The Basketweavers could be the most important far-right network you have never heard of. Operating in the shadows, it is an interconnected group of extremists who want to build their own society away from the mainstream.
Despite their secretive nature, the Basketweavers may be among the largest far-right networks in Britain, with chapters in London, Edinburgh, Bristol, Sheffield, and beyond. There were approximately 1,300 vetted members in the UK Basketweaver network as of September 2024. Estimates on Basketweaver turnout vary, but according to one senior figure, approximately a fifth of vetted members regularly attend events. Chapters containing an additional 1,100 members have also been set up in the US, Europe and Australia.
HOPE not hate sent an undercover reporter into the Basketweavers in 2022-2023. From the first meetings attended by our infiltrator, members discussed their affiliation to other far-right groups, their belief that Jews control global affairs, and their violent fantasies of murdering refugees.
The Basketweavers claim to be an apolitical group that primarily organises “social” events, but like their name, this is a ploy to distract outside attention from their far-right politics. Promoted by extremist, antisemitic influencers, the Basketweavers are a deeply racist network whose goals are the radicalisation of lonely young men, the creation of a separate society, and ultimately the cultivation of a new elite that hopes to one day rule Britain. The Basketweavers have links to numerous groups and figures of the traditional far right. Despite their size, they have avoided press coverage until now.
What makes the Basketweavers unusual in the British far right is their commitment to secrecy. Although they hope to attract members and grow, the tactics they have used to stay off the radar of media and anti-fascists reflect a greater level of sophistication relative to other far-right groups.
The promise of secrecy is not the network’s only allure. It claims to be a “community building service” offering lonely young people an opportunity to make like-minded friends. Unlike other organisations that are openly extreme and engage in traditional political campaigning, the Basketweavers provide an easy way for first-time activists and fans of far-right influencers the chance to meet. It is the hope of the group’s leaders that once inside, recruits will become more extreme and grow the network by inviting new members.
When Mark Houghton took the stage at the secretive far-right Scyldings conference in 2021, he proposed a new organisation with a funny name. The purpose of the “Basketweavers”, he told his audience, was ostensibly benign. Basketweaving would provide lonely young men with a community and a sense of belonging. The reality, however, would be very different.
Basketweaving, according to Houghton, was not just about providing community to the isolated but radicalising them. “Meeting in person will do more for you – will do more for us – than a hundred online Discord sessions,” he said. “It will do more for your thinking, for your social interaction, than listening alone to a dozen podcasts.”
Houghton, who is now a contributor to the Lotus Eaters, a popular far-right media outlet, anticipated that members of the Basketweavers could one day bring “a brother or a cousin or simply a friend from work” to events for indoctrination. In person, potential recruits will be “much more amenable to listening to what you have to say”, he explained. “It will humanise you to them.”
The name of the organisation was chosen by Houghton’s associate, Neema Parvini (aka Academic Agent), a disgraced academic who has called black people “impulsive and low IQ” and has spoken admiringly of the Nazi Brownshirts. Basketweaving was chosen as an innocuous, nonsense- sounding word that aimed to divert scrutiny from the media. It worked. Until now.
The group came to HOPE not hate’s attention when it was promoted by the race science influencer Edward Dutton, the “folkish” pagan YouTuber Thomas Rowsell (aka Survive The Jive) and Keith O’Brien (aka Keith Woods), an Irish white nationalist who once described himself as a “raging antisemite”. The Basketweavers were also advertised on the website of Neema Parvini, whose list of recommended books contains titles by a neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier.
While posing as a potential member called Chris in late 2022, our undercover reporter joined the Basketweaving community. He applied online and underwent a vetting test in the form of a political questionnaire and a brief chat with a senior member. Having passed, HOPE not hate gained access to a private server on Discord, the messaging app. Inside, we found more than 2,400 Basketweavers across the UK, the US, Europe, Australia and beyond.
A calendar is circulated at the start of every month, advertising events that members can attend. One typical month for the London chapter involved two Friday night meet-ups at the Pommelers Rest pub in Tower Bridge and a hangout for west London members at The Orange Tree in Richmond. Some members in south London went to the monthly Libertarian Drinks meet-up of Dick Delingpole (brother of Spectator columnist James). There was also a hike in Kent, a trip to a right-wing organisation’s event, and a Soho club night called The Cathedral, inspired by the neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin. Periodically, members would travel to meet Basketweavers in other cities like Bristol, and once a year a handful of members go to the French Alps for a ski trip (our reporter declined his invitation).
