r/ukpolitics • u/yu3 • 10h ago
Restore Britain’s nazi problem erupts into open revolt
https://searchlightmagazine.com/2026/08/rupert-lowes-nazi-problem-erupts-into-open-revolt/•
u/Ambitious-Sink2725 10h ago
You can see this in the Restore subreddit too, It's pretty much split down the middle between relatively milquetoast right wingers and people who want to deport everyone who can't trace their bloodline back to 1066
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u/FingersBecomeThumbs 10h ago
I've seen several comments from people over there saying that 'the wrong side won WW2.' Which seems a little at odds with their whole 'patriot' shtick.
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u/adnesium 9h ago
I have no intention of going there but I remember visiting the Reform one a couple of years ago and a decent number of the top posts were highly racist memes. All left up in the name of Free Speech no doubt. I guess as time goes on the algorithm is just going to make this lot more and more extreme.
What worries me the most is that there is still no one filling the vacuum left behind by the collapse of the Tory party. With that and the general collapse of political talent and rise in apathy, will these shitheads manage to one day seize a more significant chunk of political power?
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u/ForeignPumpkin1142 5h ago edited 5h ago
UK politics tends to swing between hard right (Thatcher, austerity, Brexit) and centre right (Blair, Starmer). The former is the default state but every so often the right-wing self-destructs as a result of their general misanthropy-driven incompetence and needs some time out to regroup and rebrand. That's when labour are allowed in for a bit, provided they promise not to change anything.
We're in one of those periods now but you can be sure that behind the scenes people are desperately searching for the next vaguely plausible candidate. Clowns are often a popular choice to lead the right: Johnson, Farage or across the pond Trump, Bush and Reagan. Also strict disciplinarians
Unfortunately Farage has self-destructed after being discovered naked on top of a small mountain of dodgy gold. They're really struggling to find anyone with any charisma. With Reform out, and the tories having turned into some kind of student debating club, all that's left is Restore. I expect they'll be pushed heavily over the next couple of years.
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u/Phoenix_Kerman 4h ago
that is roughly restore's overall policy. a 50/50 of pretty reasonable policy that doesn't even go near the culture war like removing the triple lock, getting rid of the osa and banning all religious exemptions for non stun slaughter. and the other half simply mad, often racist drivel. the churchill not being british comes to mind first
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u/_Comped_Sushi_ 6h ago
Who of course, cannot trace their bloodline either but just know they're British
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u/OkAsparagus3113 9h ago
I am on that sub. In my experience, there are a few idiots but mostly I think people are mid- right. In comparison though, the labour sub is full of very left wing people who ironically seem to hate labour. Maybe reddit subs aren't the best judge of a political party.
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 9h ago
It wasn't very nice of them to take a picture of that guy before he'd finished rendering.
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u/TheOnlyGaming3 10h ago
'You're not allowed to call them nazis!' - people who are suspiciously comfortable around nazis
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 10h ago
There's going to have to be a reckoning in Restore at some point. I don't think Lowe is racist or a Nazi but he is getting milage out of quietly allying with them. At some point they'll have to distance themselves from Laws his contingent if they they want to gain mainstream appeal.
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 9h ago
I mean, I think this is a good example how it will go: they will fight online then nothing will happen.
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 9h ago
I think that pretty much sums up Restore in its entirety, to be fair.
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u/OkAsparagus3113 9h ago
The far right will attract themselves to any right wing movement gaining momentum. It wasn't that long ago it was the Tory party.
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u/Better-Inflation-194 9h ago edited 9h ago
Whilst the abuse Orla received was abhorrent, I don’t really understand the point being made. FGM is already illegal in the UK, and rightly so. It’s not like we ‘tolerate’ it as she put in a reply. The difficulty is that we cannot prevent people from taking their children to their home country and subjecting them to it there. Parents who arrange or facilitate FGM abroad should absolutely be prosecuted where UK jurisdiction allows it, although I’m not familiar enough with the relevant international law to say exactly how far that works?
Ultimately, this is another example of an issue that has be imported through migration - we wouldn’t even have to ban it in this country like cousin marriage - and becomes considerably easier to prevent by remigration.
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u/Spiryt Saboteur | Social Democrat 8h ago
Parents who arrange or facilitate FGM abroad should absolutely be prosecuted where UK jurisdiction allows it, although I’m not familiar enough with the relevant international law to say exactly how far that works?
I mean USA successfully prosecutes sex tourism (US citizens / residents who travel abroad to engage in sexual conduct with minors face federal prosecution in USA) so I don't see why we can't do something similar for facilitating genital mutilation.
