Content note: this post discusses child sexual abuse, online radicalisation and political movements hostile to women’s rights.
I was vaguely aware of Trump-loving Joe Rogan, but didn’t know a huge amount about him until I read about Rupert Lowe going on his podcast. Rupert Lowe, 68, in case you don’t know, is a backbench MP for Great Yarmouth, leading the new, quietly rising far-right party, Restore. He spent two hours on The Joe Rogan Experience on 8th July 2026 [1]. The podcast is the most listened to podcast in the UK and its audience here is made up of disproportionately young, single men who are more likely than average to hold traditional views on gender [2]. His US fan base is 72% men [3]. His YouTube channel alone has 21 million subscribers and there’s a separate official channel just for clips, with another 8.3 million [24]. The numbers don’t matter so much really though, as his content is sliced and diced and shared across multiple social media platforms as short form video, over and over again. British boys get his content pushed into their TikToks and feeds by anyone, from anywhere. The political messages seem to be powered by young, tech savvy boys and men.
Restore Britain only became a party in February 2026, led by Lowe, and it sits to the right of Reform [4]. For reasons we can only guess at, Elon Musk publicly urged people to join the party at its launch [4]. He’s American, so what is he doing meddling in British politics? Why is he getting involved? That’s my first thought and what piqued my interest. I’m a British voter and want to know what he’s up to.
Restore’s local sister party is called Great Yarmouth First and won all nine Norfolk County Council seats that it contested in May 2026 [4], and that’s part of his strategy. He said so on the podcast: take local government from the bottom up and then national government from the top down [1].
On the podcast he talked about his Rape Gang Inquiry, which he published in June 2026. It was a private report, with no statutory powers, and couldn’t compel any witnesses. It was paid for by a crowdfunder which raised more than £600,000 [5]. There’s plenty of high earning far-right enthusiasts with reasons to want to promote a party like this.
The report had a huge headline claim that at least 250,000 young white girls were victims of grooming gangs. It certainly sounds horrific, and we should all be shocked at any level of crime, but this number was jaw-dropping. The problem was, this number was just that, a number. It wasn’t produced from any investigation [6], but from a crowdfunded report that cherry picked some bits of truthful information to make it sound legitimate and then extrapolated it. In July 2026 Full Fact officially debunked it and stated that it was not calculated in any reliable way [6]. They traced it to speeches that Lord Pearson, former UKIP leader, gave in the House of Lords in 2018 and 2019. He took victim estimates that covered all child sexual exploitation, not just gang-based, from Rotherham, Telford and Oxford and stretched them across the whole country [6]. The transcripts of these speeches are available on Hansard, the official report of all UK Parliamentary debates in the House of Commons and the Lords. It only logs what peers say, as a record. It doesn’t fact check any of the information. It’s simply a searchable public record and Full Fact traced the number back to it. So no investigation, no research, no official data, no peer reviews, nothing. Just a big, made-up, headline number to spread amongst vulnerable boys and young men to benefit their own cause. Plus, every time the number is repeated, it changes. Some speeches quote the number as ‘white girls raped this century’, others as victims of Muslim grooming gangs, and on Rogan he said it was a count of rapes, not victims [6]. It feels very much like the number is being weaponised for whatever they need on any particular day.
Now it’d be understandable if you thought that Restore must be keen to protect women and girls from poor treatment and horrific crimes like these. But they’re not. In January 2025, the grooming gangs inquiry demand was attached to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (a child safety bill) as a ‘reasoned amendment’. A reasoned amendment is something that parliament can use to stop a bill going any further. Voting for it means voting to kill the bill and that’s exactly what all five Reform MPs of the day did, Lowe being one of them. Thankfully the bill survived on a 111 to 364 vote [7]. In June 2025 the Crime and Policing Bill had its third reading. It included mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse, grooming as an aggravating factor in sentencing and survivors’ rights to sue institutions with no time limits. Surely no-one would oppose this? Well, for some reason, every Reform MP present thought it a bad idea and voted against the Bill. Anderson, McMurdock, Pochin and Tice, and Lowe, by then sitting as an independent. It was so important to Farage that he decided not to vote at all [7]. The Bill passed with 312 to 95. Their defence is that the bill also carried the clause decriminalising abortion. Well I don’t see that as any kind of excuse, they want to control women’s bodies too. 82 Conservatives also voted no.
