I was 12 years old when the far-right English Defence League (EDL) marched through my town of Luton. Teachers at my all-boys, majority Muslim state comprehensive told us to stay indoors. We were overwhelmingly working-class, the children of taxi drivers and factory workers for whom racist violence was a regular occurrence.
Many of us aligned with people organising the counter-demonstrations against the EDL and soon found other common ground. Alongside antifascism, the activists were vocal on foreign policy issues such as Iraq and Palestine, as well as the domestic issue of austerity.
When I visited my old school recently, I found very different political alliances. Teachers expressed concern about the growing influence of rightwing figures such as Andrew Tate. The influencer is part of a wider network, known loosely as the “manosphere”, which comprises anti-woke culture warriors, get-rich “crypto bros” and Donald Trump supporters. Here were young Pakistani and Bangladeshi boys taking part in a community that includes many who openly despise them. For example, Tate has previously met Tommy Robinson “untold times”, and in a 2022 interview he claimed that the EDL co-founder was “doing his very best to protect England from Islamisation”. To the surprise of many, later that year Tate converted to Islam.
It’s easy to understand the appeal of these influencers, who pose as self-help gurus, speaking directly to insecure young men of all races seeking to live better lives. The growing mental health crisis among young people and the longstanding stigma attached to any discussion of it in the Muslim community leads many vulnerable young men to seek solace in the words of influencers whose videos reference depression, anxiety and how to find motivation to move forward in life.
These young men quickly become enamoured of influencer lifestyles and seek to emulate them. Tate, in fact, grew up on the deprived Marsh Farm estate in Luton, and flaunts his money and flashy cars to impressionable young people. Crypto bros, made hyper-accessible through YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, actively encourage followers to invest in stocks and shares. A year-nine student approached me after I had given a talk at my former school and asked: “How do I become a millionaire without going to school?”
These young people are entering into an economy that is unequal, a society that is atomised and workplaces that are insecure. The idea that you can rise with your class rather than out of it has all but vanished. In Luton, nearly half of children are growing up in poverty. When ethnicity is factored in, figures show that in the UK, 67% of Bangladeshi children and 58% of Pakistani children are living in poverty. Like many areas of Britain, our town has been affected by deindustrialisation, cuts to public services and the resulting loss of social infrastructure. The decline in these spaces – youth clubs, libraries and community centres – has meant a decline in social interaction, too; the void has been filled by social media platforms.
During the Jeremy Corbyn years, many young people had a sense of hope that the state could improve their lives. I remember the long queues of young people outside the polling stations in Luton in 2017, and how many registered to vote at the stalls we used to run at the local sixth-form college. Many of us canvassed for the Labour party in Luton and in neighbouring Bedford. We were promised rent controls, the abolition of tuition fees, free travel, free wifi and an increase in the minimum wage.
Now, in the absence of such a project, many are increasingly turning to individual solutions peddled by online influencers. Why dismantle the system when you can become one of its beneficiaries? Why favour higher taxes that might one day come at your expense?
The pipeline for men of colour subscribing to rightwing influencers online to voting for rightwing parties at the ballot box was made clear during the US election. A record 46% of Hispanic voters opted for Trump – a 14-point increase from 2020. Trump also saw modest gains among Black men. Minority communities have suffered from the effects of globalisation, deindustrialisation and decline.
For far too long in the UK, progressives have taken for granted the votes of Black and Asian communities – but recent electoral events and reports show that this is ill-informed. Take Brexit: it is often depicted as the revolt of the white working class, but diverse towns and cities such as Luton, Bradford and Birmingham also voted to leave the European Union. A new report by UK in a Changing Europe shows British Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean and non-white Muslim and Christian voters are particularly likely to hold socially conservative views on issues such as crime and foreign aid in comparison with those from other ethnic or religious groups. Meanwhile, British Indian and Chinese voters are more likely to hold rightwing economic views. Both the former and current Conservative leaders, Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch, are representative of this wider shift. Many ethnic minority voters already hold rightwing views, and we may see this point of view grow in younger generations as the online culture they consume is dominated by the right.
On the Marsh Farm estate where Tate grew up, there is an alternative model of self-help being pioneered by local residents. Marsh Farm Outreach prides itself on collectivism and face-to-face social interaction. Its bottom-up community-organising approach transformed a derelict 17th-century farmhouse into a community hub. The building is now home to a DJing academy for local children excluded from school, Luton’s first Black radio station and a restaurant and bar. Here, on the estate, few young men believe there are any heroes in Westminster coming to save them, but they have found support in a local community.
Bringing young people into their physical communities, and out of their online ones, may be one way to counter the rise of the right. As these young people reach voting age, time is running out for the Labour party.
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Taj Ali is a journalist and historian. He is currently writing a book on the history of British South Asian political activism
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