The "MAGA-esque" YouTube Channel Boosting Rupert Lowe Online
The Lotus Eaters Media (YouTube)
6 min read
Rupert Lowe this week became the first British politician to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience. The podcast has more British listeners than the BBC's Today programme, and the interview with Lowe drew well over 1m views within the first 24 hours.
His appearance was not without controversy. Politicians in Scotland expressed outrage over Lowe describing the Dunblane school massacre as “one murder” in a discussion about UK gun law. A Restore Britain spokesperson later said: “Rupert was clearly referring to one incident.”
The interview was nevertheless the latest example of the Restore Britain leader and Great Yarmouth MP tapping into a digital landscape that Britain's mainstream political parties are still getting to grips with.
Lee Cain, former Downing Street Director of Communications and founder of Charlesbye Strategy, told PoliticsHome that insurgent parties such as Restore Britain are using digital platforms to reach audiences that the mainstream parties have “simply stopped reaching”.
“Westminster is always the last place to learn modern comms style; it rejects innovation because it is so focused on traditional print media and fails to appreciate or understand how people are consuming news outside the bubble,” Cain said.
The Restore Britain-supporting Lotus Eaters podcast is another example of Lowe's digital strategy.
The channel currently has over half a million YouTube subscribers and, at the time of writing, had received more than a million views on YouTube alone in the last week. It regularly hosts Restore Britain party officials such as campaigns director and spokesman Charlie Downes and writer and senior fellow Harrison Pitt, with Lowe himself appearing a number of times.
Launched in 2020, Lotus Eaters is run by hard-right YouTuber and political commentator Carl Benjamin, known also as Sargon of Akkad – a reference to the first emperor in history. Benjamin is a staunch supporter of "remigration" and has previously called for “10 years of zero immigration”.
Speaking to PoliticsHome about his journey to Restore Britain, Benjamin said he had been left "very dissatisfied with any of the parties on the left", with one of the reasons being that they "fail to recognise or even acknowledge that there are a native people in the islands of Britain".
"We've been looking for a party that recognises that actually the British people are the people with the primary claim to these islands, and Restore Britain is the only one in the mainstream that has articulated that message."
The name, Lotus Eaters, is, according to Benjamin, an “esoteric reference” to Book 9 of The Odyssey. In the text, some of Odysseus’ men who are sent to gather information from the “Lotus Eaters” eat the flower themselves and instantly forget the purpose of their journey and their wish to return home.
Benjamin said in a video on the subject several years ago that the tale is “a representation of the ethos of the site” – a place to seek respite from “the constant stream of rage and clickbait you can’t really avoid on the internet… somewhere where we can provide worthwhile content that helps you better understand the world and yourself as we also work to understand the world and ourselves better than we did yesterday.”
The channel, based in Swindon, does not just cover British political content, with other videos looking at politics abroad and one defending the "great" Star Wars prequels. The channel offers a paid-up membership, with subscription plans running up to £30 a month. The website also offers courses including in Ancient Greek Virtue Ethics.
Asked by PoliticsHome if the channel ever donates money to Restore Britain, or receives it from the party, Benjamin said: "The answer to that is no, but that's not really your business, is it?"
A disclaimer on the YouTube channel states it is promoted by Lotus Eater Media on behalf of Restore Britain. Benjamin says that this is to ensure that if any presenters want to stand for election in the future, they do not fall foul of the law.
Other hosts include Benjamin “Beau” Dade, Firas Modad, and Dan Tubb. The podcast has also platformed Callum Barker, previously an activist for the far-right Homeland Party – a splinter organisation from neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative.
Restore Britain figures have used the podcast as a place to discuss party strategy.
For example, speaking on the Lotus Eaters last month about the upcoming Greater Manchester mayoral election, Downes said the contest would “probably require a lot less manpower” than the recent Makerfield by-election because it's going to be "an air war".
“Our view is that the air war is going to be where that particular election is won, which means that we don't need to mobilise thousands of our activists on quite such a regular basis… so we will have the capacity to continue to grow the team whilst that is going on.”
Alan Finlayson, Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, told PoliticsHome that the use of digital allows people to become “ideological entrepreneurs who can make a living from producing political content”. He added that this is something Benjamin is “very practiced and experienced at”.
“You can make a living from that, so that means also that people from a much wider political spectrum can find a space they couldn't find on the older regulated platforms, people who were very dispersed with fringe views.”
Finlayson pointed to individuals such as flat-earthers, or those on the radical right. Now, Finlayson said, they can “find each other and amplify each other’s message and become part of large groups, so all that's changed the landscape and the noise and sound of politics”.
He added: “These offer an opportunity for people, often people not engaged in politics before, or people with fringe political views, to feel their power and feel like they're deeply known, and they're being recruited to a much larger movement that they can represent in their communities and workplaces.”
On the podcast style, Finlayson said it is "MAGA-esque" – a reference to the pro-Donald Trump movement in the US – in the sense that "it is positioning itself as militantly against the mainstream. And it's also MAGA-esque in the sense that it is very conscious of breaking the rules, at least claiming to break the rules of discourse.
"And to revel in, we're not going to be careful, we're going to say what we want, we're free speech people, it does a lot of that."
This is something Benjamin rejects. "You're trying to apply an American phenomenon onto a foreign country. It just doesn't track. MAGA is a specifically ideological movement and patriotic movement that applies to America and not Britain."
Despite helping to set up the Swindon branch of Restore Britain, Benjamin said he was not planning to put himself forward as a candidate.
"It's not a very pleasant thing to do. The people in the media are generally bad people. Almost every single one of them is a paid liar, someone who is out to hurt you, out to hurt your reputation with your friends and your family, because not only do they gain gratification from taking these scalps, but they think that they're very influential in determining the course of the country. And so I've decided I just don't really want to do that."
