‘The enemy in our minds was Islam’: why a 14-year-old boy joined the far right and how he escaped | UK News

What you are about to read will be difficult to digest.

It is about a boy named John who at age 14 was lied to and manipulated into having hateful and racist opinions.

I met John in late October in a drafty room in an old warehouse to interview him. He is an educated and confident young man; I’d even say it’s sweet

We chatted about his recent vacation with his mother Sarah. She is worried that the room we are in is too cold for her; the chairs we sit on are too hard.

Exclusive: Strong increase in children investigated for far-right links, including youth under 10 years of age

It’s almost impossible to reconcile this John with the angry, racist teenager who dove deep into the far right.

“I had a friend from school who was already in a far-right group and he would show me things from social media sites on his phone,” says John.

“At first the main attraction was how patriots they were. A lot of people on the far right said they were defending soldiers in the UK, which is something I’ve always been very passionate about.

“I guess you could say that I had started to radicalize at that time. I thought I was defending my country, defending Britain.

“The enemy in our minds was Islam, [it] it was the muslim people, [it] it was almost as much the police as the government, and also the journalists.

“In a way we are up against authority.”

In the early stages, John’s involvement was restricted to comments he made on far-right online forums and group chats.

It is on these platforms that young and vulnerable children are encouraged to learn and engage with a far-right ideology.

“We never went out and said our age [on these sites]”John says.

“We never said we were 14, 15, 16 years old, we went to school.”

“But from the way we were talking and how inexperienced we were in life, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to understand.

“I think we were kind of the next generation of people coming in.

“We were going to be the people who would take over from them, so I think they went the extra mile to make you feel welcome and make you feel really accepted in the group.”

The British far right is no longer the domain of middle-aged white working-class men.

The Internet has opened up a global network of right-wing groups to an audience of any age, from anywhere, from any source.

As one anti-extremism activist put it: “In the digital space, it doesn’t matter if you’re 13 or 30, if you’re working-class or middle-class, in far-right forums your voice carries the same weight.”

John’s new extreme ideology didn’t stay online for long. It soon spread to his school life.

“I think when we saw someone with darker skin we thought that in some way we were better than them,” he says.

“There was one particular assistant teacher at the school that we almost headed to. One of her parents was of Pakistani heritage and had darker skin than me and my friend at school.

“And we would say things like: ‘You are not really British. You should not be allowed a British passport. And when we have power we are not going to allow people like you to have a job. To give the jobs to white British people.”

John says he is now “enormously ashamed” of what he said and believed, but admits that at the time he found this sickly ideology “exciting.”

“I definitely remember the feeling of excitement,” he says.

“I remember thinking I was part of this elite organization that a lot of people didn’t like.

“I was kind of a bad boy like the one people described to me, but I always thought, ‘It will only be a matter of time before people realize that we are actually good people and people start coming together.’

“I would be the first of my group of friends to do it. And then everyone else will come to me and ask me to get them involved.”

But in reality, John was becoming more and more isolated.

The old friends from school left and his mother could see that her son was different in some way, but she couldn’t understand why.

“We had a very close relationship,” says Sarah. “John was always very honest and open with me, he would talk to me about anything.

“We used to laugh. Our house was full of laughter most of the time because we both have a really silly sense of humor.

“And then he started spending more time in his bedroom, which is not unusual at that age, and it was a very gradual process, but his attitude began to change.

“He started to be really disrespectful to me and he could also be verbally abusive if I didn’t agree with him.”

Sarah attributed the mood swings to tests and “the normal pressures of being a teenager.”

John’s school never informed him of his racist outburst, and far-right ideologies, along with signs of far-right grooming, were alien to him.

Sarah said, “If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I would have said, ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’

“As long as you think they are safe, they are at home, they are online talking to their friends or playing video games … to find out that this has been happening under your roof while you were sitting in the next room, it is absolutely soul destroying.

“Because you think as a parent you would know, but you just don’t.”

When John was 17 and now in college, he had started attending demonstrations organized by far-right groups.

Some of these protests turned violent and in one event the police took John’s name.

This prompted John to tell his mother that he had gone to demonstrations.

But he claimed that they were marches that were “anti-pedophilia and anti-grooming gangs.”

Sarah decided to go to one with him, not to participate, but to see exactly what he had gotten himself into.

“I went and my partner and I sat at a bus stop in front of where the march was taking place,” he says.

“I’d seen John get close to this guy. And this guy looked very presentable. He was wearing a suit. He was much older.

“And I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t so bad after all, and he’ll take care of John. John is in good hands. It looks like he’s going to take care of him.’

“Then the march started and I had to see John chanting racist words, marching down the street. And he seemed so proud of himself. It was horrible.”

Sarah tried to talk to her son about his views, but felt him become even more radical and detached. She did not know where to turn.

“I talked to my partner … should we talk to the police about it? Should we talk to the university?” He said.

“But John was in so much trouble, he was hanging from college by the hairs of his teeth.

“We didn’t want to get him into more trouble talking to the police. Obviously, they had his name on file because of the rally incident.”

But after a public outburst at the university, which John described as an “anti-immigration spiel,” teachers referred him to Prevent, the government’s anti-extremism program.

His ideology slowly changed and he says he now understands how he was manipulated and lied to.

“He would be in prison now, without that intervention because he was getting deeper and deeper and more brazen and trying to impress,” says Sarah.

“I could see the path he was taking, it was taking him to really dangerous places.”

John agrees. “I was very much against extreme violence at the time,” he says.

“However, if I had been involved with the far right for all those additional years, there is a possibility that that kind of mentality would have come down to me.

“As much as you want to say no, it could have gotten to that point.”

But even now, John recognizes the appeal of the far right to young people.

“It’s because it’s anti-authority,” he says.

“I think there are so many young people now for various reasons; they come from schools and universities, to a kind of stricter rules that parents are imposing on children; I think there is a great anti-authoritarian mentality in young people right now. I think which is why so many people are drawn to the far right.

“And it really offers a sense of belonging. A lot of young people want to feel part of something.”

John and Sarah’s real names have been changed to protect their identities.