By Tony Rose and Rob Wray | A Data Desk Report | October 2026
Far-right agitators leverage a simple but effective social media strategy, spreading manufactured disinformation which converts legitimate political and social grievances into revenue for themselves.
These disinformation tactics become far more dangerous when they dial into emotive, real public concerns, showing complete disregard for the facts while sowing community division and negatively impacting informed choice on important issues.
You couldn’t make it up. But they do.
Today, more and more people get their news through social media. Ofcom research published in July 2026 found that 60% of people in the UK aged 16 and over now exclusively use social media to get their news, while digital platforms overall are used by 82% of people, compared to 76% who watch broadcast television news.
It’s no surprise, then, that far-right agitators, groups and political figures push disinformation on social media to fit their narrative and agenda. Evidence shows this leads to the normalisation of racist, anti-migrant and Islamophobic rhetoric and often a distorted, shared belief that these claims are true. For them, manufactured disinformation isn’t just a tactic, it’s a business model.
They use disinformation, social media algorithms and online extremist support networks to piggyback off people’s real concerns about our society and communities, with emotional content designed to provoke and radicalise audiences. By persistently flooding social media with inaccurate myths, bad-faith actors are able to push distorted far-right narratives contaminating the mainstream political discourse.
There is clearly nuance to many of these arguments, and it is precisely this nuance that the far right exploits: they take issues that contain a degree of truth, or that stem from legitimate grievances, and distort them. This blog is designed to offer clear facts and encourage people to look beyond these claims and think critically about them.
Below, we debunk some of the most common myths peddled by the far right, explaining the damage they do and exactly why their claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.
You will recognise the myths we describe below, but, this time you can consider if they still seem convincing alongside the actual facts.
Fiction. Facts. Impact.
The fiction: The far -right keep immigration at the centre of political debate, framing it as a major crisis and claiming that “millions” of people are “invading” the UK.
The facts: Migration into the UK is decreasing by almost every measure. Data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows that last year (2025), total gross immigration was 813,000, a 20% decrease compared to the previous year (ending December 2024). In the same period, net migration also reduced to an estimated 171,000, down substantially from 331,000 the previous year (see chart below).
Figures from the Home Office for the same period showed that small boat arrivals totalled 41,472, accounting for around 5% of all migration. More recent data from the Migration Observatory in 2026 shows that around 36,000 people arrived in the UK by small boats, down 13% on the same period the year before. In September 2026, the BBC reported that ”Between 1 January and 14 September 2026, a total of 17,425 people crossed the English Channel by small boat from France. This was down by 44% on the same period the previous year”, and the lowest since 2021.
The impact: By framing immigration as an “invasion”, the far right have created a dangerous perception gap. The public is prompted to believe immigration is rising when in fact it is falling. Rather than offering policy-based solutions to the very real issues all our communities are facing, the far right distorts reality as a scare tactic designed to normalise anti-migrant policies, generate fear, secure political support and ultimately mainstream extreme far-right ideas like “remigration”.
The fiction: UK police operate a “two-tier” system that treats white Britons more harshly than ethnic minorities.
The facts: Decades of research shows the police overwhelmingly display systemic bias against, not in favour of, ethnic minority communities. In England and Wales, for instance, Black people are 3.8 times more likely to be subjected to stop-and-search.
A 2026 King’s College London study found disinformation about ‘two-tier policing’ had 52% of people convinced that ethnic or religious minorities receive different sentences, with 29% thinking they get lighter ones, despite the Crown Prosecution Service Director stating that the data: “.. demonstrates conclusively that there is disproportionality, by which I mean that there’s a greater likelihood of being prosecuted if you come from an ethnic group that is not white British”.
The impact: By reframing isolated incidents as “proof” of widespread anti-white racism, far-right agitators are able to completely dismiss evidence of longstanding discrimination experienced by people of colour at the hands of the Police.
The fiction: Rates of violent crime are rising, and major cities like London are unsafe as a result – with a link to supposedly rising rates of immigration.
The facts: In 2025, the Metropolitan Police reported the city’s lowest annual murder rates since 2014. London neighbourhood crime also fell by 14% in the 12 months to June 2026. One of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, London is also considered to be one of the safest global major cities in the world.
The impact: This reductivist disinformation affects public perception. Research from King’s College London found that people “believed 55% of convicted offenders were from ethnic minorities, when the real figure is 35%, and that foreign national offenders make up 25% of the prison population, more than double the true figure of 12%” (reflecting the proportion of non-British nationals resident in the UK overall). The beliefs of Reform voters were furthest from the reality, with these respondents believing 70% of offenders were from ethnic minorities. While 15% of sexual offences were committed by foreign nationals – again, reflecting the proportion of non-British nationals in the population – these respondents put the figure at 50%. Peddling this false link between migration and crime is a useful and much-used tactic for the far right, used to capitalise on people’s fears and trick them into more extreme ideologies.
