Behind their seemingly innocuous name is a radical agenda that pushes antisemitic conspiracy theories and a long-term plan to dismantle liberal democracy and reshape Britain.
Don’t be fooled by the name, the Basketweavers are anything but a quant village hall craft club. A new investigation by the anti-racism organisation Hope not Hate has exposed them as one of the most organised and ideologically extreme far-right networks in Britain, with over 1,300 vetted UK members and an additional 1,100 in the US, Europe, Australia and beyond.
Behind their seemingly innocuous name is a radical agenda that pushes antisemitic conspiracy theories and a long-term plan to dismantle liberal democracy and reshape Britain.
The question now is: how close are they to entering the political mainstream? And just how dangerous could they become?
Who are the Basketweavers?
Hope not Hate researcher Harry Shukman, who went undercover for his book Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right, documenting infiltration into nine extremist groups, describes how the Basketweavers attract members from a wide range of backgrounds. While some work as delivery drivers, cleaners, or on factory floors, the majority are young, middle-class professionals, many of whom have attended university.
“All of my university professors were Marxists, Jewish, or worse: both,” Shukman heard one Basketweaver complain. Many of them work in fields such as finance, engineering, IT, pharmaceuticals, and the civil service. “I got the sense that nobody was that happy in their jobs,” he noted.
Unlike many far-right groups that remain largely online, the Basketweavers prioritise real-world interaction. Their model is built around social bonding activities, including camping trips, pub nights, and hikes, where extremist ideas can be introduced and without the scrutiny digital platforms receive.
After passing the group’s vetting process, comprising of a questionnaire probing into political views on topics like the Israel/Palestine conflict, Hope not Hate’s undercover reporter gained access to the Basketweavers’ private messaging server on Discord. From there, he was invited to attend events around the UK, where veterans from groups like Patriotic Alternative, Generation Identity UK, and the Traditional Britain Group mingled and recruited.
Shukman describes the Basketweavers as a deeply racist network, shaped by extremist, antisemitic influencers, that promote conspiracy theories about Jewish control of global affairs and harbour violent fantasies of murdering refugees. Their goals include radicalising isolated young men, building a parallel society, and forging a new elite to rule Britain. One member was overheard praising Hitler’s “good ideas.”
Neema Parvini
At the centre of this vision is Neema Parvini, also known as “Academic Agent,” a former university lecturer and YouTuber with a large following. Parvina was reportedly ‘let go’ (as the euphemism has it) from the University of Surrey due to his far-right activism, including tweeting that “blacks are closer to homo erectus” and that black and white people are “different species.” He is currently though, an honorary research fellow at the private University of Buckingham.
Parvina helped co-found the Basketweavers alongside far-right influencer Mark Houghton.
Despite his far-right views, activism and connections, in March 2024, Parvini was interviewed by Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News, where he was treated as a serious commentator on the topic of social cohesion. Rees-Mogg described Parvini as an “academic and author,” providing him with a platform to lambast the government for the “failure of the Conservative Party to wield power for friends and against enemies while in office.” On his programme, the former Tory cabinet minister said he was “very pleased” to be joined by Parvini, allowing him to plug his latest book, and nodding quietly while his guest berated the government for six minutes.
The Basketweavers’ ambitions are funnelled through far-right conferences like Scyldings, self-described as the “most important and influential conservative conference of the year.” Held in venues, ranging from the University of Warwick, which was forced to apologise after the conference sparked a backlash among students but said it had “no legal grounds to cancel the event,” to Nashville, figures like Parvin and Curtis Yarvin, whose ideas have influenced US Vice President JD Vance, speak to a carefully curated audience. Such conferences are expensive, take place behind closed-doors, and are marketed as elite intellectual spaces. But their real purpose is to groom future leaders for a post-democratic Britain.
Lotus Eaters, Carl Benjamin and Liz Truss
Despite their anonymity, Basketweavers are embedded in a broader far-right media ecosystem, including the Lotus Eaters podcast, launched by Carl Benjamin (aka the “Sargon of Akkad”) in November 2020.
Benjamin previously gained notoriety as a failed UKIP candidate for the European Parliament, who was infamously covered in milkshake while on the campaign trail in 2019.
He has defended his use of the N-word by saying he “[finds] racist jokes funny”, and provoked widespread condemnation, and a police investigation, for saying he “wouldn’t even rape” Labour MP Jess Phillips.
The comment, made in 2016, came as Phillips was speaking out about the flood of rape and death threats targeting female MPs online.
Benjamin has also expressed support for the Great Replacement theory, a white nationalist conspiracy that claims “elites” are deliberately replacing native white Europeans with immigrants. The theory, which lacks any credible evidence, has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “racist” and “inherently white supremacist.”
