Following the tragic stabbing of three young girls in Southport in July 2024, a wave of outrage swept across UK streets and social media. Among those responding most vocally were far-right agitators, who immediately blamed Muslims and migrants, groups they deemed unquestionably responsible for such violence against white children.
As the community of Southport came together in comfort and solidarity, laying flowers at the site, hundreds of rioters, from radical alt-right and neo-fascist groups such as the English Defence League or British Movement, attacked the local mosque with rocks, bricks and bottles. For them, the attack was not a moment of mourning but of triumphant validation. As they took to the streets, giddy and vindicated, this was, in their eyes, confirmation of a long-held belief: that Britain’s supposed ‘migrant invasion’ or ‘great replacement’ was a direct threat to its people, culture, and values. ‘We told you so!’ they jeered as they rallied around the belief that Muslims and migrants must be expelled to preserve Western values and civility – values they claimed were becoming increasingly endangered, for which this stabbing was perfect evidence. However, the perpetrator was neither Muslim nor a migrant.
Still, the attack served as an instant trigger for ultra-nationalist, hyper-masculine, alt-right groups because it fed directly into the core of their ideology, preserving the supposed purity of the West. For them, this purity manifests on multiple layers, firstly the racial purity of Britain (coded as white) and secondly, the gendered and moralised purity of white women and girls.
White supremacy has long relied on a narrative of racialised and gendered threat, wherein only foreign men pose a danger to native white women and children. This imagined threat demands a particular kind of masculine response: aggression, protectionism, and violence. This racist violence against non-white, non-Christian demographics finds sanction and validation in the protectionist narrative of moral crusade. Such is the foundation upon which neo-fascist and far-right ideology are built.
Essentialised Racism
Despite statistics which indicate no causal relationship between violence against women in the UK and migrant populations as perpetrators, or any non-white ethnicity for that matter, far-right groups still vehemently weaponise the rhetoric of protecting women to disseminate their white supremacist beliefs. In fact, the Ministry of Justice and Office of National Statistics found that 85 per cent of defendants prosecuted for child sexual abuse in England and Wales in 2022 were white.
Femicide Census 2020 found that 82 per cent of all femicides in the UK were by men born in the UK. A 2020 Home Office report on group-based child sexual exploitation states that ‘studies show that the majority of offenders are White’. But presenting these hard facts to members of these groups goes through one ear and out the other.
This is explained through the racist logic of essentialism, which underpins these ideologies. Racialisation is propped up by essentialised identities and rigid categorisations of perpetrator and victim. Therefore, Muslim men are cast as inherently misogynistic, Black men as innately violent. Any identity, in opposition to the West, is barbaric and uncivilised. The rhetoric of defending Western values from the perceived encroachment of these groups is framed as a mission to safeguard the liberal ideals the West so often flaunts – women’s rights, democracy, and freedom. Yet, it is these same far-right groups that propagate some of the most virulent misogyny within British society today. Still, their worldview refuses to acknowledge the real systemic causes for violence against women anywhere in the world, and refuses to acknowledge that threats to white women could come from anyone other than men of colour – an idea so incompatible with their essentialist logic.
Take, for example, the discourse around the new and increasingly popular Netflix show Adolescence. The show has received widespread acclaim for its exploration of how young men are increasingly drawn into the radical right-wing pipeline, often through social media and dangerous figures like the infamous Andrew Tate. Crucially, the show makes the connection between this ideological pipeline and the resultant violence against women and girls. In response, alt right supporters have been quick to push back against the show, whilst also repositioning and co-opting its message.
In line with their priorities, which place white supremacy above any genuine commitment to female liberation or protection, the alt-right has attacked the show for being inaccurate, racist, and, as one Twitter user put it, “a load of woke virtue signaling.” Shifting the focus away from the real and growing threat of gender-based violence and the radicalisation of young men, such users have criticised the show claiming it is unrealistic, and even racist, to ever portray a perpetrator as white and not a man of colour, a migrant, or a Muslim. Despite statistical evidence proving the contrary, another Twitter user writes, “Young white men are not the people young women in this country need to be worrying about.” This reveals a complete willful detachment from the realities faced by women and girls in the UK, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds who are routinely excluded from the conversation, all in service of advancing a narrative of racial superiority.
Protecting the ‘White Womb’
When alt-right rhetoric turns its attention to women, it is exclusively toward cisgender white women. Their concern is not with rights or freedoms, but with controlling women’s bodies and reproductive roles, tools through which they imagine securing the future of the white race. The ideal woman, in this vision, is not liberated but domesticated, bound to rigid gender roles, domestic labour, and ‘traditional wifery.’
