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6 hours ago
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If I asked you to name a popular politics podcast, what would you think of? Maybe The Rest Is Politics for centrist dads. Novara Media’s Downstream for young lefties, perhaps, or Triggernometry for conservatives.
While these podcasts have achieved mainstream success and recognition, the contemporary media landscape also allows fringe political shows to gain huge audiences and influence without the mainstream ever acknowledging them.
One such media product is The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters, a collective YouTube channel and website led by the YouTuber Carl Benjamin (AKA Sargon of Akkad) that has advocated for, among other things, “remigration”. Remigration, in the words of co-presenter Luca Johnson, is “not just about [the removal of] the illegals, it’s also about the legals and all those foreign communities that have been forced on us”.
Most podcast platforms are opaque on listener figures. The Rest Is Politics is reported to have more than 700,000 listeners an episode. With several episodes a week, it remains a bigger product than Lotus Eaters, but with almost 600,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than a million weekly views on free YouTube clips alone, Lotus Eaters is also one of the biggest political podcasts in the UK. Apple podcasts currently ranks the audio version at 50th on its news charts, ahead of dozens of podcasts set up by established publications.
I recently attended Lotus Eaters’ live show in Swindon, where the podcast is based. Although they don’t quite have the O2-packing ability of The Rest Is Politics, they managed to fill a 700-capacity venue with tickets starting at £50. The demographic was overwhelmingly male and mostly under 40. It was split largely between suit-wearing, moustachioed elder millennials and metalhead and gamer types, with the occasional couple or father-son duo in the mix.
A speech by Firas Modad, one of the presenters, reflected the worldview of this movement. He had recently returned to his home country of Lebanon to find that in his religiously and ethnically mixed village there were problems with the water supply. He found that this was because there was conflict over water between ethnic groups, and one group had decided to siphon it for themselves.
This encounter, claimed Modad, is a parable for understanding Britain’s future, in which something as simple as water provision collapses due to racial diversity. He also warned that “political entrepreneurs” – individuals who identify a niche market among the citizenry and exploit it for political gain – would use ethnic grievances to advance their own ambitions. The solution, according to Modad? “Deport. Deport. Deport.” The irony of complaining about political entrepreneurs stoking ethnic grievances was lost on the audience.
Aside from Modad’s sincerity and a cringe-inducing debate about whether the Star Wars prequels have any artistic merit, much of the evening was laced with the semi-ironic bombast characteristic of the online wing of hard-right political movements that feel that they are on the up.
One segment was a version of the classic party game Who Am I? in which the audience would ridicule political enemies displayed on a screen behind the podcasters, while the hosts tried to guess who the subjects of the scorn were. The audience was raucous. It was, I’d imagine, a cathartic experience for these political outcasts to hear Rory Stewart described as “Alastair Campbell’s fluffer” in a theatre of like-minded crusaders, all equally convinced they are on the verge of an uprising against a tyrannical government. “It is a moral imperative for the chuds to take over,” Benjamin thundered. (Chuds is a leftist slang term for unthinking rightwingers.) “Get a girlfriend and take over,” he added.
The Lotus Eaters themselves are formerly reluctant supporters of Farage and Reform UK, who they now consider soft. They are supporting Rupert Lowe’s nativist outfit, Restore Britain. Benjamin’s YouTube channel and the Lotus Eaters website carry the disclosure “promoted by Lotus Eater Media Limited … on behalf of Restore Britain” required for campaigning organisations under electoral law.
Lowe’s vehicle has been backed by much of the organised far right. Young alumni of the ethnonationalist Homeland party were in attendance in Swindon, but the wider post-organisational far right – which mobilises through social media rather than traditional means – is also flocking to Restore. You can now expect to find support for Restore in the Patriot movements along the south coast protesting against asylum-seeker hotels, at Tommy Robinson demos and in the audience of the radical-right podcast sphere that extends beyond Lotus Eaters.
Some of the people I spoke to in Swindon were convinced that Lowe will be prime minister in 2029. While this is near-impossible, the beyond-Reform right could play a significant role in further radicalising British politics. Restore can act as flypaper for the kinds of off-putting people who revel in the violent spectacle of deportations – such as the man sat behind me, wearing merch with the words Detain + Deport emblazoned on the chest – allowing Reform to seem like the moderate option in comparison.
This movement can also exert pressure on Reform, and open up space for it to tack to the right by generating so much noise about an issue that Farage is able to pick it up when it feels like it has become part of the conversation.
Politics professor Alan Finlayson has argued that Lotus Eaters is a political education project aimed at constructing the worldview of the contemporary far right through its engagement, however tedious, with culture. Behind the paywall there are series on films, video games, Shakespeare and epic poetry. Viewers can spend time bathing in this worldview and thus engage with politics, without it always having to be about politics proper.
The strength of this movement shouldn’t be overstated, but it commands a substantial following. It could even negatively affect the right if Reform’s vote is split where Restore Britain stands in future elections. It won 10 seats in the recent local elections on Norfolk county council and Great Yarmouth borough council – one seat was in a byelection – via its affiliate Great Yarmouth First. That said, Lowe is the local MP, and the national movement focused on winning that region only.
The podcasters’ popularity and Lowe’s presence in the House of Commons show there is now a nativist movement in this country that has achieved parliamentary representation and can articulate a worldview – and indeed a culture – for its sympathisers. Its presence means British politics is likely to become more turbulent and aggressive, and that the nativist far right will play a larger role than ever.
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Oliver Haynes is a journalist and co-host of the Flep24 podcast
