The Global Far-Right Instigation Campaign

Who really benefits when cities like Southampton or Belfast burn?

JD Vance called for “righteous anger.” Nigel Farage demanded “pure, cold rage.” Elon Musk reiterated what he said to anti-migrant marchers last year: “you either fight back or you die.”

They seem to have got what they wanted in Belfast yesterday. Masked men pulled migrants and non-white residents onto the street and set their homes alight. Once again, we’re witnessing streets littered with broken glass and the shells of burned out cars.

Belfast South MP Clare Hanna put it simply. “What you’re seeing is a race-based pogrom,” she told the BBC.

“We are seeing men going door to door asking to get the foreigners out based exclusively on the colour of their skin. It’s not based on what they’re contributing to society, what their status here is and it’s terrifying for people in Belfast who want this sort of politics to be far beyond them.”

Every summer, the far-right incitement machine churns that much faster. From Southport in 2024 to Southampton last week and now to Belfast, the pattern is the same.

It begins with a terrible crime. A mass stabbing targeting young girls in Southport. A student, Henry Nowak, murdered and written off by police in Southampton. A brutal knife attack in Belfast, thwarted by a brave local man. Real and heinous acts.

But they are rare outbursts of extreme violence. Products of complex failures across prisons, policing, mental health and more. You shouldn’t use outlier examples to set national policy. And you certainly shouldn’t pretend immigration is the only issue at hand.

That’s precisely what the global far-right does. They tether these events inexorably to “mass immigration”. They envelop them into a grand conspiracy – Western civilisation is being destroyed from within. Regardless of how victims’ families feel, these human tragedies are ruthlessly harvested for a pre-existing cause.

Telegram channels repost grainy footage. TikTok accounts narrate the “slow-motion genocide of the native population.” X, stripped of content moderation, becomes the central nervous system of a viral panic. Each like and share is a small detonation in a campaign to manufacture consent for anti-migrant violence and ultimately ethnic cleansing.

Within hours, the talking points crystallise. “Two-tier justice” – systemic bias against white people – has made a comeback. It doesn’t matter that decades of evidence shows policing biases run against black people. The crackdowns on Palestine and climate protesters, the impunity often afforded to the very wealthy, those facts are washed away in favour of a convenient and emotionally charged narrative.

These little phrases – “two tier justice” “take back our country” “millions must go” – become airborne pathogens. They emanate from the Vice President of the United States to Elon Musk, on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.

The frenzy culminates in street violence, terrorising communities still grieving the initial crime. It will never hurt well-insulated people like Farage, Vance, or Musk, but it causes untold damage to ordinary families.

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Given this is an intentional global influence campaign, it’s incredible how little Britain has done to protect itself. We should be treating this as a severe national security threat.

Instead, mainstream politics too often views this as spontaneous working-class frustration. On the demand side, people feel left behind – because they have been. But on the supply side, this is a professionalised, international, well-funded instigation campaign. The anger is real. But it is also directed. Harvested. Sold back as a product – designed, optimised, and deployed.

Powerful interests are circling Britain like sharks. Few on the reasonable end seem to be taking the threat seriously. Taking them at face value, listening to their words and not looking at their project.

In my view the ultimate goal of the global far-right, at least their donors and figureheads, is a world without accountability. A world where crypto tycoons skirt rules, polluters dump freely, racists shout slurs, and handsy men grope without consequence. Where the profits and the power of figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk is never again restricted by democracy or the rule of law. Utter impunity for the few.

The only proper response is a secure, resilient democracy serious about foreign interference, serious about people’s concerns, serious about holding people accountable, and utterly unromantic about what the far-right actually is.

You already know what that looks like. Robust digital regulation that goes after companies like X. A proportional political system that can hear the disillusioned and the left-behind. An end to billionaire-backed campaigning and dodgy £5 million gifts. Protections against foreign influence from Russia and America alike.

And perhaps most urgently: mainstream politicians with the backbone to stand up for our neighbours who are under attack.