Whether MaxTempers is fascist or not the left needs an answer to Motability-type questions

Social Democracy's future depends on the left not copping out of answering difficult questions

Do Right-wing anon accounts on Xitter influence government policy? Are these anon accounts fascist? How should we approach them?

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Government responds to trad media headlines

Headlines are decided by tabloid and national paper editors who are sensitive to what’s viral, especially on Xitter where they spend most of their time. The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the Daily Express are all masters of the rage-bait headline.

As more people consume news online rather than buying papers, the editorial policy of these papers has shifted to adapt to that. When something makes it to the front page of the Telegraph or the Sun, the government is compelled to respond to it, because their ministers will be asked about it on their morning rounds and their media spinners will be asked to give lines. To give a line they need to have a policy. Remember also that a lot of the up-and-coming political correspondents and editors for these papers are millennial right-wingers whose politics crystallised on these apps.

In the pre-Elon Twitter era, leftist causes benefited from this, too. This is why we have weird Americanisms cannibalising our policy debates across the political spectrum. Also, remember that at the time, right-wing media called every garden-variety social democrat a communist, so I don’t have too much sympathy for the same cohort of people now complaining about being called far right. Take it like a man you snowflakes !!!! Worst things have happened to better people !!!!

Are the BNOC right-wing anon accounts fascists? Here is what ChatGPT tells me fascism is:

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology characterized by a powerful, dictatorial leader, a centralized autocratic government, and the forceful suppression of opposition. It subordinates individual interests to the “perceived interest of the nation or race” and is defined by aggressive nationalism, militarism, and the strong regimentation of society and the economy.

By that metric, a lot of the new right-wingers we see behind anonymous accounts are at the very least fascist curious. If the above had them in power, they would not mind it. That is what they say both in their online posts and when you speak to them in person. This is not necessarily because they are violent or deeply immoral, but because they are as frustrated as the rest of us with state dysfunction, the erosion of the middle class and the decaying public realm they are expected to raise families in. I have no need, nor do I think it is in my political interest as a left-winger, to assign the most degenerate motive to my political enemies. I do not know MaxTempers’ deep ideological motives, nor do I think it is important I find them. I do not think he is far right from what I have seen, but let me know if you’ve seen evidence to the contrary. If MaxTempers and others like him are throwing a ball, I am either catching or batting it. Dodging and heckling from the sidelines is for cowards.

I know many of the “I didn’t leave the Tory party, the Tory party left me” types are fascist-curious however because I hang out with people like this out of curiosity, masochistic compulsion and machiavellianism, and I find it pathetic when they are complaining about being called that by lefties when they will literally use the word ‘fascist’ to describe themselves too when they are among their tribe. I don’t call myself ‘communist’ among Labour people, because I really don’t associate with any elements of it. I don’t find it intellectually, politically or aesthetically appealing. The new Reform youts and Mussolini on the other hand…

Broken Clock right twice a day

Here is where they are right: lefties will use the accusation of fascism as a cover for not having, or not wanting to express, an opinion on thorny policy issues that make more losers than winners, and that spike division.

So, for example, MaxTempers will tweet about all sorts of things. He is best known recently for his investigations into the use and abuse of the Motability scheme.

I listened to a BBC ‘More or Less’ explainer on motability numbers, which focused on Kemi Badenoch’s claim at the Conservative Party Conference that millions of people are getting free cars from the government because they have anxiety and ADHD:

“Motability has become big news in recent months. For years, it was a low-profile scheme that allowed disabled people who were assessed as needing extra support with their mobility to get a new car with insurance and servicing through the Motability scheme. In exchange for that, they accept a lower cash payment from their disability benefit.

But then this year, it came to light that 20% of new cars are now bought through the Motability scheme. In Northern Ireland, the figure rises to 50%. And that sounds like a lot of cars.

But is it true that millions of people are getting Motability cars for conditions such as ADHD and anxiety?”

