Research reveals UK children are being targeted by far-right groups online

According to a Guardian investigation, a "far-right ecosystem" online is targeting children in an attempt to radicalise them.

Experts are warning that increasingly younger children are being targeted.

According to teachers, police officers, academics and community leaders, there is evidence that long periods of unsupervised online access, which was exacerbated during lockdowns, have led to children and young people across the country coming into contact with far-right groups in larger numbers than ever before.

Director general of MI5, Ken McCallum has cautioned that teenagers are being caught up in a toxic ideology of “online extremists and echo chambers”.

Platforms used to introduce young people to racist, white-supremacist, Neo-Nazi and incel ideas include gaming forums and private chatrooms.

Det Supt Vicky Washington, former coordinator for the government’s Prevent counter-terrorism programme, explained that isolation throughout the pandemic has caused a perfect storm for far-right radicalisation.

She said: “There’s no one path, there’s no one sort of child who’s particularly vulnerable but I would say online, in a variety of ways, it’s something we are seeing more and more of.”

Experts have explained that that while the overall number of children and young people being referred and arrested in relation to far-right extremism is still very small, the ages of those concerned is getting increasingly younger. Children as young as 13 have been convicted and in one case, there were concerns about a nine-year old becoming involved in extremism.

As an example, in January, a 13-year-old from Darlington became the UK’s youngest person to be convicted of terrorism offences.

Across all ideologies, terrorism-related arrests have increased according to Home Office figures. The largest increase is in the under-18 age group, which is now at the highest number since records began in 2001. 15 per cent of terrorism-related arrests are now for people under 18.

Despite a fall in referrals during the pandemic, record levels of children and young people were adopted into Prevent's Channel anti-radicalisation programme for rightwing extremism.

Nick Wilkinson, a former police assistant chief constable who is a senior lead for Prevent in Kent, said: “I can say that we are extremely busy. We saw a large increase in our work over the last year.”

Exit Hate, a national charity that supports families affected by far-right extremism, explained how it was asked to help a nine-year-old boy who it was believed was recruited by his older brother. Wilkinson said that parents are often unaware, or in some cases unconcerned, and dismiss the problem as “just online, it’s not real”.

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