Sir Afilonius Rex, Martyn Jones and Lila de Alba

Kensington, Sunday 8th March 2026

The internet was supposed to be a glorious democratising force, connecting people, spreading ideas, and letting truth shine through. Instead, it has become a glittering weapon in the hands of the extreme right, twisting platforms into tools that erode rational thought, fair elections, and basic decency. This is no accident. It is a deliberate, sophisticated playbook designed to undermine democracy while hiding behind memes, outrage, and “free speech” rhetoric.

Here are ten key ways the far right manipulates social media to push anti-democratic behaviour, each one more insidious than the last.

Algorithmic Amplification of Outrage

Platforms reward emotional intensity. The more rage, fear or disgust a post generates, the more it is boosted. Extreme-right content, often inflammatory, conspiratorial or scapegoating, thrives because it drives engagement. Calm, evidence-based argument rarely goes viral. The result: algorithms quietly radicalise users by feeding them ever more extreme material until moderation looks like censorship and democracy looks like weakness.

Spreading Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories

Falsehoods travel six times faster than facts. Fabricated stories about “stolen elections”, “deep state” plots, immigrant crime waves or elite paedophile rings are engineered to destroy trust in institutions. Once people stop believing in shared reality, courts, journalists, scientists, election officials, democracy becomes impossible. The extreme right doesn’t need everyone to agree with them; they just need enough people to believe nothing at all.

Hashjacking and Topic Hijacking

They latch onto trending hashtags, #ClimateChange, #COVID, #CostOfLiving, and inject extremist framing. A conversation about puppies can suddenly become “puppies are part of the great replacement”. Neutral topics are colonised, turning innocent feeds into propaganda pipelines. The technique is cheap, fast and almost impossible to police at scale.

Building Echo Chambers and Radicalisation Networks

Mutual follows, group chats, recommendation loops and private channels create closed ecosystems where one dodgy meme leads to another, then to full-blown ideology. Newcomers arrive curious or angry and leave convinced the system is irredeemably corrupt. The journey from “something feels off” to “we need to burn it down” can take weeks, not years.

Using Bots and Fake Accounts for Astroturfing

Automated accounts simulate mass support. A fringe view suddenly appears to have thousands of backers. Hashtags trend, comments sections fill, and ordinary users assume “everyone thinks this”. The illusion of consensus is one of the most powerful tools for normalising anti-democratic ideas.

Exploiting Live Audio and Real-Time Spaces

Voice chats allow charismatic figures to build intimacy and group identity in real time. Conspiracy theories are shared, grievances aired, calls to action whispered. The format feels personal and unfiltered, perfect for mobilising people who would never attend a physical rally but will gladly cheer from their sofa.

Mobilising for Real-World Anti-Democratic Actions

Social media doesn’t just radicalise; it organises. From storming Capitol buildings to far-right street demonstrations, platforms coordinate logistics, share targets and provide real-time updates. What begins as online venting ends with physical attempts to intimidate voters, disrupt counts or overthrow results.

Undermining Trust in Media and Institutions

Everything is branded “fake news”, “mainstream media lies, “and “globalist propaganda”. Once trust collapses, the extreme right can present itself as the only honest voice left. When no source is credible, power flows to whoever shouts loudest and lies most convincingly.

Targeting Youth with Entertaining, Subtle Content

On short-form platforms, irony-soaked memes, edgy humour and “just asking questions” videos lower defences. Extremist ideas are packaged as rebellion, humour or cool contrarianism. Young people absorb ideology without realising they are being groomed, because it never feels like a lecture; it feels like entertainment.

Creating Parallel Media Ecosystems

When mainstream platforms apply even mild moderation, the far right migrates to friendlier sites or builds its own. These alternative networks operate with almost no oversight, allowing unchecked amplification of violence, Holocaust denial, election denial and calls for authoritarian rule. The ecosystem becomes self-reinforcing: doubt one platform, and you’re funnelled into the next.

These tactics are not random. They exploit the very architecture of social media, engagement metrics, virality loops, and minimal content moderation for explicitly anti-democratic ends. The goal is rarely to win elections outright (though that helps); it is to make liberal democracy appear unworkable, corrupt and illegitimate.

The extreme right understands something crucial: you don’t need a majority to destroy a system. You just need enough chaos, distrust and disillusionment to paralyse it.

So the next time your feed fills with rage-bait, conspiracy threads or “just asking questions” posts that somehow always land on the same authoritarian conclusions, remember this isn’t an accident. It is engineering.

And democracy, once lost, is very hard to reinstall.

Many thanks for reading.