He sits alone in his house, laptop glowing in the dark. He\u2019s not a teenager holed up in a gaming den, nor an elderly retiree falling for email scams. He\u2019s in his fifties, maybe sixties. A mortgage, a family WhatsApp group, a job that once gave him purpose \u2014 all feel smaller, more precarious, now. He scrolls, shares articles, and drifts into forums where outrage is indistinguishable from truth. Slowly, his world narrows, discontent becoming something darker.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, public attention has fixated elsewhere: on young extremists or retirees vulnerable to scams. Those in the middle \u2013 digitally connected, socially influential \u2013 are largely ignored. Yet this group is unusually vulnerable, and uniquely dangerous.<\/p>\n
The 2024 England and Northern Ireland riots revealed that far-right thuggery is no longer confined to the young. Many rioters were middle-aged, in their 40s, 50s, and 60s \u2013 a noticeable shift over time. During the 2011 England riots, just 5.6 per cent <\/a>of court defendants were over 40. By contrast, a Guardian sample of the first 500 rioters charged in 2024 found more than a third<\/a> \u2014 34.6 per cent \u2014 were in that age group.\u00a0<\/p>\n Government research reinforces that point. A 2022 Ministry of Justice report note<\/a>d that pathways to radicalisation online were often \u201cmost evident for older rather than younger individuals\u201d.\u00a0 The Southport riots proved just that: a lie about the perpetrator\u2019s identity rippled through social media, mobilising hundreds within hours. Yet middle-aged extremism rarely features in our conversations about radicalisation; a phenomenon still largely seen through the lens of angry, young men.\u00a0<\/p>\n Blind spots<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr Sara Wilford, Associate Professor at De Montford University, has led pioneering research into the radicalisation of people in their 40s to mid-60s, concluding that the dangers of this group are \u201cflying under the radar among authorities concerned about radicalisation\u201d. Her findings challenge assumptions about the role of ignorance or disengagement in extremism. After all, this is not a group of digital na\u00effs. They are politically active, socially and economically influential, but navigating online spaces not designed for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Dr Wilford, much of this phenomenon stems from the way society treats the middle-aged. \u201cThis is borne out by the way the media \u2014 and I\u2019m talking marketing as well, the whole ecosystem \u2014 treats this age group,\u201d Wilford tells The New World.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt 50, you\u2019re considered over the hill. You can\u2019t get a job if you\u2019ve lost one. You\u2019re seen as not worth training. You\u2019re expensive. You\u2019re a technophobe. These sorts of ideas permeate employers\u2019 minds. So you can find that \u2013 at 50 \u2013 your whole life feels over. You feel like you\u2019re on the scrap heap.\u201d<\/p>\n This invisibility breeds resentment, creating fertile ground for some middle-aged individuals to drift into the conspiratorial corners of the internet. And, unlike younger radicals who grew up educated about online manipulation, the middle-aged entered the digital world as adults with the assumption that their life experience equips them to navigate it as easily as the physical world.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re the ones giving the advice. Why would we need to learn anything? We\u2019ve got it all sorted,\u201d Wilford explains. Yet the wider culture sends the same message back: \u201cWe\u2019re not marketed to, we\u2019re ignored \u2014 it\u2019s almost a confirmation that no one needs to talk to us. Society assumes this group has it sorted, that they\u2019ve been guided through life and know what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Middle age is also a period of intense life shocks \u2014 divorce, redundancy, bereavement \u2014 which research from RAND <\/a>shows can fuel susceptibility to extremist narratives. As Wilford notes, many in this age group experience isolation just as they are searching for meaning, and online, they find communities ready to supply it.<\/p>\n The calls are coming from inside the House (of Representatives)<\/strong><\/p>\n But of course middle-aged radicalisation doesn\u2019t exist only at the margins.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wilford\u2019s research reveals a twin phenomenon: while some men drift into extremism through isolation and invisibility, another \u2014 highly successful, influential, powerful \u2014 move toward harder, more extreme worldviews from the opposite direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n The signs are visible in the corridors of power across the world. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has hardened his anti-migrant rhetoric, proposing mass deportations and calling Channel arrivals<\/a> an \u201cinvasion\u201d and a \u201cscourge,\u201d with Tory figures like Robert Jenrick following his lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n Across the Atlantic, Elon Musk \u2014 the world\u2019s richest man and owner of X \u2014 appears radicalised by the ecosystem he controls. Spending nearly $300\u202fmillion supporting Trump\u2019s campaign<\/a>, the Tesla founder presided over the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and has since tumbled down his own algorithmic rabbit hole, amplifying far-right narratives, calling for violence on UK streets<\/a>, and backing far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who claims Musk is covering his legal costs.<\/a><\/p>\n Trump, though older, exemplifies the same phenomenon, surrounding himself with radical-right middle-aged ideologues: JD Vance, his anti-abortion Christian conservative vice-president, Stephen Miller, architect of his harshest anti-immigration policies; and Peter Thiel, Palantir founder and Silicon Valley financier. These men are hardly marginal figures, they run the show. Far from isolated, they are catered to, shaping our political systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n These are the two faces of middle-aged radicalisation: the unseen: ignored and isolated; and the \u201chighly successful.\u201d \u201c[The latter are] the most dangerous of all,\u201d Wilford explains. \u201cThey are not disgruntled, looking for power. They are in the shadows. They bankroll others.