By Jock Mulligan
I see the prolific Gael and others have recently been banging on this drum too. But I can’t fughing well stress hard enough how much my friends and comrades need to get to grips to understand the massive attack we are under from the device in our pockets. The device we pull out as soon as tgere us a lull in conversation, or when we are waiting for a bus; in a doctor’s waiting room or for the fughing adverts to finish. Media literacy is completely shit in the UK (and Ireland), thanks to the right and the far right – with a little help from Putin and other international bad actors. What we’ve witnessed over the past ten years is the use of cult tactics in drawing in and cutting people off from outside information- ensuring these people- friends, family members, work colleagues turn into conspiracy spouting maniacs. You’ve heard it- family members refusing to have their children vaccinated. Odd beliefs about people they revere and the rest of us understand as complete grifting, lying cunts.
There is a dangerous digital plot eating away at the foundations of democracy. It is no longer merely a few angry children in basements; hackers rebelling against the world or people hacking government computers to find the truths about war and dodgy doings. We are in the midst of a sophisticated, tech-fuelled pipeline churning out a new breed of far-right “tech-bros” – men who have traded their belief in objective reality for a diet of grievance, algorithms, and imported lies for profit. This phenomenon is not an accident but rather the result of many specific, overlapping threats that have poisoned our digital well. These have been meticulously designed to funnel the tech-literate, the naive, and the frustrated into the waiting arms of the far right.
The rise of this movement is the inevitable by-product of a toxic ecosystem where geopolitical sabotage, lethal disinformation, and predatory algorithms converge. To understand this pipeline, one must move beyond the reductive idea of “fake news” and examine the structural poisoning of the information landscape. The first and perhaps most sophisticated assault originated in the East. Since 2016, the Russian “Active Measures” campaign – spearheaded by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and the GRU – has evolved beyond pushing simple falsehoods. Instead, they pioneered a strategy of hyper-polarisation. The true goal was never to convince the public of a specific Kremlin narrative, but to erode the very foundation of objective truth. By flooding the digital landscape with contradictory, high-emotion narratives on race, gender, sex, immigration, and sovereignty, they did not just win an argument; they created a citizenry so cynical and exhausted that they stopped believing in anything at all. This “Doppelgänger” effect, where fake versions of reputable news outlets mimic the truth, has effectively salted the earth of international discourse.
This foundational cynicism provided the perfect soil for the COVID-19 vaccine disinformation crisis. If the Russian campaign was about political sabotage, this was about biological survival. Propagandists weaponised the language of science – purposely misinterpreting data and manufacturing “whistleblower” testimonies – to turn a public health necessity into a battlefield for personal liberty. The cost was counted in more than just votes; it was counted in lives. With studies showing a 6% drop in vaccination intent directly linked to these digital lies, the “anti-vax” movement became a gateway for a broader, deeper distrust of all institutional expertise. This radical scepticism of “the elites” is the primary engine now driving the retreat into existentially dangerous reactionary, anti-establishment politics.
However, even the most potent lie requires a delivery system, and this is where the engagement-based algorithms of major platforms serve as the ultimate “propaganda multiplier.” While these platforms claim to be neutral, their code is anything but. By prioritising content that triggers raw human emotions – anger, fear, and tribal empathy – they have turned radicalisation into a profitable business model. These algorithms do not care if a story is true; they only care if it keeps us fughers scrolling. This has created a “digital slipstream” where extremist content travels faster and further than the truth ever could. For the tech-savvy young man, this means an entire world-view can be skewed in weeks, as the algorithm relentlessly pushes him from “moderate scepticism” into the darkest corners of far-right ideology.
Ultimately, what we are witnessing is the birth of a new political class: a generation of people who are on the surface technically proficient but philosophically adrift, radicalised by a system that rewards their outrage and punishes their nuance. We are not merely fighting a political movement; we are fighting the very architecture of the modern internet. And fighting for freedom.
*Some of this has been formatted and grammar checked by ai. Ideas and arguments totally the author’s (and not altered or researched by ai).
*Picture -ai. WE NEED ARTISTS!