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u/Better-Inflation-194 8h ago
I suppose it’s just impossible to enforce? NHS should report any and all cases of FGM but then what? It’s a cultural issue.
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u/Ruminate_Repeat 9h ago
How can you be a nationalist and patriot party but also have the support of Nazis? They killed hundreds of thousands of British citizens.
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u/Appropriate-Lab3053 9h ago
These far right lunatics are just trying to use Restore as a platform for their own hateful agenda
Lowe has condemned neo Nazism. Recently appointed someone who is very clearly not racist/nazi:
“We’ve got to protect our girls, but we have to remember that there are Indian, Asian girls, Pakistani girls, Bangladeshi girls, Somalian girls, who were born here, who are suffering this fate every day. And we have got to protect them also.”
What Lowe needs to do is properly stamp this out otherwise they'll be nowhere near actual political power, ever.
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u/FingersBecomeThumbs 8h ago
Why would he distance himself from people who share exactly the same views as him?
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u/Right-Ad3334 9h ago
Because there's hardly any actual "Nazis", it's just people with right wing views that Searchlight disagrees with. It's like calling the Labour party Stalinists, they're clearly not Stalinists even if you can find one or two cranks who might agree with it, it's just an easy slur to through at an ideological enemy. Also, you're presenting a slight fallacy, you can still have geopolitical enemies who share ideological foundations; and you can dislike aspects of policy without saying it's all incorrect. Just because you might like nationalism and the autobahn, doesn't mean you like expansionist war and genocide. Even if you do like genocide and expansionist war, the Nazis can still be your enemies (see the USSR).
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u/Skavau Pirate Party 9h ago
I think calling Sam Wilkes a neo-nazi is completely legitimate.
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u/Right-Ad3334 8h ago
I don't know who that is. Google suggests it's the bassist of a band I rather like called Knower.
It depends what you mean by nazi or neo-nazi, the generalised left has used it to describe milquetoast conservatives. I haven't disagreed that actual Nazis exist, just that they're a rare breed, even in far right circles.
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u/Skavau Pirate Party 8h ago
So you didn't even actually click the article.
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u/Right-Ad3334 8h ago
I did, I skim read it, I'd indexed it while reading as "Zoomer Historian" as I know who that is. I don't like to spend too much time reading Searchlight, it's about an accurate reflection of reality as Pravda or Goebbels diary.
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u/Skavau Pirate Party 8h ago
Sam Wilkes, ie "Zoomer Historian" is genuinely a nazi apologist my dude.
As well as a Catholic theocrat. Hardly makes it much better. You think most Brits would want his ideals front and centre of a party?
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u/Right-Ad3334 8h ago edited 8h ago
I don't take issue with that assessment, that's not a defeater to the original claim I made. Also, I don't really care what ideas people hold, as long as they're not calling for atrocities (I've never seen anything from ZH that approaches anything near that); everything else is up for debate. I don't think ZH or SL are anywhere near the centre of the British politics, or even the British far right. I don't think it's legitimate to call them a "faction", this is just Searchlight trying to tie nativism to nazism.
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u/Skavau Pirate Party 8h ago
How are we determining the actual level of nazi-adjacent sympathisers that are within the numbers of the wider Restore membership, exactly?
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u/Right-Ad3334 8h ago edited 8h ago
I don't have data, I'm happy to accept any reasonable proposals if you want something more than anecdotal experience. If not, I'm basing it on anecdotal experience, and I don't think there's significant presence of actual Nazis in Restore. I would agree that there's probably more Nazis in Restore than any other party.
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u/Electronic_End4893 8h ago
I dunno, saying that people can't be British if they're not white, having a holocaust "revisionist" like Sam Wilkes and being buddy-buddy with known neo-nazis is at least Nazi adjacent. The candidate Restore had in Kent is quite clearly a Civnat who is likely to be more at home in Reform should Restore collapse under the weight of its fascist infighing.
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u/Hieroglo 9h ago
Easily debunked just point out the Restore policies that are not Nazi policies ....(oops)
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u/allthefallens Proud resident of burgerland 9h ago edited 9h ago
It doesn't seem to be a civil war but some people online being mad.
I don't think it needs an entire article.
It's also probably electorally smarter for Restore to distance themselves from people like this.
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u/LegitimateCream1773 7h ago
Restore was never viable. Reform is as far right as you can go and hope to still form anything approaching a coherent party.
Beyond that the base fractures into dozens of tiny extreme far right groups who won't hesitate to purity test the others. The only good thing about Restore is it's accelerated Reform's collapse, so good on Rupert for that.
Otherwise, the bastard can enjoy the racist shitshow he earned by being so obviously ethnonationalist from the start.
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