The far right calls to ‘save’ women and girls while doing the opposite

Having avoided central London for as long as I could last weekend, when I eventually arrived at Victoria for an unavoidable social engagement, I was quickly reminded of why I didn’t want to be there. Three women and a man, Union flags draped around their shoulders like capes, stood swigging from cans and laughing. A few moments later, I was heavily shoulder-barged by a different woman while walking briskly down the street.

This was part of the aftermath of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s (aka Tommy Robinson) far-right anti-immigration Unite the Kingdom march. I had been dreading this day since it was announced on January 15, months after he had organised another march reported to have been the largest nationalist protest in decades. Little has angered me more than seeing the videos that have emerged from the protest of him and his guests on stage, talking about “the battle of Britain” while flyers were handed out in the crowd, speaking of securing “a future for white people”.

The stunt that has perhaps gained the most traction on social media, and gave me most pause, was of three women dressed in niqabs, who stripped them off on stage to chants of “take it off”, to reveal long hair and short dresses underneath. When I saw their faces, I knew exactly who I was looking at: women that my newsroom had been investigating with reporter Meg Clement since February this year; they are part of a dangerous, Islamophobic far-right group from France called Collectif Némésis.

They are part of a growing segment of the far right who use rhetoric around “protecting” or “saving” women and girls as justification for their hatred and racism. Némésis specifically focuses on claiming that women’s safety is tied to migration and the easily disproved idea that the only men who harm women are immigrants or non-white. Its founder, Alice Cordier, said that she was inspired to found the group in 2019 by “an article about a young woman being raped in her own garden by a migrant”.

In the UK, we have our own specific “femonationalist” groups such as the Women’s Safety Initiative, whose stated aims are to “expose the dangers of uncontrolled immigration [and] put women and girls first”, and the Pink Ladies, who’ve made a name for themselves in the past year by protesting outside of migrant hotels while chanting slogans such as “never trust a lefty with your kids”, and holding inflammatory banners about women’s safety.

But, even as these groups continue to grow, backed by billionaires such as Pierre-Édouard Stérin and politicians such as the Tory-turned-Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, there are cracks in the façade. The insincerity of stunts like that of Collectif Némésis is easy to see through: these women don’t actually care about Muslim women and girls, or what they do or do not wear – they are racists, and they are solely and utterly preoccupied with the fates of white people.

Meanwhile, hypocrisy abounds in the UK. Reporting revealed that of those arrested at the “racially motivated” riots during the summer of 2024, catalysed by the murders of young girls at a dance class in Southport, two in five had been previously reported to the police for domestic abuse. Researchers have for a long time made the connection between misogyny and far-right extremism – that connection hasn’t disappeared, even if they are using different, pseudo-feminist slogans to try to bolster their support base. Far-right politicians and movements do not support women’s rights.

In August last year, women’s groups put out a categorical statement which condemned the fact that “conversations about violence against women and girls are being hijacked by an anti-migrant agenda that fuels division, harms survivors and ultimately impedes the real work of tackling the root causes of society-wide violence, to the detriment of women and girls”.

At the march last weekend, Robinson was still leaning on the language of safety and protection when it comes to gender. He said to the crowd: “Two years ago, women were still too scared to speak out”. But unfortunately for him, other women aren’t afraid to speak out either.

I know that the women in my life, those who have been the victims of gender-based violence, which so often happens in the home (rather than being committed by “migrant men” on the streets); those whose feminism is expansive and welcoming; those who have fought too long and too hard to go backwards, will continue to call out the anti-feminist darkness at the heart of the far right’s indefensible movement until it rots and crumbles.

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is lead editor at Fuller. Read the full investigation into Collectif Némésis here. For more reporting on women and the far right, subscribe to Fuller’s newsletter.