The fiction: Migrant and Muslim men are the biggest threat to women and children.
The facts: National data shows most Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) perpetrators are white, with ONS figures indicating Asian minorities are underrepresented. According to official data from the Ministry of Justice and the ONS, white defendants made up 88% of CSA prosecutions from 2022, 5 percentage points higher than their 83% share of the population. South Asian defendants accounted for 7%, slightly less than their 9% population share. The far-right claim that grooming gangs are predominantly of a single migrant ethnicity cannot be verified nationally due to inadequate ethnicity recording for two‑thirds of perpetrators. In fact, following the anti-migrant riots in 2024, which were under the guise of “protecting women and children”, police data revealed 1 in 5 men arrested have since been reported for domestic abuse.
The impact: This rhetoric reinforces the misconception that gender based violence comes from migrant strangers. In reality, one woman is killed every four days in the UK by a partner or an ex-partner and more than 90% of perpetrators of rape and sexual assault are known to the victim, which means the remaining 10% cannot therefore all be assumed to be migrants.
The fiction: Far-right extremist content is simply “edgy,” “provocative,”, “banter” or simply “common sense”.
The facts: Research from the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security (CETaS) identified a “shadow influencer economy” where creators turn divisive content into profit. Perverse social media algorithms compound this by increasingly rewarding conflictual and deliberately incendiary material. For example, The Guardian reported in August 2026 that Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe profits from his online content. Through X alone, his so-called “creator revenue” has surpassed £100,000 since 2024, averaging between £931 and £1,476 per hour from his posts.
The impact: Commercialising this kind of divisive “click-hate” has created a vicious cycle: outrage generates views and revenue which, in turn, funds further radical content. This impacts informed choice, and reduces active social media participants to misled, passive consumers. Our research also suggests that encouraging people to prioritise online identity and outrage over evidence can steer voters toward more extreme policies that in fact run contrary to their own socio-economic interests.
The fiction: Far-right movements increasingly frame themselves as “defenders of Christianity” against secularism, Islam, or “cultural Marxism.”
The facts: This is a cynical and selective use of religion. After Stephen Lennon’s Unite The Kingdom Rally 2025, the Presidents of Churches Together in England stated “The Cross and the Gospel of Christ must never be co-opted to support the messages that breed hostility towards others”. A report by Christian think tank Theos, says many churches in the UK welcome and support asylum seekers because it aligns with Christian teachings that reject the alienation of immigrants.
The impact: By co-opting Christianity, the far right targets new audiences, moral legitimacy, and most importantly fundraising networks, tapping into funding from US wealthy Christian nationalist evangelists. This form of disinformation is not new: UKIP’s “Mass Deportation Tour” and “Walk with Jesus” marches used religious symbolism to push their exclusionary politics with “the cross treated as a KEEP OUT sign aimed at our Muslim neighbours and those seeking sanctuary on our shores”.
Disinformation impacts informed choice and democracy
Disinformation has become a commodity and for the far right, it is their main business model. The spread of distorted information about immigration, crime and justice is not just about inaccuracy. It’s a deliberate strategy to manipulate informed choice and by extension democracy. Each of the myths described above are carefully designed to create fear, make prejudice seem normal, and destroy trust in UK institutions.
The 2024 riots and more recent vigilantism at coastal towns and asylum centres are the inevitable result of a tactic that teaches people to see their neighbours as enemies rather than part of their communities. When people have been tricked into believing that institutions are corrupt, that minorities are dangerous and that democracy is failing, they are duped into supporting anyone who promises to “restore order”, by any means necessary.
Disinformation narratives like these create distrust which turns to anger and civil disorder. Far right agitators then exploit this to justify harsher, authoritarian solutions that bypass proper democratic debate. This opens the door to far-right agitators and their political movements to cynically peddle disinformation, repeated so often that people come to believe it.
HOPE not hate continues to scrutinise and challenge these claims with actual data to help rebalance the debate, make us think twice before buying into false far-right propaganda, and combat the spread of this harmful disinformation.
Disinformation Decoder – Online tool
To fact check these and other false claims, use our Disinformation Decoder online tool, where you can put social media fake news and far-right myths to the test yourself and share the real facts and data on your socials.
For further information about this report, contact [email protected]
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