Boriswave, fighting-age men, cultural Marxism: how the far right is changing how we speak | The far right

At a press conference in September, Reform UK announced a seismic policy proposal: an end to indefinite stay for immigrants. This change, which would radically transform the British immigration system, was justified by the supposed need to combat the “Boris wave”.

At first glance, the Boriswave portmanteau could be understood as a simple description of the pattern of increased post-Brexit migration but, as the reactionary digital policy expert Dr Robert Topinka explain to Helen Piddthe term was generated by the “extremely online far right” and originally used as a racial epithet. Topinka describes how it conveys a right-wing framing, whether its users are aware of it or not.

The two discuss how far-right terms enter mainstream political conversations, the idea that politics is “downstream of culture,” why the right has recently been more successful in shaping our political language, and how we as individuals should approach these terms.

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