Across Europe, on the streets and at the border, far-right extremists are targeting migrants and people of color for vigilante harassment and attacks. These movements claim vulnerable minorities and migrants are dangerous and subversive entities inside their countries.
The far right has historically relied on divisive issues to expand its support. Migrants, refugees, and marginalized populations like Romani people are long standing targets of these movements. By using conspiracy theories and racist tropes that incubate and spread through mainstream and fringe social media platforms, the far right has been able to mobilize people to protests and in the most severe cases, violence.
Carried out by a variety of actors with different affiliations and motivations, the past three years have seen a spike in targeted harassment of migrants and minorities. These include street violence targeting people of immigrant backgrounds in Sweden, anti-Romani groups performing extrajudicial evictions in Hungary, clashes between “civilian border patrols” and the police in the Netherlands, British anti-immigration groups sabotaging migrant rafts in France, and other acts of racist intimidation and brutality across the continent.
Hungarian “Crime Hunters”
Three uniformed members of the Bűnvadászok (Crime Hunters) gathered outside of homes allegedly occupied by squatters. (Source: YouTube).
In Hungary, members of the nationalist group Bűnvadászok (Crime Hunters) are facing a criminal investigation for their repeated targeting of Romani people. Charged in February 2026, member of the group are accused of using intimidation and physical violence to remove individuals they find allegedly squatting in abandoned or empty properties.
Founded by András Bartal, a municipal representative in Budapest for the far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) party, the complaint against the Bűnvadászok compares its tactics to the Sturmabteilung (S.A.), known as “Brownshirts,” the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
“The action seen in the video shows an eerie parallel with the SA terror seen at the dawn of the Nazi dictatorship: civilians provoke a crime, then ‘pass judgment’ with physical violence and intimidation, while the police legitimize the vigilantism through passive assistance,” the complaint reads.
The group’s YouTube channel, with more than 360,000 subscribers, contains over 100 videos that borrow a reality show-style format to show members harassing individuals purportedly to prevent crime and evict squatters from properties. Other times the videos claim to have uncovered fraud, resolved property disputes, and exposed criminal activity. The content serves to create a spectacle out of the Bűnvadászok’s harassment of primarily Romani people and communities.
The highly edited videos show Bűnvadászok members in black and green bomber jackets engaging in vigilantism to protect what they view as “true Hungarian values,” stepping in where they believe the police and the state have failed. The group will visit or enter properties, sometimes dismantling doors or windows to make the homes uninhabitable, and demand personal information from the occupants.
The criminal proceedings began after multiple complaints were filed by a Romani man, József Ferenczik, who allegedly first reported the Bűnvadászok to law enforcement in March 2025.
Anti-Roma sentiment is also fueled by Hungarian far right political parties. The political party Mi Hazánk was founded by former members of the opposition Jobbik party in 2018. Jobbik, which began as an antisemitic, far-right political party, began to gravitate towards more mainstream conservatism in the 2010s. Mi Hazánk is led by László Toroczkai and has gained representation in several local governments as well as the European Parliament. The party is explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Roma. The European Roma Rights Centre has called Toroczkai a “virulent, anti-Roma racist,” and the party has run under racist slogans like “Hungary will not become a Gypsy country,” which appeared on leaflets for the national 2022 election.
The party also used the election to promote their own version of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory—the far-right concept that there is a large-scale effort to replace indigenous Europeans with immigrants or other ethnic groups. Pointing to falling birthrates in their election program, it added “Gypsies are producing a population explosion typical of the Third World. The number of Gypsies doubles by generations, while the number of Hungarians is almost halved.”
Mi Hazánk currently holds six seats in the national parliament.
Mi Hazánk also has close ties to the Betyársereg (Outlaw Army), one of the most active white nationalist groups in Hungary. The Betyársereg is a frequent participant in anti-Roma protests and has previously targeted Roma neighborhoods for its marches.
During a recent campaign event, both Mi Hazánk and Bűnvadászok were run out of the Northern Hungary village of Kálló. Around 50 protesters gathered to push back against a “street forum” being held by Mi Hazánk’s vice chairman and local candidate, Dávid Dócs. In a video to his over 300,000 subscriber YouTube channel, László called the region a “no-go zone,” claiming it was not safe to enter due to criminal activity by Roma people.