Restore doesn’t actually have to win elections to do damage. They’re creating a radical flank effect. This was first documented in the US civil rights movement, where the rise of radical groups coincided with donations surging to moderate groups [8]. Two experiments in 2022, on 2,772 people, showed that a radical flank increases support for the moderate faction by contrast, even when the moderates haven’t changed. Basically it means that Restore Britain is so bad that they make Reform look good, even though Reform didn’t change a thing. The experiments tested social movements, not parties, and the authors said the effect on parties was an open question [8]. I saw this first hand on an Instagram reel that I put out in August 2026 about the Equality Act, where a commenter said “Restore UK is who you should vote for not Reform, I wouldn’t trust Farage” [14].
This is Restore, whose founding video stated “for the foreseeable future, far more people must leave Britain than arrive” [4]. This was followed up by a 113-page detailed paper of their political strategy, including mass deportations: up to two million removed in three years, abolishing asylum, leaving the ECHR and repealing the Equality Act, amongst other things [16]. So I can see why people might think Reform looks good by comparison.
But here are some things about Reform that should worry all of us. Three senior Conservatives have crossed to Reform: Braverman, Jenrick and Kruger [9]. Farage, Reform party leader, called Andrew Tate “an important voice for men” [10]. Yes, the same Andrew Tate who faces 59 criminal charges in the UK, between him and his brother, including rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking, all of which he denies. He was arrested in Miami in July 2026 and is fighting extradition to the UK [17]. Key Reform pledges include scrapping the Equality Act on day one, reopening the abortion limit, and a push towards fewer divorces [10]. I can’t see how any of these are beneficial to women and narrowing the gap.
With the promotion of Lowe and his beliefs on global podcasts, supported by billionaires, and spread through short form video content on social media, it seems that a section of the younger population are headed directly to Restore, bypassing Reform altogether. The minimum age on every major social media platform in the UK is currently 13, although due to rise to 16 in spring 2027 [18]. However four in ten UK children under 13 have a social media profile, and six in ten of the 8 to 12 year olds who use social media have their own account rather than using a parent’s [12].
Back in the 90s, when I turned 18, we didn’t really have much of an idea of who to vote for and only had top line info on what each political party stood for. A 5 minute political party broadcast before Hollyoaks every so often was about it. And even then it got a sigh. A lot of us looked towards our parents for guidance, what did they vote for? A study across three generations, published in 2009, backs this up, finding that children were more likely to adopt their parents’ politics where the family was politicised and gave consistent cues [13]. But this was before the explosion of social media. These days, with kids online so young, and a lack of consistent online restrictions for kids, people are being politically groomed before they can even cast a ballot. If a boy starts on social media at ten, that means he’s had eight whole years of messaging and opinion forming, and none of it regulated or fact checked.
Researchers in Dublin set up blank phones as teenage boys and every one of them was fed misogynistic content within 23 minutes, whether it went looking for it or not [19]. When researchers did the same with accounts set up as thirteen year old girls, TikTok was serving them content that makes them feel small within eight minutes [25]. I wrote a whole blog about that, Eight Minutes. We know from research done in Spain that sexual and affective frustration converts into far-right votes among young men, and that’s showing in the comments on my content [11].
So exposure to misogyny online leads not only to far-right voting, but to increased violence against women and girls. Teachers are on the receiving end too. Nearly a quarter of women teachers in the UK said a pupil had been misogynistic towards them in the past year, the highest in the four years they’ve recorded it, and it’s gone up every year since 2023. Some say boys ignore them just because they’re women [20]. The National Police Chiefs’ Council have declared violence against women and girls a national emergency, with at least 1 woman in 12 a victim each year [15].
