Middle-class white schoolchildren in Britain aged as young as nine are being referred to a far-right deradicalisation charity after becoming ‘brainwashed’ by memes.
Exit Hate UK chief executive Nigel Bromage said the average age of referrals to his London-based organisation was 15 but they even had one as old as 68.
Mr Bromage, who spent 20 years in the far-right and co-founded the proscribed neo-Nazi group Combat 18, said it was ‘often self-referrals or parents referring their children’ and ‘middle-class white children who feel lost’.
Those whose children were referred say they are often radicalised via memes – viral images that capture and distil ideals into an easily shareable format.
The group had just 11 annual referrals when he founded it in 2016 – but this has since increased to consistently between 100 and 150 per year, he told The Times.
Mr Bromage quit the far-right after growing increasingly uncomfortable with the violent rhetoric being spread by his peers. His activities also cost him his marriage.
He claimed excessive screen time was often linked to radicalisation, with Exit Hate seeing a 300 per cent rise in referrals during the pandemic.
He said: ‘Our youngest ever referral has been nine years old but usually they are around 15, with the oldest we have ever had being 68 years old.
‘It’s often self-referrals or parents referring their children, and its often middle-class white children who feel lost. The majority are young and well-educated.
‘They are worried that when they start talking about sex and immigration they will be called sexist or racist, and these far-right groups offer them a safe space to have those conversations.
‘They are mainly far right, neo-Nazi and incel extremists that get referred to us and can spend as long as two years going through our deradicalisation programmes.’
Sarah Hardy, a mother who works with Exit Hate on training programmes, said her son John was first radicalised aged 14 with a meme shown by a friend on a phone.
The meme said: ‘British soldiers are on the streets because immigrants are taking all the houses. They’re just left to die.’
And Ms Hardy told The Times: ‘As a mother you go through so many emotions: confusion, fear, grief. It’s like losing your child. Physically, he was still there, but the John I knew and loved was gone.’
Social media and messaging platforms have been instrumental in allowing hate to flourish online – and the weapon of choice among its architects is the meme, a cover-all term for viral images that are copied and spread online.
Taking after the anthropological term for cultural ideas that are passed down from generation to generation, internet memes can capture large, complex ideas in a single image – and are easily remixed and shared on among online communities.
But this can extend to far-right ideas, such as white nationalism, toxic ideals of masculinity and women’s role in society and racist stereotypes – all made palatable, digestible and easily spread in a matter of seconds.
But many have dark undertones – or have been co-opted and toxified by far-right movements. Pepe the Frog, a cartoon amphibian drawn by artist Matt Furie, was absorbed into hate movements around a decade ago, to Furie’s dismay.
And ‘wojak’ memes – innocuous-looking Microsoft Paint drawings of cartoon faces – are often used to subtly promote these far-right ideals.
Other memes take the form of images with claims written on them in bold text, typically without a source, or use AI to generate racist images – such as a ‘British’ lion roaring at monkeys, a coded racist metaphor for people of colour.
But they carry currency in internet communities that will often take their claims at face value without question.
Experts say their innocuous appearance may be helping to shift the ‘Overton window’ – the frame within which certain political ideals are deemed acceptable – so far-right views are seen as acceptable.
This week, the UK’s head of counterterrorism Matt Jukes compared the harm caused by social media use to ‘cancer’ – warning that the radicalisation of young people was forming a greater part of MI5 and counterterror police work.
He has suggested that the UK follow in imposing a social media ban among under-16s – despite critics claiming it would be unenforceable.
He told the Times: ‘If I give you a parallel with the harm caused by smoking, by 1950, it was clear that smoking was causing lung cancer and killing people.
‘But it took decades for governments to decide to regulate, not even the supply of tobacco more closely, but even just the advertising of tobacco to young people in places where young people could see it.
‘So that kind of delay of decades is what we can’t sustain against this challenge.’
And last year, MI5 boss Ken McCallum revealed the agency had reported a three-fold rise in children being investigated for terrorism, with memes typically playing a role in the youngsters’ radicalisation.
Speaking at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in west London in October, he said: ‘Sadly, 13 per cent of all those being investigated by MI5 for involvement in UK terrorism are under 18.
‘That’s a threefold increase in the last three years. Extreme right-wing terrorism in particular skews heavily towards young people, driven by propaganda that shows a canny understanding of online culture.’