They invited Tom Waters from the Institute of Fiscal Studies to give a rebuttal to that claim:

“So if we look at the number of people who are working age who are getting disability benefits, there’s about 600,000, a little bit less than 600,000, that are getting it for things like anxiety disorders and ADHD. Of those, about a third or so, about 190,000 get what’s called the enhanced mobility element of the benefit, and that’s what’s required to get a car through Motability. But it’s worth noting, certainly not everyone who gets that will have a car, but that’s the minimum requirement.”

“So Motability say that they have 860,000 people who currently have a vehicle through them. It’s worth noting that’s not all cars. They also provide scooters and wheelchairs.”

This podcast examines the numbers in claims made in the public domain to verify their accuracy. It makes sense that they are pedantic about this, and if only 860,000 people get a motability car, then that is not literally millions. However, Kemi’s speech did not say that millions get a car, but that millions get benefits for anxiety and ADHD:

“Millions are getting benefits for anxiety and ADHD, along with a free Motability car.”

It is not unfair to say she sexed up her claim with the motability car bit in the end. It is impossible to know the exact number of people who receive benefits for only ADHD and anxiety, as official figures group mental health conditions together. Well over half a million people are now claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP) for anxiety and mood disorders, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The most recent figures show 633,000 people were claiming the benefit with these conditions by July 2025, up by over 44,000 since the general election.

So we don’t know exactly how many people receive benefits only for anxiety and ADHD, let alone how many of those get a motability car, but that disclaimer alone is not the slum dung against these anonymous right-wing accounts we would like it to be. Voters are not relieved that only a few thousand are using the system in ways they find inappropriate, rather than millions.

“If you look at the benefit as a whole that gets you onto Motability, so person with a pension payment, there’s about 88,000 people who are getting it for ADHD.

Of those, about half of them, 43,000 get this enhanced mobility award. That means they could, in principle, they could get a car through Motability. But 43,000 in the grand scheme of the number of people claiming the benefit is fairly small.

And again, as we’ve been saying, it won’t be all of those 43,000 who do get a car through the scheme.

These 43,000 claimants are quite interesting from a data perspective. 21,000 of them, nearly half, are very young, age 16 to 19. Only about 7,000 are over 30.”

Now we already know that TikTok and Reddit are full of people giving advice on how to hack the benefits system to maximise the benefits you receive. It is not improbable to assume that this partly explains why younger people primarily get motability cars for these conditions, given that they are the most likely to come across this advice.

The point of crunching these numbers for some mainstream journalists or liberal figures is to show that the claims from these fascist-curious accounts are exaggerated.

Indeed, I don’t think any politician, especially a left-wing one, should spend too much political capital or media airspace discussing these occurrences because they are low-feedback issues. The ROI is minuscule compared to our bigger problems that the government should be talking about: lack of cheap and stable energy, crumbling infrastructure, expensive housing, the social care and pension time bomb, and the lack of foundational industries, etc.

But saying that it is likely just a few tens of thousands of people getting free cars for ADHD and anxiety is not making any voter feel better. “Oh, good, I thought it was a lot more milking my taxes, glad it is only a few thousand!” The optics are terrible, and the culture it breeds is equally bad: the bitterness, the animosity, the nihilism, the adverse incentives. It is not left-wing to ignore these issues because the people making them are right-wing and because you are afraid that you give them an inch and they take a mile, and next thing you know, they are dismantling the welfare state. The welfare state is being threatened when people no longer feel like it caters to their needs and values, and at the moment, it doesn’t. It caters to the needs of pensioners and those at the very bottom. People should not feel like the state gives them something back only if they are old, sick or willing to exaggerate their difficulties. I am against wholesale cuts to PIP because I do not believe in causing hardship to people with disabilities just so that I can catch those who abuse it. But I do believe in clarifying and re-establishing what abuse means. People thinking that getting a free car on the taxpayer's dole for anxiety is not abuse are damaging public trust and civic wellbeing. I don’t care if it’s 10, 100 or 1000s of them. They are harming social democracy.

So, I understand why journalists want to write about whether fascists staff these right-wing Anon accounts or not, but this is a low feedback endeavour. Not only is it not saving social democracy, it is giving online right-wingers clout, making them countercultural and *cool*.