they gave me a firm nod of their heads, no, they looked disgusted. And then I went on to the next person, kept smiling, went to the next person. And fortunately, that guy must have not had any breakfast that day, he must have been starving and fed up.

The first guy took the first burger, we started talking. And then, more people were taking the food.

VOICEOVER: As the anger melted away and the shouting stopped, Adam even managed to hug a protester - in a moving moment captured by photographers.

ADAM KELWICK: Me and my two colleagues were going around having chats with people, listening to people. And the ice was really, really, really broken at that point. And it was soon after we gave everybody the food, that I think everybody on both sides felt comfortable and felt that they could walk away without losing any face, if that makes sense. And then, things kind of fizzled away from there.

JOANNA BALE: That's an amazing story. Did you get to the point where you could invite them in, into the mosque?

ADAM KELWICK: There was one protester, the one who I was captured giving a hug in the photograph to. This guy, he was probably the loudest person at that protest.

But what you've got to realize is that number one, it takes two people to hug. I would not have been able to hug him if he didn't hug me. So think about that. What does that mean? What does that imply? The loudest person at this protest had it somewhere within his heart to reach out and hug the imam of the mosque. Maybe the burgers were amazing, I'm not sure!

But also as well, I did actually kind of go against the police's advice on this one exception, I did take him into the mosque on the night. After things had settled down and people had started to go away, I literally took him by the hand and we went inside the mosque and we had a walk around. And he was really impressed and he was really happy. And he walked home a very cheerful guy, and hopefully, with a lot of ignorance being dispelled.

VOICEOVER: Adam continues meeting with ordinary people wanting to question Islam - as well as far-right activists. Some have close links to Tommy Robinson.

ADAM KELWICK: What I've found since the riots last summer, and especially since talking to people who were kind of influential figures in that movement, if you like, what I've discovered is there are a small number of agitators who are the ideologues and were probably behind organising these events.

But the vast majority of people who come to these rallies and these protests are actually genuine people, genuine families who don't necessarily want to harm others.

It was very emotional. And I think some people know how to manipulate those emotions in a way which furthers their own agenda. And that's what worries me, that there are people out there who gain to benefit from situations like this in society.

There's a lot of politics being played here, which is turning us against each other, and we've probably got much more in common with each other in our communities than we have with these people who are playing these political games.

VOICEOVER: Burgers and chips won’t dismantle global disinformation networks. But Adam has shown they can do something else - pierce the echo chamber, just long enough for human curiosity to slip in.

Still, he knows he’s facing an uphill battle.

We’ve heard how the far right is no longer on the fringes - it’s steering the narrative. It appears to be shaping our future. Fringe ideas are being weaponised. Amplified with precision. Pushed across social media. Shared. Echoed. Believed.

And it doesn’t stop online. Millions are turning out to vote - for those who spread fear and division.

So my final question is: Will mainstream politicians find the courage - and the language - to push back?

Here’s Dr Marta Lorimer:

MARTA LORIMER: There's still space to engage. I think people should be trying to resist the ideas of the radical right rather than trying to copy them, which is unfortunately what we see. We see a lot of mainstream politicians in particular saying, "Well, look, if these parties are successful, then maybe we should be lifting their ideas."

That's not a very intelligent strategy. It only legitimizes the far right, and it legitimizes their solutions which means that they are just going to keep winning elections, and everyone is just going to shift to the right.

VOICEOVER: Professor Tim Bale.

TIM BALE: I think all the government can do is focus on trying to make a tangible improvement to people's standard of living and to public services, and hope that that is enough in the end to persuade people not to take a chance on something more radical.

VOICEOVER: Dr Michael Vaughan.

MICHAEL VAUGHAN: I think it's important, in a way, not to overestimate Musk's influence.

Along with his huge capacity to influence politics and the way that we communicate, through his wealth, there's also a huge amount of volatility and instability that comes with how he builds and breaks relationships with other actors. So, I think that that works as almost a countervailing force to his effectiveness at influencing the political landscape, certainly in other countries.

VOICEOVER: Finally, Imam Adam Kelwick.

ADAM KELWICK: Just look at the mosque incident, we've got 50 people coming to protest against the mosque, and if you scratch beneath the surface, you find out that there's no substance to their reasons why they want to protest against the mosque.

And then you've got 450 people who are protecting our mosque, and I'm talking about everybody from LGBTQ activists to my local jewellery dealer, to the local MP. It was amazing. Literally, everybody in society was there. And that, for me, is the biggest sign of reassurance.

VOICEOVER: This episode was written and produced by me, Joanna Bale, with script development by Sophie Mallett and editing by Oliver Johnson. If you’d like to find out more about the research in this episode, head to the show notes. And if you enjoy iQ, please leave us a review. Join us next month when Sue Windebank asks: ‘How can we be more resilient?’.

If you like this podcast, you might like the LSE Events podcast which features talks by some of the most influential figures in the social sciences. In a recent event, journalist Ben Chu discussed his new book on the end of globalisation with LSE’s Richard Davies.

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