Members would also arrange to attend overtly political events, including the New Culture Forum, the Traditional Britain Group, and talks from figures like the far-right conspiracy theorist James Delingpole. Notably, members also arranged to attend the Nomos and Scyldings conferences, where they would hear an array of far-right and fascist speakers, including Neema Parvini, Michael Wright (aka Morgoth) and Colin Robertson (aka Millennial Woes). The Basketweavers were planning an event in June 2025 at the East India Club featuring John Sweeney, Benjamin Afer, and Howard Cox, Reform UK’s former London mayoral candidate.
Over the period of a year, our infiltrator went to Basketweaver events in London (the busiest chapter), Sheffield and York, plus an art exhibition and a conference in the Oxfordshire countryside. Activists from the wider British far right attended these meet-ups, including former members of the neo- Nazi group Patriotic Alternative (PA) and the now-defunct identitarian group Generation Identity UK.
On the surface, Basketweaver events are primarily about socialising and are open to those who follow a range of radical and far-right beliefs. However, there is a wider purpose to this. What they intend through their events is a form of prefigurative organising by which intellectual and political connections are forged, ultimately leading to the construction of a far-right elite. Basketweavers, in large part, hope to live as separately as possible from mainstream society and rely on their network: they socialise together, work together, and in a few cases marry and have children together. As many of them are anti- democratic, they believe that political activism within the current system will not bring about change. The best way to achieve their goals, they believe, is starting on a small scale.
Attracting new members is thus important to the success of this project. Whenever members attend public events, they are invited to proselytise with the directive to “keep to Lotus Eaters levels of spice”, a warning not to be too extreme. At a Battersea pub meet-up organised by a staffer of the New Culture Forum, our infiltrator overheard a senior Basketweaver telling a non- member to read about the so-called “Kalergi Plan”, a conspiracy theory that claims white people are the victims of a genocidal plot. “I heard it might be some racist thing,” replied the man. “Just check it out and read into it before you make any judgements,” said the Basketweaver with a smile.
Although the Basketweavers enforce an offline-communication policy in their main Discord server, they have another, invite-only group for 50 of their most trusted members. HOPE not hate’s undercover reporter was invited inside. There, Basketweavers were much less restrained. They shared racist video clips of the American white nationalist Nick Fuentes calling Jews “filth”, memes warning against miscegenation, and photos questioning the number of Holocaust dead. Posting pictures taken at one event, a veteran member described it as “Basketweavers NSDAP Adventures”, using the acronym for Hitler’s Nazi Party. At the event, members jokingly posed for a camera making straight arm salutes.
Many Basketweavers share a belief common to far-right politics: the conspiratorial view that a cabal of international Jews is responsible for many of the world’s problems. In this baroque fantasy, Jews are trying to poison gentile Westerners with toxic food, distract them with pornography, make children gay or trans, and convince white women to have children with black men to erase the white race. Basketweavers also frequently express hatred towards other groups traditionally targeted by the far right. At one meet-up, members described how black people “don’t have souls” and gleefully shouted racial slurs; at a different event a member called for the murder of left-wing civil servants. “Shoot them dead, so the streets run red with their blood,” he said.
The Basketweavers are committed to remaining obscure, and so while the group cryptically advertises itself through extreme influencers, in addition to hosting a website and publishing an online magazine, they also insist that their members use their Discord server only to plan offline events. The network encourages real-life meet-ups, rather than online discussions vulnerable to infiltration. Discord conversations that stray off the topic of scheduling these meet-ups are quickly deleted by administrators. This discipline reflects a growing complaint within the far right that prominent figures prioritise hosting live-streams instead of arranging in-person activity. The Basketweavers, as Mark Houghton explained in his speech, are intended as a response to that frustration.
The Basketweavers are now an important meeting place for the British far right, especially those with pseudo- intellectual aspirations. Edward Dutton, the race science influencer, spoke at a Basketweavers event in 2022. His colleague, John Rayner-Hilles, a contributor to the race science journal Aporia, has also appeared at Basketweaver meet-ups. Presenters of the Lotus Eaters internet show, including Dan Tubb and Luca Johnson, have gone to events with Basketweavers. Hugh and Justine Brown, supporters of the Traditional Britain Group (TBG), have also been involved. Basketweavers have used their Discord server to plan their attendance at TBG events.
