Olivia Laing: far-right groups weaponise loneliness
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- Olivia Laing argues that far-right groups including Tommy Robinson's 'Unite the Kingdom' rallies exploit loneliness as a recruitment tool, offering 'potent narratives' that displace grievance onto others who can then be hated and attacked
- Laing cites Hannah Arendt's 'The Origins of Totalitarianism' — 'loneliness is the common ground of terror' — to argue the emotion curdles into rage and a desire for retribution rather than arising in a vacuum
- Incel ideology attracted Elliot Rodger, who explicitly blamed loneliness in his 2014 manifesto 'My Twisted World' and reframed personal rejection as systematic exclusion by women, with no cure offered beyond 'violent punishment'
- Andrew Tate promotes toxic masculinity as a cure for loneliness that Laing says actually entrenches it by shutting down the vulnerability and empathy required for intimacy and friendship
- AI companion products including Replika, MyAI, Gylvessa, DreamGF, Candy and Grok's 'Lolita-style' Ani are marketed as cures for isolation but risk entrenching loneliness by deskilling users in the two-way demands of human relationships
- Loneliness statistics cited in the essay include the 2024 Health Survey for England finding 22% of adults feel lonely at least some of the time and 6% (around 4 million) often or always, the 2025 WHO report that one in six people globally are lonely, and a British Red Cross finding that 41% felt lonelier during the pandemic
- Theresa May appointed the world's first minister for loneliness in 2018, but Laing credits the Covid-19 pandemic — and the lockdowns' mass encounter with isolation — for most of the reduced stigma around the topic
Why it matters: Laing reframes a widely discussed public-health problem as a political one: if loneliness is a structural vulnerability that far-right recruiters, incel ideology, and now AI companion apps actively exploit, then policy responses focused only on individual therapy or dating miss the point. The 2024 English survey's finding that loneliness correlates strongly with area deprivation underpins her argument that the remedy is community infrastructure — transport, green space, social centres — not a romantic partner, human or simulated.
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