Racism, transphobia and the mainstreaming of far-right politics in Britain

Blog post by Maddy Clark and Aleksandra Lewicki, University of Sussex, UK
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In September 2025, one of the largest far-right marches in the history of the UK took place in London at which the American tech billionaire Elon Musk addressed a crowd of over 100,000 protesters wrapped in Union Jack and St. George’s flags, openly inciting violent action. In the following week, the UK’s Labour Government rolled out the red carpet for US President Donald Trump’s state visit to facilitate a £150 billion investment of American tech firms. Both events are indicators of the mainstreaming, transnationalization, mimicking and courting of the far-right movement – trends that have a longer trajectory in the UK.

Mainstreaming has been defined as involving conservative, liberal and social democratic political forces, on the one hand, embracing and implementing far-right talking points, demands and political agendas. On the other hand, far-right actors successfully expand their protest repertoires and appeal to new target audiences within the population.

In our Identities article, we examine key facets of this mainstreaming and emboldening of the far-right. Specifically, we analyzed statements by individuals who have gained a public profile by advancing far-right agendas (even though some do not necessarily self-represent as far-right agitators themselves). This analysis drew on an archive of social media posts and 21 interviews with individuals self-identifying as men and 18 self-identifying as women (no one identified outside of this binary) which were generated within two separate research projects over the past five years.

The article highlights three key strategic areas of the mainstreaming and emboldening of the far-right movement. Firstly, our data shows that far-right agitators are not as isolated, ignored or side-lined as they often claim, but part of political networks that reach into centrist political parties, including the Conservative and the Labour Party. These personal networks across the political spectrum play an important role in advancing far-right agendas. Indeed, many of the far right’s prominent actors who self-describe as ‘left behind’ white working class were in relatively powerful and privileged political positions, well-connected to members of parliament and influential in Westminster.

The second strategy we noted is a gendered division of labour in relation to the topic areas covered within far-right agitation. Individuals self-identifying as men often engaged in mobilization against immigration, while those self-describing as women rallied around issues of ‘anti-gender’ and opposition to trans rights. This also indicates that the role of women in the far-right movement has mistakenly been reduced to ‘bystanders’, ‘mothers’ or ‘wives’; instead, they emerged as skilled political actors in their own right who creatively manipulate how they are perceived for their own purposes.

Yet, it’s not only women who increasingly play an important role in far-right mobilizations; we also noted targeted attempt to foreground the voices of racialized and minoritized groups who thereby become framed as ‘critical of their own community’ to justify its persecution and targeting. The topical division of labour and the platforming of women and minority ‘spokespeople’ thus are part of the strategy that aims at widening the appeal of far-right agendas beyond its ‘classic’ constituencies. Specifically, the expansion of ‘figureheads’ is a deliberate attempt to claim space within the democratic spectrum that contributes to legitimating racist, homophobic and anti-trans agitation.   

Thirdly, the far-right movement has successfully expanded the target groups it frames as ‘enemy’ or ‘threat’ populations. We noted parallels and overlaps between how racialized, gendered and sexualized ‘Others’ are constructed within far-right agitation. This too constitutes a key strategy to widen the appeal of far-right agendas and has been remarkably successful with influential individuals and groups engaged with a distinctive reading of feminism. Racist and transphobic tropes thereby fulfil distinctive, but also complementary functions: both operate via projected scenarios of biological contamination and criminal transgression. With some variation, those positioned as ‘Others’ – e.g. racialized groups and trans people – are imagined as contagious, invasive, transgressive and dangerous species. In the same wake, these mobilizations project images of the cisgendered White saviour, custodian and defender of resources. Hegemonic cisgendered Whiteness is thereby imagined and enacted as pure, vigilant, safeguarding, defensive political subjectivity – which in turn emboldens more belligerent forms of political action.

The trend we observe has implications for Critical Whiteness Studies. Previous research has shown how Whiteness is constructed via equations with innocence, purity and benevolence, narcistic wounded fragility or neurotic victimhood and grief over the loss of empire. While we note continuities with regards to narratives of fragility, melancholia or ‘left behind victimhood’ in our data, we also observed the emergence of a distinctively belligerent and combative notion of ‘vigilant Whiteness’ within the expanding milieus engaged in mainstreaming far-right politics.

The invocation and enactment of a combative vigilant idea of a White collective prepares the ground for more belligerent and aggressive national and global politics. Recent assertions of the alliance between US-American and British governments and the far-right movement do not bode well in this regard. Indeed, despite key differences, there are worrying overlaps between how both governments engage in the rolling back of educational and welfare institutions, the imposition of access restrictions for trans people or the militarization of border controls. 

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​Image credit: Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

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Read the Identities article:
Lewicki, A. & Clark, M. (2025). Vigilant Whiteness: racism, transphobia and the mainstreaming of far-right politics in Britain. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2025.2548136   OPEN ACCESS

Read further in Identities:

Whiteness, populism and the racialisation of the working class in the United Kingdom and the United States

On the proximity of the far right and the misuses of the ‘mainstreaming’ metaphor   OPEN ACCESS
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Post-homophobic imaginaries amongst the far-right in Germany and Switzerland   OPEN ACCESS