By Keighley Perkins and Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
Across the summers of 2024 and 2025, demonstrations and riots linked to the far-right reignited tensions over immigration and cultural belonging in the UK. Heated debates on our screens spilled onto the streets, exposing how radical right narratives are no longer confined to the fringe but are seeping into everyday politics and shaping public discourse.
These developments raise urgent questions. How do radical right groups position themselves as politically viable alternatives while claiming outsider status? What kinds of identities and behaviours do they adopt to appear legitimate to their supporters and sympathisers?
Identity and belonging in extremist politics
Identity lies at the heart of extremist mobilisation. Individuals drawn to extremist movements often experience a weak sense of self and belonging. Social media provides a platform where radical right groups can build a brand, recruit followers and perform belonging in real time, thus, filling this gap.
Through posts, images and symbols, radical right organisations showcase the values and behaviours they want supporters to emulate. For followers, sharing these materials signals in-group status and transforms belief into performance.
Our research examined how three radical right groups – the English Defence League (EDL), Generation Identity UK & Ireland (GI UKRI) and Siege Culture – construct political identities online. We explored how each presents itself as politically capable yet outside the mainstream.
Data and approach
We analysed tweets and images produced by the three groups across a 10-month period between 2017 and 2019 – a crucial time in UK politics as the radical right was particularly active and had become part of the counter-terrorism agenda for the first time.
- English Defence League (EDL): 3,229 tweets, 50,670 words, 681 images.
- Generation Identity UK & Ireland (GI UKRI): 1,332 tweets, 25,716 words, 87 images.
- Siege Culture: 407 tweets, 4,812 words, 6 images.
The dataset was collected and shared, for research purposes, by UK law enforcement.
Using Du Bois’ stance triangle, we identified how each group positioned themselves and their audience in relation to key topics. This approach was combined with van Leeuwen’s legitimation theory to examine how radical right actors across the three groups sought to normalise and justify their ideologies.
Political roles of the radical right
Our analysis revealed four recurring political roles: the canvasser, the champion, the influencer, and the expert. Each mirrors familiar political behaviours but pursues extremist goals. Here, we focus on the first three, which were the most salient roles for, respectively, the EDL, GI UKRI and Siege Culture.
The canvasser
The EDL counters its reputation as “drunken and thuggish” by portraying members as professional and organised. Photographs of demonstrations borrow from the semiotics of mainstream politics – rows of placards and orderly marches – to suggest legitimacy.
Tweets often feature supporters in branded clothing or gathered at events, portraying a disciplined community and reinforcing a sense of belonging. These visuals offer potential supporters a glimpse of the kind of community they could join.
The group also lowers barrier to involvement. Posts link to petitions or donation pages are framed around relatable figures – like a “school dinner lady” suspended for attending an “anti-terrorism rally”. The language evokes working-class solidarity and moral outrage, funnelling emotion into low-risk activism such as signing or sharing a petition.
Example:
School dinner lady suspended for attending anti-terrorism rally [URL] Sign petition here: [URL]
In this way, the canvasser role functions as a kind of digital door-knocking for the EDL. The organisation invites participation, lowers the entry threshold, and normalises belonging to a radical movement.
The champion
Posts shared by GI UKRI within this role represent the organisation as the heroic defender of national identity. Its posts frequently endorse international allies and policies – such as European burqa bans – to imply that similar action in the UK would be common sense rather than extremism.
The organisation also champions historical figures such as Enoch Powell, invoking his “Rivers of Blood” speech as a point of ideological lineage. By positioning Powell as a silenced truth-teller, GI UKRI reframes its own activism as a continuation of a misunderstood political legacy.
Example:
#GenerationIdentity won’t let the nation forget the importance of this speech. #RiversOfBlood #EnochWasRight #Bristol [URL]
Through this strategy, the group markets nationalism as a positive lifestyle choice. It becomes the brand ambassador of exclusion, selling nostalgia and belonging while concealing division beneath patriotic imagery.
The influencer
Siege Culture performs politics through irony and provocation. Using memes, GIFs and internet in-jokes, the group makes extremism appear humorous and subversive.
Their use of pop-cultural material – such as a GIF from Commando repurposed to convey exaggerated laughter – relies on pop-polyvocality, where cultural references are reworked into new meanings by online communities. These memes act as coded language: insiders understand, outsiders do not.
The movement venerates American neo-Nazi James Mason, using his name as a hashtag to brand him an ideological authority. Even hostile media coverage is reframed as validation—proof that “the establishment” fears their ideas. This reflexive mockery aligns with what is described as a social-Darwinistic logic: hostility from outsiders is recast as evidence of superiority.
Example:
We thank everyone at the Huffington post for this brilliant article. Hope you guys keep reading! [URL]
The influencer role, therefore, sees the radical right group as “meme lords” of extremism, cloaking hate in humour.
Performing politics from the margins
Across these groups, the pattern is clear: radical right actors perform politics using roles borrowed from democratic life. By representing themselves as canvassers, champions or influencers, they infuse extremist narratives with a veneer of normality and civic legitimacy.
Their outsider status becomes a strategic asset. Claiming to speak “for the people” against corrupt elites, they sidestep the accountability demanded of mainstream politicians while still shaping public debate. Through these performances, extremist actors can influence discourse, shift boundaries of acceptability, and mainstream exclusionary ideas – all while remaining beyond institutional scrutiny.
Why this matters
Recognising these political performances is vital to understanding how extremist ideas migrate into the mainstream. The radical right does not merely shout from the sidelines; it rehearses for political influence, testing messages and building audiences online.
Countering these strategies requires more than content removal. It demands awareness of how legitimacy is constructed through language and imagery. The radical right’s ability to blend familiar political forms with extremist content underscores a central paradox: the tools of democracy can also be used to erode it.
Dr Keighley Perkins is a Research Associate at Cardiff University and a researcher at Swansea University. Her work sits within the field of applied linguistics, focusing on digital discourse, online harms, and political communication. Keighley’s research has explored online identity construction in the radical right, online child exploitation and abuse (as part of the DRAGON team), impartiality in political reporting, and peer-to-peer online sexual harassment among young people.
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus is Professor of Linguistics at Swansea University, where she also directs DRAGON – a digital innovation programme hosting a portfolio of applied research projects that develop technology to keep children safer online.
This blog post is part of a series featuring contributions from presenters at the VOX-Pol Next Generation Network Conference 2025, held at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
Photo credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images