Inside the far-right social media ecosystem normalising extremist ideas in UK politics

Last September, Reform leader Nigel Farage dismissed a policy of mass deportations as a “political impossibility”. Now, a year on, the party has pledged to deport up to 600,000 illegal migrants and retrospectively strip indefinite leave to remain from people already settled in the UK.

This is a drastic lurch to the right, even for Reform. Only last year the party was saying it seeks to represent the “silent majority” and keep out “extremists”.

In explaining this shift, Reform politicians would probably claim this is what the silent majority wants. They would point to a hardening of public opinion on illegal migration.

They would want to avoid the accusation they have given in to extremists by proposing these policies. Reform has, after all, sought to distance itself from the far-right with every step it takes towards the mainstream.

But an analysis of social media suggests something else. Many people and groups on the radical and far-right are harnessing a process known as audience capture in order to influence political policy.

A group of anonymous X accounts is said to follow a “posting-to-policy” strategy. These accounts – some of which are run by disaffected Westminster professionals – post to inject their grievances into online discourse.

Their goal is to see their narratives circulate and gain popularity within rightwing networks. Once established, they hope political actors, many of whom follow them, will take up the ideas.

Use and discussion of the “Boriswave” is an example of this. The term, which refers to a rise in non-EU immigration under former prime minister Boris Johnson, originated and proliferated from this network. It is now commonly used in the mainstream and was deployed by Reform to justify its proposal to revoke indefinite leave to remain.

Another example is the motability scheme, a programme that helps eligible disabled individuals lease a car. It was first highlighted and heavily criticised by anonymous accounts on X for being wasteful and subject to fraudulent abuse, and has dominated much of the discussion on welfare reform in 2025. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch recently promised to restrict eligibility to the scheme.

While many of these accounts are anonymous, some are more out in the open. Online conservatives such as Connor Tomlinson and Steven Edington have boasted of how their work has helped move Reform to the right.

Further to the online activities of aggrieved anonymous online users and disaffected conservatives, are the cases of ex-Reform politicians MP Rupert Lowe and Advance UK leader Ben Habib. Both left the party in acrimonious circumstances, both now lead alternative movements, and both are pushing Reform to adopt more radical policies.

Lowe has called Reform’s pledge to deport up to 600,000 illegal migrants “pathetic” and has suggested it be quadrupled. Habib attended the far-right Unite the Kingdom protests in September.

Add these forces together and you get what amounts to a rightwing arms race – communities of social media users pushing for more radical policies in an attempt to change the norms and policies of Reform and the right.

How an idea spreads

To explore this dynamic, and how Reform’s recent u-turn has been shaped by it, we analysed the online networks that drove conversation about “mass deportations” on X over the past year. Using computational methods, we identified four distinct sub-communities defined by their retweet relationships. These sub-communities were formed around far-right influencers, radical right influencers, Advance UK/free-marketeer influencers – and around the Reform party.

Reposting network of discussion of mass deportation on X:

Discussion of mass deportations in 2024 was almost exclusively dominated by the far-right and the anonymous accounts of the radical right. Fast forward to April 2025 and we find Lowe, Habib and a wider range of rightwing influencers have entered the conversation in support of the policy.

Finally, in September, following Reform’s August announcement, you can see Farage and key Reform personnel supplant the influencers as players in a movement they had little role in creating. In doing so, the party has aligned itself with a policy that less than a year ago it vehemently rejected.

This offers only a snapshot of discussions on social media and cannot account for the wider political and socioeconomic factors influencing these shifts. It does, however, demonstrate how narratives in far-right and fringe online ecosystems can migrate into more mainstream discourse over time and help shape the norms and policies of whole political movements.

It is difficult to imagine this happening without the new role of X under Elon Musk. With far-right figures now allowed back onto the platform, and the liberalisation of its algorithms to push more extreme content, the result has been the amplification and normalisation of more radical views and rhetoric.

Researchers have highlighted how, as a result of this, social media begins to function like a funhouse mirror, distorting political reality. Because online debate is dominated by a small number of extreme voices (10% of users produce 97% of political content), it projects a skewed and unrepresentative picture of public opinion.

This, in turn, blurs users’ sense of which norms and views are mainstream. The fact that offline, the majority is said to oppose the retrospective removal of indefinite leave to remain, only adds weight to the argument that Reform’s policy shifts are being driven by a small number of influential online voices rather than the voices of the masses.

Where once social media played a role more akin to that of a town hall, allowing people to express their views and support for political parties, it is now increasingly reflective of the strategic activities of a select influential few.

While the extent of this is unclear, we have to wonder if Reform’s perceptions of public opinion are being distorted by the funhouse mirror that X has increasingly become. And while the party is polling ahead of all others, that has implications for the future direction of the UK.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.