This summer, an emboldened far right is repackaging racist outrages as ‘local issues’—and the mainstream media is playing along
~ Blade Runner ~
Hundreds turned out to counter a fash protest in Epping Forest on Sunday 27 July, mobilised by Stand Up To Racism and local trade unions and joined by grassroots antifascists. Police, also in the hundreds, kept the two sides apart—Essex Police had issued a dispersal order covering the town centre and station area, along with a Section 60AA rule empowering officers to remove face coverings. There was a no-show from Tommy Robinson, who has been instrumental in stoking this new wave of far-right activity through social media.
The fash have stepped up their efforts, announcing another mobilisation for Saturday 2 August in London’s Old Street area, outside the Thistle hotel at Barbican, which is said to house refugees. The date marks the anniversary of last summer’s far right attacks. Robinson and DFLA leader Phil Hickin have called on their online base to turn out. Both mainstream and grassroots groups have issued calls for a strong counter-demo.
In Epping this July, the far right has been emboldened. Once again, a sexual harassment allegation involving an undocumented asylum seeker has been used as a trigger. Reportedly organised through local Facebook groups linked to Homeland Party members, far-right gatherings have repeatedly taken place outside an alleged migrant hospitality centre, sometimes turning violent with assaults on private security.
The mainstream media has largely legitimised these protests as expressions of “local concern”. Similar scenes are spreading—to Canary Wharf, Norfolk, Norwich, Manchester, and across London. Councils and police officials have joined calls to shut down asylum hotels following what they term “multiple serious incidents.”
A year on from the 2024 summer riots, something is taking root. Far-right groups have been organising continuously over the winter and into the summer. The most high-profile event was the June 2025 “Footy Lads Against Grooming Gangs” protest in London, again supported by Robinson and similar figures. Framed as a campaign to protect children, the rally functioned as a vehicle for Islamophobic agitation and nationalist spectacle. Counter-protests were organised by Stand Up To Racism and trade unions, with a small but determined antifascist bloc promptly kettled by police.
Unlike previous far-right eruptions in Britain—see for example Bradford in 2001 and Dover in 2016, today’s racist outrage is more rapidly mobilised, digitally coordinated, and openly backed by political forces whipping up nationalist tension. The far right increasingly co-opts the language and aesthetics of protest, but in service of white supremacy. Occasional clashes with police are staged disciplinary theatre—reinforcing state power rather than challenging it.
This summer, fascists appear more strategic, presenting themselves as “concerned locals” raising “public safety” fears, repackaging hate in PR-friendly form. The language may evolve, but the white nationalist defence of the status quo remains central.
Western societies have consistently failed to integrate diverse ethnicities and cultures. Marginalised minorities are pushed into controlled, surveilled spaces, while dominant white populations live in uneasy proximity. The result is a precarious equilibrium of growing suspicion and xenophobia.
Mainstream accounts suggest the far-right surge is a backlash to left failures—neoliberal betrayal, cultural elitism, or identity politics gone too far. But this narrative obscures the deeper truth: social-democratic parties have long functioned as pressure valves, absorbing and neutralising radical revolt. Their current irrelevance is the consequence of this legacy.
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