The Basketweavers are part of a larger group called the Beowulf Foundation. Named after the Old English epic, it oversees the Basketweaving Discord server. The Beowulf Foundation is a partner of a number of other far-right influencers and organisations, including Imperium Press, a company that sells books by Edward Dutton and Jonathan Bowden (the BNP’s late culture officer) plus posters of Julius Evola.
Under the auspices of the Beowulf Foundation, members hope to launch a book publishing company and a digital payments system that would prevent users from being “debanked”. The foundation’s leaders write: “We are dedicated to promoting the growth and success of organized minorities through the development of networks, infrastructure and training programs.”
To that end, the Basketweavers are seen as essential in cultivating connections from which new far-right projects might emerge. One such project is the creation of a separate community within Britain where Basketweavers could live entirely outside mainstream society. Other members set up a discussion group dedicated to off-grid living and homeschooling.
Key to motivating the Basketweavers is the belief that they are in a countercultural vanguard that one day will become the new elite. “Power lies in the organised minority, not in the disorganised mass,” Neema Parvini has said. “The organised one hundred will always defeat the disorganised one thousand. Just as fire drives out fire, so an elite is only ever driven out by another elite.” Mark Houghton believes that the Basketweavers will build this intellectual cadre that will eventually displace the current system of government.
At their events, Basketweavers express a belief that democracy is a sham. Some describe their desire to retreat from mainstream society, which they view as degenerate and on the verge of collapse. Many want to purchase their own land and live in whites-only communities with separate institutions. This is a longstanding goal of the far right, and in the Basketweavers is often expressed by a desire that no money should be spent on products and services that are not “ours”. Members took a step towards this ambition when they hosted a show called The Exhibition at the Fitzrovia Gallery in west London in July 2023. It featured works by Alexander Adams and Fen De Villiers (who attended Scyldings in 2023). “We realise that art at the highest level can never be egalitarian, nor espouse egalitarianism,” reads an extract of The Exhibition’s manifesto. “There is no equality, nor can there be.
Ultimately, the Basketweavers are unlikely to achieve their grand ambitions of creating the new elite. Our undercover reporter noticed factional differences about the direction of the organisation. An attempted rebrand by an online administrator to “Club Weave” was mocked by members (“sounds like some dated ibizan nightclub to me”) and ultimately overturned.
The desire of becoming the new elite is not the only fantasy within the organisation. “Basketweaving and the idea it upholds is a commitment to meaningful local connections, promoting healthy and positive values,” Mark Houghton said in his opening speech. He went on to identify poor mental health as a problem, exacerbated by social isolation and internet addiction. And then he included “the crimes of Islam” in his assessment, in addition to “hypergamous dating”. This is the belief that women can be ranked according to looks, and thanks to dating apps, can ignore men of equal rank in favour of more attractive matches. If lonely young men join the Basketweavers in search of meaningful connections and healthy values, they are unlikely to find them there.
Despite Basketweavers broadly not engaging in traditional forms of activism, some members are involved in, or have passed through, such organisations. The Basketweaver Zachary Stiling, for instance, has been an electoral candidate for the Heritage Party (an anti-5G party whose leader has dabbled in antisemitic conspiracy theories). The Basketweavers have also proved attractive to those immersed in the UK’s neo-Nazi fringes. Shaun Caldwell, a Scottish activist who has been previously been involved with Patriotic Alternative, White Stag Athletic Club and Active Club Scotland, has appeared at an event alongside the Basketweavers. A London Basketweavers barbecue in August 2024 hosted senior members of the fascist Homeland Party, including its National Media Officer Alec Cave, and core activist, Callum Barker.
The Basketweavers are also connected to Evelyn Grant and John Sweeney, both the organisers of Nomos Events, an occasional conference that has partnered with the Mises Institute in Alabama. Basketweavers at a 2022 Nomos event in Birmingham were photographed alongside Tom Webster, a member of Patriotic Alternative who appeared in a BBC documentary and admitted to giving out wrong information at his civil service job to people “just because they’re not white”.
With over a thousand members across the UK, US, and beyond, the Basketweavers present themselves as a harmless social club, but behind closed doors, they push antisemitic conspiracies theories and a long-term plan to reshape Britain. HOPE not hate went undercover to expose the truth. Read the full report today.
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