How the far right stirs up protests against immigration in Britain

It was extreme even for a figure like Nigel Farage. Hours after the police footage of officers handcuffing Henry Nowak on the fatal night of December 3 in Southampton became public and spread like wildfire on social media, the Reform UK leader called on citizens to respond with “pure, cold rage.” The young Nowak had been fatally stabbed by a man of Sikh faith and Asian descent, who later falsely accused him of a racist attack. “I can’t breathe,” the victim shouted up to nine times, to the officers’ disbelief as they moved against him. His cry of agony echoed the words George Floyd uttered on the streets of Minneapolis, which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

Farage, leader of Reform UK, is a shrewd and opportunistic politician who has long tried to distance himself from the most violent elements of the far right. In Nowak’s case, however, he decided to light the fuse, fearful of being sidelined in an all-out fight to appropriate the anger of many Britons.

Former Reform UK member Rupert Lowe was expelled from the party amid turmoil. From his seat as an independent MP he founded Restore Britain, a party that has gained traction and now threatens to fragment the populist right’s vote with far more extreme proposals. In the three months prior to April 13, according to data from the social network X, Farage received 1.9 million likes on his posts. Lowe, who has become the favored politician of tech magnate and X owner Elon Musk, received 12.9 million in the same period.

In the hours after the footage of Nowak’s death circulated, Farage denounced a double standard by the police and said during a speech that “white lives matter.” He gained 59,000 likes. Shortly afterward, Lowe raised the stakes: “A Restore Britain Government, with the British people’s approval, would put Vickrum Digwa to death [the Sikh man who committed the crime and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years],” the politician wrote. He received 137,000 likes.

‘Triggers’ of the protests

It has become a reproducible model that succeeds whenever a crime or tragic incident inflames the public and puts politicians on alert, as happened with the girls murdered in Southport on July 29, 2024, by a minor born in the UK but of Rwandan descent; with Nowak’s murder at the hands of a Sikh man of Asian descent who was carrying two ceremonial daggers; or now, with the attempted murder in north Belfast — an attempted decapitation — of Stephen Ogilvy by Hadi Alodid, a Sudanese man living in the UK who arrived via Paris and Dublin under a temporary visa.

Crime is the perfect trigger for fury to erupt on social media and for national and transnational extremist groups to organize and coordinate street protests that inevitably escalate into violent confrontations with police. In Nowak’s case, Musk himself used his X account, with 240 million followers, to encourage people to mobilize.

“Send the video to everyone you know showing how heinously Nowak was treated by the police in his dying moments and how the police cravenly kowtowed to his murderer,” Musk wrote on X alongside the police-camera footage, in which Nowak is heard repeatedly saying he cannot breathe. “Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak,” Musk added.

After the attempted murder in Belfast, Musk reposted the locations of all the protest points on his account. Tommy Robinson, the far-right leader who has most successfully mobilized Britons, egged on his followers from Moscow to replicate in UK streets what was already happening in Belfast.

“Everything that happened [on Tuesday night], both in East Belfast and West Belfast, was organized and responded to racist violence. It all took place after the protests were widely promoted by online far-right communities and amplified by figures such as Nigel Farage, Elon Musk or Tommy Robinson, who incited the crowds from Moscow, where he was visiting,” said Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope Not Hate, an organization that studies and combats extremism. “It’s always the same pattern: they exploit local residents’ emotions to stir up hatred and demean all immigrants,” he added.

Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland Jon Boutcher urged citizens “not to listen to those who know nothing about Northern Ireland and use toxic social media to drag people onto the streets.” “Don’t let other people, who don’t care about here, incite hatred and fear. Don’t allow people who are faceless to orchestrate campaigns on the street,” Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill urged alongside him.

Within hours, the call by those “faceless individuals” had brought dozens of masked men onto Belfast’s streets, setting buses, cars, and dumpsters on fire. They terrorized the immigrant population by torching their homes and forcing them to flee with only the clothes they were wearing.

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