The Far-Right Playbook
The claim
"Far-right messaging is just plain-speaking common sense about real problems."
The headline facts
- The "Great Replacement" is a debunked white-nationalist conspiracy theory linked to multiple mass-violence attacks worldwide
- The viral "£1 billion a month on asylum hotels" figure is wrong — hotels cost around £108 million a month in 2024/25
- The £49.18/week asylum support figure is real — but the "£70 a week" and "£26k a year" claims are false
Graphic idea: "Spot the Far-Right Playbook" card listing tactics — conspiracy framing, inflated figures, dehumanising language. Replace with your finished graphic.
The full picture
The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory
The "Great Replacement" is a debunked white-nationalist, far-right conspiracy theory coined by French author Renaud Camus, who published an essay titled Le Grand Remplacement in 2011, claiming that native white Europeans are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants. It is inherently white supremacist and antisemitic.
The theory has been cited by perpetrators of mass-violence attacks including the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting (2018), the Christchurch mosque attacks (2019), and the Buffalo supermarket shooting (2022). When this language appears in mainstream political discourse, it is not common sense — it is a conspiracy framework with a documented trail of violence.
Graphic idea: "Myth £1bn/month vs Fact ~£108m/month" comparison. Replace with your finished graphic.
The viral cost figures
Asylum hotel costs peaked at £8.3 million a day in mid-2023 — a real and legitimate figure to scrutinise. But by 2024/25, the Home Office spent £2.1 billion on hotels for the whole year — around £108 million per month, not £1 billion a month as claimed in viral posts. Total asylum support spending (all accommodation, not just hotels) was £4.7 billion in 2023/24, falling to lower levels in 2024/25 as the backlog was cleared.
This is how the far-right playbook works: take a real figure (£8.3m/day at peak), strip it of context, inflate it, and repeat it until it becomes "common knowledge." Understanding this pattern is the first step to countering it.
Graphic idea: "kernel of truth" diagram — how a real figure (£8.3m/day at peak) gets inflated and stripped of context. Replace with your finished graphic.