‘What 1,000 hours of right-wing media taught me about persuasion’

Over the last two years I have spent over 1,000 hours watching GB News, listening to podcasts like TRIGGERnometry, reading Rupert Lowe’s X account, consuming conspiracy theories, and scrolling through some of the deeper, darker, less mainstream parts of the alt-right’s internet. 

None of it changed my politics. 

But it did change how I think political persuasion works. 

Because the biggest thing most progressives misunderstand about the right is that it doesn’t persuade through arguments. It persuades through affinity. 

This is a different, and much more effective, strategy of building and persuading an audience than the left’s approach. It is more effective at extending your base, and turning people who are ambivalent, or even disagree with you, into people who will silently sympathise or campaign for you. 

Meanwhile the left is losing voters it once took for granted. If we want different results, we can’t keep communicating in the same ways we always have, hoping things will change.

READ MORE: ‘The next general election will be won on vibes’

To win back Red Wall voters we need to stop treating the right’s media ecosystem as something to sneer at and start treating it as something to learn from. 

But how?

Most right-wing content isn’t actually ideological. It’s emotional. They create sympathy before agreement. People join emotionally before they agree intellectually. 

The audience doesn’t first agree that immigration is too high. They agree that politicians are lying, and then become receptive to ideological arguments. 

It goes something like this: Here is something outrageous, here is who is hiding it from you, and here is the community that sees through it. 

The left thinks persuasion is when people consume arguments and facts. 

The right understands persuasion happens when people join communities. They don’t persuade people, they recruit them. 

They do this through fairly simple tactics. Including (but not limited to)… 

1. They meet people where they already are 

I started out as a journalist and will always have a passion for traditional media. However, the right aren’t as sentimental. 

Traditional media informs, new media influences. 

This isn’t simply saying digital is important (hardly breaking news in 2026), it’s about targeting hyper-niche, local, online groups. The right has thousands of them. You’ve seen them, they’re the ones written in ALL CAPS!

The further you get away from the mainstream, the more impact you will have. Audiences turn into participants. If you can persuade them, you have an army on your hands. 

You can’t change hearts and minds if you only speak to your kind on Bluesky. 

You’d be surprised about how often a Facebook group about potholes becomes an anti-immigration or anti-ULEZ group. People don’t join because of ideology. Ideology arrives later. 

The right has done this exceptionally well on places like Facebook, Discord, 4chan, and Telegram. This is a vital part of the persuasion ecosystem. 

2. They reach people when they are emotionally receptive 

Westminster is obsessed with ‘the grid’, the coveted 8:10am slot on BBC Radio 4 Today, and the latest Patrick Maguire column. 

Normal people aren’t. 

The most powerful slot is the 9pm to midnight ‘second-screeners’. Those scrolling while watching TV, with a beer in hand, after the kids have gone to bed. That’s when the right thrive.

A post from right wing influencer Darren Grimes hitting all the key viral marks: late at night, video, person-centric, promoting outrage, and with a clear enemy. 

This is when viral political narratives start to take shape. When people are most likely to share content on X, Facebook & TikTok. When attention turns to action. 

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But this isn’t the time for long-form policy essays. This is the time for reaction clips and outrage stories. Choose topics that have enemies (while the right go for things like crime and immigration, the left should go for fat cats and landlords). Embrace the anti-establishment hour, talk about cultural issues, and lead with personality driven video commentary. 

3. They distribute ideas through clips, not essays 

The left love long-form. We love evidence and data. We thrive on Substacks and essays. In many cases, we actively object to short-form content as stuff that ‘rots your brain’. 

And long-form content does have a place when it comes to persuading. To make short-form out of. 

To illustrate my point, I have done some back-of-fag-packet analysis comparing the reach of three original long-form outputs from famous right wingers, with the reach of their X clips.

From the limited data available, Andrew Tate’s recent ‘Emergency Meeting’ livestreams peak at around 3,000 live concurrent viewers. But his clips shared on X in June averaged at around 850,000 views. 

Farage’s flagship GB News show apparently averages somewhere between 100,000-200,000 live watchers, while his clips in June on X averaged 885,000 views. 

Matt Goodwin’s book, Suicide of a Nation, has probably sold around 30,000 copies, while his X clips averaged four time more at about 127,000 views. 

The voters progressives most need to persuade aren’t going to read this Substack, they aren’t going to listen to the latest episode of Political Currency, and they aren’t fans of Any Questions. But they will consume your clip, especially if it’s funny, rude, or causes outrage. 

Don’t try to persuade 

Progressives often assume persuasion happens when people encounter a compelling argument. 

But after 1,000 hours inside the right-wing media ecosystem, I think something else is happening. 

The right rarely starts with ideology. 

It starts with identity. 

It starts with the feeling that somebody understands your frustrations. 

Agreement comes later. 

That’s the lesson I keep seeing, whether it’s GB News clips, local Facebook groups, or late night Telegram channels.

The right isn’t just building audiences. It’s building participants. 

It isn’t trying to persuade. It’s trying to join them. 

And until progressives understand that, we’ll keep mistaking communication for persuasion.

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