The same conspiracy has been echoed by public figures across the far right. Donald Trump, Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán have all referenced it. In February, Nigel Farage shared the same narrative at a farmers’ rally, claiming the Labour government had a “sinister agenda” to seize “lots of land” in preparation for “another five million people” arriving in the UK.
A description on the Benajmin-founded Lotus Eaters website reads: “We aim to discover what is poisoning our societies and what the solution to these problems might be. Whatever is causing the rot eating into the heart of the modern world must be identifiable and able to be countered.”
The site claims to offer “a more calm, thoughtful and nourishing alternative” to what it calls “the raging cyclone of clickbait, misinformation and misinterpretation” found elsewhere online.
In truth, however, Lotus Eaters traffics incendiary and conspiratorial content. Visit it, if you dare. Podcast episodes have explored themes such as “Straight is the New Gay,” “Everything is Antisemitism,” and “Sadiq Khan Joins the Far Right.”
Remarkably, the podcast has attracted attention from senior Conservative figures. In May 2024, former prime minister Liz Truss appeared on Lotus Eaters, using the platform to attack “gender ideology” and “degrowthers,” while indulging in language and ideas steeped in conspiratorial thinking. Her decision to engage with a platform linked to eugenics and Holocaust denial reveals a growing pipeline between fringe far-right spaces and embattled mainstream politicians seeking relevance.
Following Truss’s appearance on the podcast, Jess Phillips wrote to then prime minister Rishi Sunak, urging him to deselect Truss as the party’s candidate for South West Norfolk. Phillips noted the podcast’s associations with hate speech and extremism, including the fact that it is run by the same individual who once publicly joked about raping her.
“It is clear that anyone willing to appear on this hateful platform is not suitable to be a candidate for any political party. Even Reform UK deselected one of its candidates after his harmful views and work as a content creator for Lotus Eaters was exposed,” she said.
Sunak refused to act but fortunately the good people of South West Norfolk did the job for us all in the general election.
Beowulf Foundation
Basketweavers’ ambitions extend beyond ideology. Operating through a parent entity called the Beowulf Foundation, a volunteer-based organisation that claims to draw inspiration from the epic hero Beowulf, “who courageously faced and overcame obstacles to protect his community,” members are working to lay the groundwork for a breakaway white nationalist future. The group is focused on building real-world infrastructure, including homeschooling networks and “off-grid” communities designed to function outside mainstream society.
“Under the auspices of the Beowulf Foundation, members hope to launch a book publishing company and a digital payments system that would prevent users from being “debanked,”” writes Hope not Hate.
Rather than engage in mainstream politics, the Basketweavers seem focused on radicalising isolated young men through in-person social events, creating a parallel society with its own economy, culture, and institutions. Their long-term strategy appears to be aimed at creating a tight-knit, like-minded group that lives outside the mainstream and slowly gains the power to change society from the margins.
Media silence
Despite Harry Shukman’s exposé, the Basketweavers have remained largely absent from media coverage. One of the few exceptions is UnHerd, where criminology lecturer Simon Cottee reviewed Shukman’s book The Year of the Rat. Cottee dismissed the book as full of “trite clichés” that, in his view, obscure more than they reveal.
“The Year of the Rat is a revealing book,” he writes, “but not in the way it aspires to be. What the book reveals instead, despite its driving thesis, is the dire state of Britain’s far-right, which, far from becoming “mainstream”, is so exotically fringe and weird that most normies wouldn’t even have heard of its various ideologues and acolytes. It also reveals the dire state of a progressive mindset that can’t seem to discriminate between Alan Partridge-sounding populists such as Nigel Farage on the one hand and mouth-frothing racists on the other.”
That take, it could be argued, is naive and risks underestimating the threat. While far-right groups may mask themselves in eccentricity, their underlying intent is far from harmless.
As journalist Andrew Anthony, who once closely followed British National Party leader Nick Griffin, noted in his review of Shukman’s book, the broader political atmosphere has unmistakably grown darker and more menacing.
“Much of that is to do with Donald Trump’s second presidency in the US, which has not only produced a right-wing authoritarian-leaning government, but also empowered far-right fellow travellers both in the US and abroad, including in the UK.”
Indeed, after Trump’s landslide return to office, the global far-right celebrated, and quickly reasserted itself online, amplifying its ideology. In the UK, even with Labour’s win, influential political figures echo Trumpian rhetoric. Liz Truss, for example, has openly courted platforms associated with far-right ideologies, while Nigel Farage continues to stoke culture wars and anti-migrant narratives with populist fervour.
Last summer’s far-right riots following disinformation around the Southport attack, sadly, demonstrated this shift. When extremist ideologies, like the Great Replacement theory are supported by leaders like Trump, Orban and even Farage, they’re no longer seen as fringe, and they begin to shape mainstream discourse. And that, ultimately, is what makes extremist groups like Basketweavers dangerous and the work of Harry Shukman more important than ever.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
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