\u201d<\/p>\n Radicalisation \u2013 or as the system intended?<\/strong><\/p>\n For Dr Ian Hughes, academic and author of Dangerous Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy, we are reaching a dangerous tipping point.\u00a0<\/p>\n He argues that while social institutions have long rewarded leaders with dangerous and extreme qualities, the present concentration of power in the hands of these men is existential. \u201cWhen inequality is high, democracy is failing, and crises are everywhere, it\u2019s not surprising that these kinds of leaders rise,\u201d he tells The New World. \u201cWe\u2019re now in a downward spiral\u2014greater inequality, more aggression, more division. These leaders are actively trying to annihilate the social values they envy: love, care, equality.\u201d<\/p>\n Hughes challenges the idea that this is some mass psychological radicalisation. Instead, he sees a collapse of guardrails \u2013 both in offices of power and across society \u2013 which is causing a shift toward extremism. \u201cI\u2019m not sure these men are becoming radicalised. What\u2019s changing is the culture around them; it\u2019s enabling them to express psychology that was always there,\u201d he explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wilford observes a similar pattern: many of the \u201cradicalised\u201d middle-aged people she studied had kept their views quiet for years, but online anonymity and constant exposure to like-minded voices made them acceptable. Social media is central to this process, as echo\u2011chamber dynamics amplify extreme views, normalising what was once taboo.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the 2024 Southport attack, anti\u2011Muslim hate on Telegram surged by 276 per cent,<\/a> and anti\u2011migrant posts on X more than doubled. For Hughes, it is a \u201cglobal ecosystem deliberately used to undermine democracy,\u201d one that encourages people to act on impulses they would once have restrained.<\/p>\n Nowhere is the removal of guardrails more evident than in Trump\u2019s second term. The restraints that once held him back \u2013\u00a0 moderating advisors, civil-service resistance, judicial oversight, party discipline, and a semi-independent media \u2013 have largely collapsed.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the UK, the situation is strikingly similar. The Conservatives have abandoned their moderate wing to chase Reform UK\u2019s hard-right voters. GB News, a conduit for conspiracy and grievance, now averages 81,000 daily viewers \u2013 surpassing the BBC News Channel in key slots \u2013 and is on track to become the UK\u2019s largest news channel by 2028<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, local journalism has collapsed, the BBC has been weakened from the inside out, and unregulated social media amplifies outrage without scrutiny. With institutions weakened and trust and confidence in government at a record low<\/a>, Britain has lost many of the stabilising forces that once contained extremism.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cViolence is latent in society all the time, but we have checks and balances that stop that violence from becoming overt,\u201d Hughes observes. \u201cDemocracy is really a system of defences that keeps a lid on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Middle-aged militants<\/strong><\/p>\n Taken together, this is not a story about vulnerable groups at the fringes of society, but a political age moulded by a group of middle-aged men. One group falls downward into radicalisation because society has ignored them; the other climbs upward into extremism because it has enabled them.\u00a0<\/p>\n The result is a dangerous symmetry. The isolated man in his living room finds purpose in the ideas pushed by the powerful man in the Situation Room. The powerful man finds a receptive audience in the anger brewing below. What looks like a wave of individual radicalisations is in fact one big feedback loop.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both Wilford and Hughes are clear that the solution cannot lie with the individual alone. Middle-aged people are the only demographic with no meaningful protections, no targeted guidance, and no dedicated interventions. Ofcom commissions media literacy training<\/a> for the young and the elderly, while Prevent\u2019s publicly available materials<\/a> focus heavily on younger cohorts. Yet the group that is active online, most politically influential, and most socially overlooked is the one with very little support.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can start building initiatives actually aimed at this middle-aged group and acknowledging their skills,\u201d Wilford says. But right now, even the idea feels culturally awkward. \u201cAre you really going to report the middle-aged guy in Aldi? Most initiatives are aimed at young people. Even if you report an older person to prevent radicalisation, the materials are not age-appropriate.\u201d Her team has created age-specific guidance, but she stresses that the first step is simply recognising this group as vulnerable \u2014 and acting as though that vulnerability matters.<\/p>\n For the powerful men at the other end of the spectrum, the answer is more uncomfortable. The issue is not that they need to be \u201ceducated,\u201d but that the democratic constraints that once contained their worst instincts have eroded. Reversing that means rebuilding the institutions that keep power in check: independent media, functioning parliaments, an empowered civil service and political systems that stop rewarding extremity with attention and electoral gain.<\/p>\n Despite their different emphases, both scholars agree on one essential point: none of this will happen unless we admit what is happening. This group are not a footnote in the story of rising extremism: they are its centre of gravity.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, as Hughes argues, the scale of the challenge requires something society has never attempted: a reckoning with our institutions, and their susceptibility to bend to those who want to destroy them. \u201c[We need] a mass conversation that acknowledges the spiral we\u2019re in and thinks seriously about how to rethink our institutions. We\u2019ve never done it before in history,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He sits alone in his house, laptop glowing in the dark. 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