The rise of the far right
In the United Kingdom, the summers of 2024 and 2025 were shaken by far-right disorder. Leveraging crimes committed by racialised Britons and asylum seekers alike, various far-right political entrepreneurs on both sides of the Atlantic – from Tommy Robinson to Nigel Farage to Elon Musk – were successfully able to frame the persistent problem of male violence against women as uniquely racialised.
They argued that racialised men, especially Muslim migrant men, pose a threat to (White) women. Note that ‘women’ is racially unmarked but understood as referring to White women only; other racialised women’s experiences of sexual violence, as recently seen in the West Midlands, are studiously ignored by these self-appointed protectors of women.
This threat to White women is deemed, as a familiar part of the far-right playbook, to be symbolic of a broader threat to the imagined White nation. As a direct consequence of these crimes and online provocations, nationwide protests erupted, with a focus on the issue of migrants arriving on small boats, sexual violence and ‘protecting women and girls’.
It is noteworthy that the scope of the protests expanded within a year with disorder reported across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The situation in Ireland (on both sides of the border) is especially worrying with authorities there declaring that racist violence is becoming a ‘permacrisis’.
How emotions are policed and who gets to show their emotions in public
On 13 September 2025, arguably the largest far-right demonstration in British history took place in London. More than 150,000 people from across the country descended on the capital to protest against migration.
Among the protestors, a range of emotions was on display: anger and betrayal directed at so-called political, media and metropolitan elites who are to blame for the migration crisis and a lax border regime; fear, suspicion and hatred directed towards migrants and people of colour – regardless of their citizenship status. And, crucially, hope that by virtue of rallying this unprecedented number of people against migration, the popular discourse and policy priorities might shift decisively in their favour.
Emotions play an essential role in any kind of activism from the politically progressive to socially regressive. However, seemingly only far-right activists are legitimised to tap into and mobilise their ‘ugly feelings’ of anger, fear and yes, sometimes hatred, to achieve their goals.
Left activists are often stuck with ‘safe’ and high-minded emotions such as hope and optimism. From the campaigns of Barack Obama in 2008 to Zohran Mamdani in 2025, hope for change has been a key mobilising sentiment.
Where more subversive emotions are at play, such as anger, horror and grief as we have seen in the years of the pro-Palestine protests or the direct action of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, that activism has been branded problematic, dangerous and a threat to the established order.
Unlike the far-right protests which exhort us to understand ‘legitimate concerns’ and politically incorrect feelings about migration, race and belonging, few instances of empathy were extended to left issues, grievances and emotions about mass killings and the destruction of the planet.
The differing fates of the emotional registers of left and far-right protests reveal something important about who is sanctioned to publicly emote. Similar to the phenomenon of White women’s tears, in which White women crying in public often signals their innocence and prompts an authoritative response to resolve their grievance and to soothe them, public emotions are unequally available to different groups.
For certain left activists, hope is the only legitimate emotion that is publicly legible. We argue that kind of compulsory emoting around hope robs left activists of the necessary private and collective feelings of fear, anger, outrage, bitterness and betrayal that mobilise them to action.
The political power of conflicting feelings
A recognition of the ambivalence of the left position is important, in which a concomitant of emotions – self-serving and collective, noble and ignoble – are its motivation and that less high-minded feelings are also its birthright.
Consider the transformative global Black Lives Matter protests in 2013 and 2020, which were sparked and sustained by anger, grief and distrust of state institutions due to the systemic killings of Black people by police forces across Europe and the United States. Yes, hope played an important role, but it was always muddied in more pragmatic waters of mutual aid, bail funds, occupations and confrontations with the police.
Similarly, climate justice activists are motivated as much by fear, anxiety and anger about their stolen futures as they are by hope for change.
Why sitting with discomfort can fuel action
Indeed, doubt, hesitation and ambivalence are not obstacles to effective left activism but powerful tools for social change. Emotions that we normally associate with paralysis or non-action such as confusion or doubt are in fact important moments of learning that activists should not merely seek to quickly resolve and move past but rather use as a way to reflect and reset.
Left activists should refuse to show their emotions in expected and safe ways through compulsory hope but rather revel in discomfort and the power of unruly, unbecoming emotions.
After all, there is much to be angry and afraid about in this world and tapping into those legitimate feelings will help us all fight another day.
Akwugo Emejulu is Chair of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield.
Marlies Kustatscher is Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh.
Callum McGregor is Senior Lecturer in Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh.
Ambivalent Activism edited by Akwugo Emejulu, Marlies Kustatscher and Callum McGregor is available for £24.99 on the Bristol University Press website here.
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