Since the diminishing of the British National Party (BNP), there has been a lack of political representation of the extreme right in the UK. The consequence of this has been an increase in street-based activity by non-political organizations like the English Defence League (EDL), Britain First,...
In September, the highest-ranking counterterrorism officer in Britain, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, declared the far-right to be the fastest growing terrorist threat to Britain. According to the Met, in the last year, a quarter of all terrorism related arrests were of...
In 2018, the President of the United States Donald Trump posted a rather enigmatic tweet about“farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers” by the South African government. What initially seemed puzzling was soon everywhere. A few days later, during the former UK...
Without the delivery of integration work at the local level, any effort to counter extremism is effectively built on a shaky foundation with too much sand in the mix. “Communities Defeat Terrorism” was the tagline when I worked as the head of strategy and policy in the office of the UK’s...
“It absolutely could happen here.” This was the Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace’s response on BBC Radio 4 to the question many in the United Kingdom and around the world have asked themselves in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 50 people praying in...
The far right recognizes the value, both in training and in terms of access to arms and equipment, that active and former soldiers bring to its organizations. In early October 2018, a photo emerged that showed former leader of the English Defence League, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy...
The gilets jaunes movement has become a part, even a fixture, of contemporary French culture. In an article for Fair Observer about how the far right in the UK has appropriated the symbols of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement in France, doctoral researcher Natalie James highlights the...
Why are American groups funding a figure on the British radical right? Since the arrest of former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson for breaching reporting restrictions on a trial and his subsequent imprisonment on contempt of court charges, a large movement has gathered to demand his...
