Today VICE report on our research into Local Matters.
Several former members of Generation Identity UK and Ireland (GI UK), including at least one former regional leader, are behind the creation of Local Matters (LM), a new group promoting ‘anti-globalism’, ‘environmentalism’ and ‘political reform’.
LM seeks to put a soft face on the damaged brand of ‘Identitarianism’ and smuggle ethnonationalist politics into campaigns around local and environmentalist concerns.
While the group’s graphics and social media posts evoke a twee nostalgia for village pubs, farmers markets and countryside strolls, this aesthetic has been carefully cultivated to avoid the scrutiny of journalists and anti-fascists.
By portraying themselves in this way, LM have caught the attention of key figures in the Green Party, including peer Natalie Bennett and deputy leader Amelia Womack, who both followed the group’s small Twitter account.
The creation of LM follows GI UK’s disavowal by their European counterparts for hosting ‘racist vlogger’ Millennial Woes at their conference in 2019, and a short-lived rebrand as the Identitarian Movement before the group’s dissolution in January 2020.
Within days of GI UK’s collapse, the domain for the LM website was registered and by early March the group was active on social media.
Analysis of the group’s social media reveals the involvement of several former members of GI UK, including Charlie Shaw, GI UK’s former North West regional leader, along with Jack Rockett, Patrick Carragher, Seth Murphy, Liam Murphy, and Ethan Megrath.
LM is just one of the far-right projects to emerge from the wreckage of GI UK. Other former members have recently launched a new Identitarian group and several are now active in fascist party Patriotic Alternative.
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Local Matters Britain