This worldview is not new; it echoes most clearly in the ideology of Nazi Germany, where the role of women was summed up in the slogan “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (children, kitchen, church). Today’s alt-right groups invoke the language of protection to mask a much darker intent: to craft a society that is white, monocultural, and patriarchal. In this imagined order, women are expected to serve as the vessels for racial continuity, confined within narrowly defined roles in service of a pure supremacist ideal. Their supposed defence of women is not about empowerment or safety, but about preserving a demographic vision rooted in exclusion, hierarchy, and control.
Right-wing Populism and alter-progressivism
But for these groups, revealing the truth that lies at the very core of their horrifying and depraved ideology is not the smartest move, especially when the goal is to draw as many as they can into the pipeline. This is where right-wing populism steps in. Parties like Reform UK and segments of the Conservative Party have successfully employed populist rhetoric to obscure the racist foundations of their politics. Rather than openly championing white supremacy, they reframe their agenda as a defence of social liberalism. By calling for the expulsion of migrants, promoting slogans like “stop the boats,” and spreading increasingly Islamophobic and racist narratives, they claim to be protecting democracy and modern values from the so-called barbarism of the global South, often reduced to sweeping caricatures of backwardness and incivility.
This rhetorical strategy has become central to the messaging of contemporary right-wing populist movements. Fuelled by conspiracy theories and engineered disinformation, groups such as Reform UK and Britain First now present their mission not just as one of exclusion, but of protection, specifically, the protection of white femininity from the perceived threats posed by migration and multiculturalism.
This insidious trend also overlaps with a more recent phenomenon. While the far right has traditionally been hostile toward LGBTQ+ communities, some factions have begun to reframe their stance, presenting themselves as protectors of certain lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, particularly when doing so reinforces anti-Muslim sentiment or supports a culturally “Western” identity. This selective embrace of seemingly progressive values, especially when framed as a defence of vulnerable minorities from external threats, is what Russell David Forster et al. define as alter-progressivism.
Under this framework, the appearance of inclusivity becomes a strategic tool, used to legitimise exclusion and reinforce existing racial and gender hierarchies under the pretence of protection. The logic of this populist narrative assumes a foundation of progressivism; its adherents claim not only to accept marginalised groups, but to defend them against imagined dangers. In doing so, they are not positioning themselves as anti-progressive, openly rejecting equality, but rather alter-progressive, with a deluded belief that they are the true protectors of minorities. It is progressivism in form, but exclusion in substance.
For example, Suella Braverman, the former Home Secretary, has frequently made provocative and inaccurate statements about “grooming gangs,” claiming that perpetrators are “almost all British-Pakistani” and victims are “overwhelmingly white girls from disadvantaged or troubled backgrounds.” These assertions, made in an apparent bid to court the general population through obfuscation, not only misrepresent the reality of child sexual abuse and exploitation but also erases the lived experiences of Black and minoritised victims.
Braverman’s claims directly contradict the findings of her own department, which reveal that offenders involved in group-based child sexual exploitation are predominantly white. This contradiction is particularly glaring given that, in 2023 when Braverman was most vocally pushing this racist narrative, thirteen white men stood in court, charged with heinous child sexual abuse and exploitation. Yet, neither the Home Secretary nor the media labelled them a “grooming gang.”
An Interconnected struggle
As Deniz Uğur, Deputy Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, powerfully states, “The media has a critical role to play in this narrative: instead of amplifying and normalising the racist tropes of the far right, journalists must challenge this and expose the root causes of issues like violence against women and girls.” This challenge, however, must extend beyond the media to all of us.
When far-right groups seize moments of tragedy to push narratives rooted in racial hatred and patriarchal control, they are not protecting women – they are exploiting them. Their selective outrage, which centres exclusively on white, cisgender women and girls, is not a commitment to justice but a strategy of erasure of black, brown, migrant, and minoritised victims whose experiences fall outside their essentialist worldview. These ideologies thrive on fear, fear weaponised to divide, to scapegoat, and to preserve systems of power that benefit the few while harming the many. Their appeals to ‘protection’ are disingenuous when they ignore the overwhelming evidence that violence against women is a wider structural issue, embedded in patriarchy, not ethnicity.
Until we dismantle the racist and misogynist foundations on which these narratives stand, we will continue to see cycles of violence, both the violence committed against women, and the violence enacted in their name. The fight for women’s safety cannot be separated from the fight against white supremacy and right wing ideology. It must be rooted in truth, in solidarity, and in a refusal to let our tragedies and our narratives be twisted into tools of hate.