Politics

Anonymous right-wing accounts are attacking Restore Britain

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Restore Britain is a breakaway party of Reform UK which exists because the latter wasn’t right-wing enough.

Reform has largely just ignored its rival, but this changed in late May when it turned out Restore could stop them from winning the Makerfield by-election. An interesting development since then is that the legions of anonymous Twitter/X accounts seem to have turned on Restore.

The question is whether these accounts are actually British, or if they’re foreign users trying to game Twitter’s algorithm? Because as you can see, some of these people apparently live in Ecuador:

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Foreign interference… in Restore Britain…?

In 2025, Elon Musk announced that Twitter would be revealing every user’s location data. People anticipated this day, because they suspected many far-right accounts were actually foreign individuals cosplaying as Western reactionaries to farm clicks. Surprise, surprise – this ended up being precisely what happened:

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Shockingly, the exposed accounts included the US Department of Homeland Security:

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Reporting on the issue at the time, the Independent wrote:

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MAGANationX, for example, includes a bio line that reads “Patriot Voice for We The People,” but was actually started in Eastern Europe, according to the new feature.

Another account, using an image of President Donald Trump in a tuxedo and using the name “MAGA Scope” with an American flag emoji, was found to have been started in Nigeria in 2024.

In terms of the UK, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported on a man who shared AI slop videos of Keir Starmer dressed as a Muslim. Surprisingly, this particular account holder turned out to be “a devout Muslim man living in Pakistan”. The Bureau added:

This man, who we are not naming for his own safety, runs successful accounts pushing Islamophobic AI slop to UK audiences. Videos shared by just one of his Facebook pages had been viewed millions of times and he told us in an interview he earned around $1,500 a month from that page alone.

While it sounds bizarre that Black and Brown people could be driving white supremacy in the UK, you have to remember:

  • These people don’t have to worry about racism in a foreign country.
  • Our uneven and individualistic global system guarantees there will always be people out there doing anything they can to get ahead.

We have plenty of scammers in the UK, too – the difference is our homegrown talent can pull in a lot more than $1,500 a month:

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It’s also far from the case that only foreign accounts are spreading misinformation. In America, the reformed influencer Ashley St. Clair revealed that her former right-wing bedfellows get paid to coordinate their messaging. St. Clair recently discussed this and a lot more about the right-wing grift-o-sphere in a conversation with Hasan Piker:

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Anon for Reform

One of the prominent accounts posting in favour of Reform UK is ‘Wolf’:

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If we look at Wolf’s account, it says they’re in the UK but with an exclamation point by the name:

The exclamation point indicates that the account is using (or has used) a VPN. A VPN allows you to set your location to someplace else, suggesting that Wolf is using one to hide their true location.

I should note that this method of verifying where someone is from isn’t foolproof. I actually have the exclamation point on my account, which is almost certainly because I use a VPN sometimes. Thankfully, however, we released a physical newspaper today, allowing me to demonstrate that I am in fact in the country:

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Be sure to pick a copy up near you!

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Back to today’s news, Wolf is far from the only account going all out for Reform. The following is apparently based in Ecuador, but confusingly also has the VPN symbol:

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If these accounts are fraudulent, the question is whether their activities are coordinated, or whether individual accounts are simple posting in a fashion which best brings in the cash? Because – let’s be clear – we’re not pointing this stuff out because we’d prefer Restore Britain to Reform UK. As much as these accounts pretend otherwise, they’re both the same party, and that party is the Tories.

Another thing to note is that while there’s a deluge of anonymous accounts blasting Restore right now, they’re not all leaning that way. The ‘Basil the Great’ account we shared at the top supports Restore and is also of questionable origin. Said account is additionally a prominent spreader of misinformation:

There are also many accounts like this one with obviously AI profile pictures:

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Strange times

We live in a bizarre period in which it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s real. The legions of anonymous accounts attacking Restore Britain could be shy Brits; they could be foreign users; they could be AI; they could be all manner of things. The issue is we simply don’t know, and many people don’t care to check.

It’s hard to say exactly how we solve this problem. Do we want to end anonymity online? Almost certainly not, but if these accounts are receiving money to push political messaging, it might not be ridiculous to make them display the actual country they’re posting from at least.

In the long term, the only way to prevent people from cheating the system is to create a system which doesn’t need to be cheated. If we all lived roughly equal lives, people wouldn’t be scrabbling to get ahead.

In the meantime, be careful who you trust.

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Featured image via Leon Neal (Getty Images) / Junko Kimura (Getty Images)

By Willem Moore

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