For years, the far right has wrapped itself in the Union flag and dared anyone to question its motives. Its leaders and influencers insisted they were driven by love of country, by patriotism, by a desire to defend “British values” from erosion. Critics, they claimed, simply didn’t understand their concerns.
But that story no longer survives even casual scrutiny. What we are witnessing today is not a nationalist revival. It is a business model.
From AI-generated racist memes to political parties funded by millionaires and sustained by subscriptions, the modern far right has evolved into an ecosystem where outrage is monetised, fear is leveraged, and patriotism is little more than a marketing aesthetic. The goal is not to fix Britain’s problems but to profit from the perception that everything is broken.
Hate, packaged and sold
The sudden rise of “Amelia” — the purple-haired, AI-generated “British goth girl” who spouts racist talking points while waving a Union flag — is a perfect illustration of this shift.
Amelia wanders through Westminster, London streets or the House of Commons, warning of “militant Muslims” and “third-world migrants”. She is endlessly adaptable: Manga Amelia, Wallace and Gromit Amelia, “real life” Amelia confronting fictional characters. Anyone with access to a mainstream chatbot can now create their own version.
This isn’t grassroots expression. It is scalable propaganda.
Within days of Amelia breaking out of far-right online silos, she became a financial asset. An Amelia cryptocurrency appeared. Telegram groups coordinated to inflate its value. International actors joined in. Elon Musk amplified it with a retweet. National identity was transformed into a speculative token.
As Matteo Bergamini of Shout Out UK, whose organisation created the original counter-extremism game Amelia was taken from, put it: “What we’re seeing is the monetisation of hate.”
That phrase captures the moment we are in. Racism is no longer just ideological; it is transactional.
From street movements to revenue streams
This commercialisation did not begin with AI. Figures like Tommy Robinson laid the groundwork years ago.
Robinson’s career has followed a familiar pattern: provoke outrage, claim persecution, launch a fundraiser. Arrests become donation drives. Platform bans become proof of martyrdom — and justification for paid alternatives. Books, films, speaking tours, subscriptions, direct appeals to supporters: the movement never stops passing the hat.
The message to followers is always the same. Britain is under threat. He alone is brave enough to speak the truth. And he needs money to keep going.
What rarely gets discussed is how little of this has anything to do with solving real problems. There are no serious policy proposals, no workable solutions to housing, wages or public services. Those would require compromise, detail and accountability. Outrage, by contrast, requires only a camera and a payment link.
This is not a mass movement rooted in civic engagement. It is a personal brand economy built on grievance.
Reform UK and the professionalisation of populism
What has changed in recent years is that this model has moved from the fringes into formal party politics.
Reform UK presents itself as an insurgent force: anti-establishment, anti-elite, standing up for “ordinary people” ignored by Westminster. But follow the money and the image begins to crack.
Reform UK is not powered primarily by small donations from struggling voters. It is heavily bankrolled by wealthy individuals and sustained by a subscription-style membership model that turns political belonging into recurring income.
Membership fees, reported to start at around £25 a year, generate a steady cash flow. With claims of hundreds of thousands of members, that alone represents millions of pounds annually. Politics, in this model, is not just about votes every few years — it is about constant monetisation.
Then there are the donors. A significant proportion of Reform UK’s funding has come from a tiny number of very wealthy individuals. Multi-million-pound donations have dwarfed anything that could plausibly be described as grassroots. This is populism funded from the top down.
And at the centre of it all is Nigel Farage, a man who has turned political disruption into a career spanning decades.
Farage’s income streams are instructive. Media appearances, paid broadcasting roles, speaking engagements, social media platforms and personal branding all blur into his political role. His visibility generates outrage; outrage generates attention; attention generates income. The incentives are clear.
This is not an aberration. It is the logic of a system where politics is increasingly treated as content, and leaders behave less like public servants and more like influencers.
Patriotism without responsibility
True patriotism involves responsibility: to truth, to democratic norms, to fellow citizens. The far right’s version discards all three.
If these movements genuinely cared about Britain, they would not constantly portray it as a failed state on the brink of collapse. They would not undermine trust in institutions while offering nothing credible to replace them. They would not frame entire communities as enemies within.
But fear is profitable. Calm is not.
The more Britain is depicted as lost, the more donations can be extracted to “save” it. The more communities are pitted against each other, the more engagement spikes online. The more apocalyptic the rhetoric, the easier it is to justify ever-more extreme content — and ever-more fundraising.
This is why far-right politics is so resistant to solutions. Solutions end the crisis. Crises end the revenue.
Algorithms, aesthetics and young men
The role of technology cannot be ignored. Social media algorithms reward provocation. AI tools reduce the cost of content creation to almost zero. Extremist messaging can now be generated, localised and disseminated at scale.
Amelia’s spread was not random. Analysts tracking disinformation have pointed to highly skilled anonymous accounts and coordinated amplification networks. What began as niche content became global in days.
Researchers have also noted the target audience: overwhelmingly young men. Sexualised imagery, irony, humour and “just joking” plausible deniability are central to the appeal. Politics is smuggled in through memes, not manifestos.
The result is not just radicalisation, but commodification. Identity becomes content. Belonging becomes a subscription. Rage becomes a product.
Who actually benefits?
The far right claims to speak for the “left behind”. But the people making money are not those struggling with rent, energy bills or insecure work.
They are the party leaders drawing salaries and media fees. The donors shaping agendas from above. The influencers monetising attention. The crypto promoters and platform owners are skimming value from every spike of outrage.
Supporters, meanwhile, are encouraged to feel permanently besieged — and permanently open their wallets.
This is why media literacy and scrutiny are treated as existential threats by these movements. Once people start asking who is funding whom and who is getting rich, the patriotic performance begins to fall apart.
Not nationalism. Not patriotism. A grift.
The mistake has been to take the far right at its word. To assume its rhetoric reflects its motivations.
In reality, much of the modern far right is driven less by ideology than by incentive. Outrage pays. Division pays. Victimhood pays.
From AI-generated racist avatars to subscription-funded political parties, the pattern is the same. Nationalism is the branding. Profiteering is the purpose.
And that matters, because movements built on profit do not de-escalate. They must constantly intensify. The enemies multiply. The language hardens. The stakes rise. There is always another crisis to monetise, another outrage to sell.
The real danger is not that these actors love Britain too much.
It is that they love money, attention and power far more than the country they claim to defend — and are willing to burn trust, cohesion and truth to keep the revenue flowing.
