PRETTY much anyone who’s ever posted a remotely left-leaning, political post that’s gained some attention online will have faced the same thing: tens, if not hundreds – and for senior political figures, thousands – of comments from accounts advocating for hard right parties, many with Reform or Restore profile photos, calling for an election, and calling people liars or traitors.

They aim to portray far-right parties as naturally popular, and that their opinion is commonly held – but it’s important to remember that 3/4 of people don’t support them. Their support is not overwhelming or assured.

Like the deimatic threat display of a predator – puffing itself up to look big and scary – hard right activists use co-ordinated networks of WhatsApp groups to organise pile-ons.

These aren’t natural occurrences but artificially created. Looking at the comments of my social media posts – amongst polite disagreement and discussion between constituents, you’ll see the same few names crop up, with anger, bile, and name-calling.

What you don’t see, however, is that these are, very often, fully paid-up members of Reform. They masquerade as concerned citizens, but are modern, digital political activists; they have every right to campaign for their party, but they should be honest when they go about doing so, and about their methods. It is not just these frequent flyers, but all the other trolls and bots they mobilise.

On a national scale, we need to take a hard look at the current state of our political discourse and decide whether we want to import vitriolic, American-style polarisation. Elon Musk has pledged his support to Rupert Lowe, who has received over £70,000 from X.

This is the same social media platform my colleague Jess Asato, MP for Lowestoft, is suing after the site’s AI created non-consensual sexualised images of her, including a video Jess described as showing her being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault. When the AI was generating indecent pictures of children and the government considered banning the site, Lowe threatened to protest in the streets.

Even recently, following the tragic murder of Henry Novak, and despite his parents pleas for unity, not division, we saw Nigel Farage take to social media to call for “pure, cold, rage” – hours later we saw rioting in Southampton and 11 police officers injured.

In Makerfield, Reform’s candidate Robert Kenyon, has a striking social media history. Robert proudly declared himself a “sexist”, said women get abortions for “vanity purposes” and that they “can’t ref, drive or give directions”. Robert’s defence is that he can’t be sexist because… his mum and sister are women.

The far-right’s online playbook is well known; co-ordinated dogpiles, extreme language, and nasty behaviour. Often, quite serious topics receive a tell-tale, derisory laughing reactions. I’m sure they’ll prove my point when this article is shared on social media.

We must decide whether to accept this as our new politics, or if we need a proper conversation about how politicians conduct themselves both on and offline, and the responsibility of social media companies to prevent frequent abuse.