Executive Summary

The state of Britain today

• Britain is increasingly divided and that is likely to increase whatever the Brexit outcome
• The way Parliament has handled the Brexit process has deepened the poor attitude many hold towards our politicians. 68% now say that there is not a political party that speaks for them and 55% think the political system is broken
• Anti-Muslim prejudice has replaced immigration as the key driver of far right growth, however after six years of increasingly positive views, attitudes towards immigration in Britain are deteriorating

Terrorism

• While the numbers arrested for terror-related offences in 2018 was down on the previous year, we are witnessing a growing threat of far right terrorism
• The threat of far right terrorism comes from both organised groups, like National Action, 
but also from lone actors who get radicalised via the internet
• Over 25 Al-Muhajiroun activists have been released from prison in the last 12 months, including most of its leadership

The far right

• The extreme far right is getting more extreme and younger
• The far right is successfully tapping into the political rage and discontent that is prevalent in society.
• A narrative of ‘betrayal’ and ‘traitors’ increasingly dominates the far right’s discourse, with much of their anger focused on MPs – and female MPs in particular.
• Continued decline of the traditional ideological far-right and the rise of an emotionally driven, conspiratorial populist message
• UKIP has become a far right party under the leadership of Gerard Batten
• Continued increase in internationalisation of ideas, tactics, money and collaborative working
• The adoption of the ‘free speech’ narrative by the far right has enabled them to deflect from their own extremism and attract a more mainstream audience

Stephen Lennon

• 55% of Britons have heard of Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Lennon)
• Of those, 37% have seen or heard one of his videos on social media. This rises to 57% of 18-24 year olds
• Only 6% of Britons have a positive view of Lennon

Online hate

• Five of the 10 far right activists with the biggest social media reach in the world are British
• There’s been a continued rising trend in traffic to far-right websites and followers of far-right social media accounts, although increasing moderation by social media companies seems to have slowed down, and in individual cases reverted, the explosive increase we saw last year

Islamophobia

• The 2017 terrorist attacks have had a lasting negative impact on attitudes towards British Muslims
• 49% of 2017 Conservative voters think that Islam is incompatible to the British way of life and 47% think there are no go areas in Britain where sharia law dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter

Antisemitism

• Left-wing antisemitism is a very real problem. While extreme antisemitism and Holocaust
 Denial is less common, a larger number engage in conspiratorial antisemitism and use antisemitic tropes, especially in relation to supposed Jewish power and an even larger group are involved in denying a problem exists and dismissing the issue as a right wing and Zionist smear
• Labour is still not doing enough to tackle antisemitism

Investigations

• We expose the increasing influence of the Order of Nine Angles, the world’s most extreme nazi-satanist group, on a young generation of violent nazis including National Action and the Sonnenkrieg Division
• We reveal an illegal steroids factory run by Polish nazis living in London
• We examine both Loyalist and Republican paramilitary groups
• We investigate the manosphere and the growing anti-feminist movement

Prospects for 2019

• We are likely to see a resurgence of a far-right electoral threat
• A strong far-right vote in the European Elections will give a boost to the far right and populist right in the UK
• Divisions within Britain are likely to increase and this will further split communities and boost the far right’s populist anti-politics message
• We are likely to see a continued far right terrorist threat, though possibly more from “lone actors” than organisations
• The Identitarian movement will continue to replace the Alt Right as the main international movement
• Al-Muhajiroun is likely to become more active