There’s a major row brewing within the far right over the role of so-called ‘auditors’, the seedy propagandists who film confrontation for social media content, clicks and cash – and provide ready-made evidence to the police.

Dion Wragg is a little-known far-right foot soldier.  In his X bio, he describes himself as “Anglo Saxon English”. He likes to repost film montages glorifying the British Union of Fascists leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and praises the neo-nazi outfit, White Vanguard.

When the Southport riots erupted in the summer of 2024, he joined the mob that attacked the Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, housing asylum seekers.

‘Degenerate auditors’

He was one of the more than 90 people convicted for their part in the rioting at the hotel. He was sentenced to two years and four months for throwing debris at police officers and served a third of his sentence.

“8 months inside due to degenerate grifiting auditors posting videos online with clear faces of patriots at the protest!

“You’re not helping our cause, all you’re doing is damaging our movements…putting people’s freedom at risk to earn a few quid from views…They are basically grassing on the nationalists they claim to support!” he said on his X feed, last week.

The prosecution’s case against Wragg was built on content filmed by far-right supporters. “Every video they played to me in court was from GoPros of auditors”, he moaned.

The ludicrously named ‘auditors’ (a title that infers credibility to mask their sinister intent) engage in a particularly malicious form of far-right activism.

Profit from provocation

They are the bottom feeders of social media. Inherently confrontational, they often act out as beligrent, mouthy provocateurs, fueling the racist frenzy in the far-right online echo chambers, for likes, subscriptions and lots of cash.

Gangs of up to 30 auditors are ever-present at anti-migration and asylum hotel protests and far-right marches; they are digital scavengers hungry for conflict.

They also use their cameras to film and intimidate anti-fascist protestors. To keep the digital cash register ringing, they now turn up at any political event where their presence will create or increase tension.

For example, several were spotted at a Pro-Palestine march in Manchester last weekend.

Auditors or informers?

But a backlash within the far right itself against the motley band of rage entrepreneurs is emerging because their rampant filming is ruining lives. As Wragg highlighted, they are providing the police with a goldmine of evidence they need to nick England’s fascist thugs, doing the bidding of apex rabble rousers like Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage.

Since the ‘Farage riot’ in Southampton last week, which followed the conviction of Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh man, who was sentenced yesterday to a minimum of 21 years for the murder of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old Polish-British student, leading figures on the far right have been denouncing the auditors.

Steve Laws, a leader of Restore Britain’s hardline fascist wing, posted a warning on X.

“I’m yet again reminding you all to stop filming faces. If our guys are getting a bit tasty, don’t fucking film it. You’re putting them in the shit”.

Sam Melia, a leading member of Patriotic Alternative, who was only recently released from prison for inciting racial hatred, was more even forthright on X:

“Any uprising would be immediately nipped in the bud thanks to these auditor cunts who film every moment in HD”.

Auditor Thomas Moffitt, aka Young Bob, a precocious teenager who deliberately provokes and films trouble, uploaded footage of the mob in Southampton setting dumpsters on fire and pushing them into the police lines, an act he blamed on “mass migration”.

At least one of those pushing the burning bin into the police was clearly identifiable. The clip received over 3 million views.

Alex Yerbury, the leader of the minuscule National Rebirth Party, chided the youngster.

“Are you aware that by filming this, all you are doing is creating a pile of evidence that can be used against people that you sympathise with in court”, he lectured.

Fighting police

Yerbury has a particular reason to be annoyed.

Footage was posted, and widely shared, showing his Portsmouth branch organiser, Luke Jahn, in the front line of the trouble and fighting with police.

While the rumblings against the auditors are growing louder among the far-right leadership and rank-and-file, the auditors, or as one right-wing commentator aptly put it, “paytriots”,  will be reluctant to abandon their lucrative hustle chronicling carnage and race hate.

Anthony Barnes, aka AY Audits, a West Ham-supporting chirpy cockney, is one of the most successful  auditors with 142,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.

A Channel 4 investigation into the far-right auditors estimated that he could be earning between £10,000 and £20,000 from the social media content he harvests, supported by subscriptions and programmatic advertising from the biggest brands in the country that automatically upload to YouTube videos.

Barnes specialises in anti-migrant protests and calls himself the ‘hotel inspector’. He practices an inherently confrontational and often explicitly hostile form of “activism” that frequently becomes extremely invasive, coupled with long periods of him playing the free speech martyr when intercepted and challenged by police or security guards.

This is subsequently reframed on his YouTube channel as abuse directed at him, and it becomes the video’s narrative hook.

Southampton – a turning point?

AY Audits was one of the first to turn up at Southampton police station, and live-streamed the protests that turned violent. It was more than six hours of mostly boring digital slop.

Much of it featured Barnes, who obviously fancies himself a presenter, in front of the camera, glad-handing other auditors and protestors, mooching about smoking cigarettes, and imploring viewers to “keep sharing, keep caring”.

When Tommy Robinson appeared to give a speech outside Southampton Police Station, Barnes scored a shoutout from the UK’s most notorious race agitator.

Eventually, when the protests turned violent, and the police were being attacked, Barnes followed, filming the action, chanting “racist police of our streets!” and gleefully commenting when  bricks, industrial bins and traffic cones hit officers.

Eleven people have appeared in court so far in connection with the violence in Southampton. One man who pleaded guilty was captured on multiple video clips near the police line as he threw a brick in the direction of officers, Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court heard, BBC News reported. But Barnes had a good day, harvesting more than 230,000 views on his YouTube channel.

Threats fly

However, a few days later, Barnes was on the defensive about the content he had created in Southampton, facing growing criticism that his business model was sabotaging the far right and that he was essentially a “snitch” and a “grass”.

In a live-stream from his car, and smoking a roll-up ‘cigarette’, Barnes rambled for 50 minutes, insinuating that there could be violence if the damning accusations continued.

He said: “So we’ve addressed the grass and the snitiching. Never in a million years. I don’t know where some of these people get off as labelling people this and that. These words are very bad words to call people. Yeah, they’re very bad words to call people, and they could incite people to have a lot of trouble, yeah?”

The possibility of auditors violently clashing with their own political bedfellows – that could be the best social media content yet.