He is the anonymous architect behind one of the most successful and toxic British far-right YouTube channels, responsible for disseminating racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic material. For years the individual known as The Iconoclast has managed to protect his identity despite amassing nearly 21m views and more than 218,000 subscribers.
However the Observer can reveal that the figure behind one of the biggest far-right content producers in the UK – and the movement’s most prominent anonymous account – is a former media student called Daniel Atkinson.
Campaigners said the unmasking of Atkinson was important because he is emblematic of the latest manifestation of the far right.
They said it is highly likely his widely disseminated racist views influenced some far-right supporters who clashed with police in central London last weekend.
The far-right’s influence has traditionally been consolidated within formal groups and political parties such as the British National Party and English Defence League (EDL). Now, however, its most prominent figures more closely resemble social media influencers such as Atkinson and those who have opted to be identified, for example rightwing commentator Katie Hopkins and far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, also a senior editor at the conspiracy theory website Infowars. The former leader of the EDL, Tommy Robinson, is another far-right figure who now prefers to produce online content than belong to a particular organisation.
After the Observer asked YouTube why it continued to host The Iconoclast, the platform finally moved to close a channel which has operated since 2016 and repeatedly been accused of hate speech. A YouTube spokesperson said: “We share a deep concern and responsibility in protecting the community against hate speech and do not want our platform used for harm. Due to repeated violations of our policies, we have terminated The Iconoclast channel.”
Not only had Atkinson’s YouTube channel and magazine steadily attracted an international audience over the years but it also provided a platform for a number of high-profile and extreme figures on the global far right.
Among these are US writer Brittany Pettibone, who views immigration as “white genocide” and in 2018 was banned from entering Britain. Another is antisemitic white supremacist Colin Robertson – aka Millennial Woes – who has described himself as “pro-slavery” and demanded the torpedoing of refugee boats.
On Friday night anti-fascist groups celebrated the removal of one of the most divisive channels on YouTube. Gregory Davis, researcher at anti-extremism pressure group Hope Not Hate said: “The Iconoclast is the perfect example of the threat posed by the modern far-right. It operated online and anonymously and outside of any formal far-right organisation but managing to reach huge numbers of people around the world.”
Extreme even by the standards of most far-right YouTubers, Atkinson actively promoted the idea of “voluntary repatriation” for the UK’s minority ethnic population. In a video uploaded to YouTube in April, he showed clips of an interview with Enoch Powell talking about measures that could encourage voluntary repatriation. Atkinson agreed, saying they would “create an atmosphere that may make leaving Britain seem a more attractive option”.
Such views are similar to those expressed by Generation Identity, a far-right racial separatist group that Atkinson has promoted on his channel and whose ideology is said by some to have inspired the mass shooter in the Christchurch mosque attack, which killed 51 people in March 2019.
Another video on The Iconoclast, published on 5 April and attracting more than 50,000 views, reveals Atkinson’s dismay at suggestions that Rishi Sunak, the Southampton-born chancellor of the exchequer, may be the next prime minister.
“He [Sunak] isn’t British. He is Indian. He can never be British beyond a civic sense. He can never have a genetic connection to the history of this country. So how can he do what’s best for us?” said Atkinson.
Uncovering Atkinson’s identity involved forensic analysis of his social media output, including repeated usernames, profile pictures, throwaway comments that corroborated biographical details shared in his YouTube videos and undeleted accounts. One closed TikTok account linked to Atkinson has a profile blurb that simply states: “I’m racist.”
YouTube has intervened on a number of occasions, removing one video from Atkinson’s channel as recently as 4 June. The video made several racist statements about black people and the Black Lives Matter protests, including one claim that the demonstrations proved Enoch Powell was right to say that the “black man will have the whip hand over the white man”.
Last August his YouTube account was temporarily removed for violating the platform’s guidelines along with prominent anti-Islamic extremist Martin Sellner, who has also been banned from the UK. However, both were reinstated with no apparent explanation from YouTube other than apparently that it had been “the wrong call”, a decision that caused global controversy. Days earlier, YouTube’s chief executive said it had to be open to hosting “controversial” ideas.
Commenting after YouTube had terminated his channel, Atkinson said: “As it stands, your article will paint me in a certain light, and the video samples you have chosen will be the only representation of my wider work, which the public can no longer access.”