What can be done? Well the government have tried to make a start. Phones have now been officially removed from classrooms [21]. That came in through the same Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that Reform voted to kill. Whether schools and pupils adhere to this is another matter, but it’s the right direction. Along with lessons on misogyny and incel culture now on the compulsory relationships, sex and health education curriculum [22]. Again, a good thing, although a lot more is needed than a handful of lessons. Age limits on social media are being increased to 16 in spring 2027, but there is little detail as to how this is going to be enforced and whether it goes far enough. The Online Safety Act needs to be enforced. Parents, teachers, councils, businesses and the government all need to pull together to make substantial change. And I fear it’s all too little, too slowly and too late. We already have one generation of kids who’ve grown up with Tate and co as role models. Who treat women like sh*t, get their bedroom cues from porn, and are addicted in a cult-like manner to the feeds on their phones. Whether those feeds are factual or not is irrelevant once they’re sucked in, they lap it all up.
Our fight for feminism has to be a political fight. We might all be doomed, but the only way to try and stop this nightmare from becoming a reality (watch it play out in real time in the USA) is to vote. All of us. Every single one of us. Remember, there is a point in voting. If we all vote, we can make a difference. They did it in Poland, we can do it here [23]. For ourselves, for our children, for women everywhere.
The Receipts // (Sources)
[1] Great Yarmouth Mercury, "Rupert Lowe appears on Joe Rogan Experience podcast", July 2026.
[2] YouGov, "Who's listening to The Joe Rogan Experience? Men, mostly", October 2023. Edison Podcast Metrics UK, quarterly ranking, as reported by RadioToday, September 2023.
[3] Morning Consult, polling of US adults, March 2022.
[4] HOPE not hate, "Case file: Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain", February 2026. Norfolk County Council election results, May 2026.
[5] The Rape Gang Inquiry, report, 16 June 2026. Left Foot Forward, “Who is funding Rupert Lowe’s rape gang inquiry?”, August 2025.
[6] Full Fact, "'250,000 victims of rape gangs' is not a reliable estimate", 23 July 2026. Lord Pearson, House of Lords, Hansard, 2018 and 14 May 2019.
[7] House of Commons, Division 74, 8 January 2025. House of Commons, Division 239, 18 June 2025. votes.parliament.uk.
[8] Herbert Haines, "Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights: 1957 to 1970", Social Problems, Vol. 32, 1984. Brent Simpson, Robb Willer and Matthew Feinberg, "Radical flanks of social movements can increase support for moderate factions", PNAS Nexus, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 2022.
[9] House of Commons division lists, 2026, votes.parliament.uk.
[10] As sourced in The Backlash Is a Receipt, Receipt [2].
[11] "From frustration to radicalization: sexual-affective grievance and modern sexism among young right-wing voters in Spain", Political Research Exchange, 2026.
[12] House of Commons Library, "The impact of smartphones and social media on children", citing Ofcom, February 2024. Ofcom, Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes, 2025.
[13] M. Kent Jennings, Laura Stoker and Jake Bowers, "Politics across Generations: Family Transmission Reexamined", The Journal of Politics, Vol. 71, No. 3, 2009.
[14] Comment posted publicly on the With Shaking Hands Instagram account, August 2026, username withheld.
[15] National Police Chiefs' Council and College of Policing, Violence Against Women and Girls: National Policing Statement, July 2024.
[16] Restore Britain, "Mass Deportations: Legitimacy, Legality, and Logistics", Harrison Pitt and Rupert Lowe, February 2026. Factually, fact check, July 2026.
[17] Crown Prosecution Service, statement on charges against Andrew and Tristan Tate, 28 May 2025. OCCRP, “UK Brings New Trafficking Charges Against Tate Brothers”, 20 July 2026. NPR, “Andrew Tate is denied bail”, 9 September 2026.
[18] UK Government, “Growing Up in the Online World” consultation response and announcement, 15 June 2026.
[19] Baker, Ging and Andreasen, Recommending Toxicity, Dublin City University Anti-Bullying Centre, April 2024.
[20] NASUWT, “Misogyny in schools hits new high”, 4 April 2026.
[21] Department for Education, Mobile phones in schools, statutory guidance under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, in force 29 June 2026.
[22] Department for Education, Relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance, July 2025, in force 1 September 2026.
[23] Poland 2023 election turnout, as sourced in The Backlash Is a Receipt, Receipt [6].
[24] Social Blade, PowerfulJRE and JRE Clips channel statistics, October 2026.
[25] Center for Countering Digital Hate, “Deadly by Design”, December 2022.