Poland Sees Emergence of Civilian Border Patrols
Poland has seen its own anti-migrant extrajudicial movement emerge, when in the Summer of 2025 civilian border patrols began to form along the boundary between the country and Germany.
Groups of citizens, sometimes from football support clubs, organized crowds often numbering into the hundreds to protest and patrol the country’s borders. They were attempting to elicit a response from the Polish government, which has been criticized by the far right for being too soft on migrants returned to the country from Germany.
These protests spawned anti-immigrant activist groups like the Ruch Obrony Granic (ROG — Border Defense Movement) founded by Polish far-right activist Robert Bąkiewicz.
A former candidate with the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party, Bąkiewicz is a frequent fixture at anti-immigration protests and rallies. In February 2026, Bąkiewicz had three charges brought against him for inciting others to commit a crime and inciting hatred related to statements he made in October 2025 during a march against EU migration policy. Prosecutors allege he incited the murder of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, while Bąkiewicz has said his words are being deliberately misinterpreted.
In 2025, Bąkiewicz was found guilty of assaulting a well-known campaigner for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, Katarzyna Augustynek. In October 2020, during a protest against far-reaching anti-abortion laws, Bąkiewicz grabbed a rainbow-colored scarf worn by Augustynek and two of his supporters dragged her down the steps of a church she was occupying.
Sentenced to community service and ordered to issue an apology, Bąkiewicz was pardoned by former Polish President Andrzej Duda of the PiS party in Summer 2025 as he was leaving office.
A vocal critic of multiculturalism who pushes the narratives about the replacement of the “indigenous dwellers” of Europe, that homosexuality undermines the family, and in a 2017 interview that “[democracy] is one of the stupidest systems that man has created.”
Despite calling the “citizen patrols” illegal, the activity near the border did result in Tusk’s government putting stricter controls and checks at crossings between Poland, Germany, and Lithuania.
French Beaches and the British Far Right
Since 2024, British far-right activists have traveled to France to target migrants who are they claim are waiting to cross the Channel into the U.K. Since these actions began, migrants have been harassed in encampments where they sleep, rafts and supplies have been vandalized and destroyed, and hateful graffiti like nooses and swastikas have been documented in the area of the camps.
Among these “activists” are well-known members of the British far right, including the former bodyguard of anti-Muslim leader Tommy Robinson, Daniel Thomas, as well as Elliot Stanley and Ryan Bridge. All three men have participated in the British “Raise the Colours” movement, which began as a campaign to hang the U.K. and English flags throughout the country. The movement has been widely criticized for its connections to anti-immigrant and far-right activism.
While 10 unnamed activists with Raise the Colours were banned from France in January, Thomas continued to post protest action from the beaches as part of what he called “Operation Overlord,” borrowing its name from the code name used by the Allies in the Second World War for the invasion of Normandy on France’s coast.
Two unnamed individuals were deported from France in January 2026 after livestreaming themselves confronting migrants and slicing the rafts with a knife.
Daniel Thomas in a video on a French beach on as part of Operation Overlord. (Source: YouTube).
There is also a history of previous anti-migrant patrols in France, as the far-right, anti-immigrant group Génération Identitaire was banned after it was found to be a paramilitary organization that targeted refugees.
Other street violence has been directed at far-left activists. In Paris, the recent killing of a young far-right activist resulted in reports and footage of far-right patrols wandering the streets, allegedly looking for antifascists. On February 14, 23-year-old Quentin Deranque died, two days after suffering head injuries from a fight in Lyon, France. Deranque had been an active protester with a “small neo-fascist group, the Allobroges Bourgoin,” since May 2025.
The altercation occurred following a speaking event featuring Rima Hassan, a leftist Member of the European Parliament.
Allegedly providing security at a protest against Hassan, Deranque and several others clashed with a larger group of rival activists. As video of the fight circulated showing the brutal blows that ultimately killed him, footage of apparent far-right street patrols circulated showing men in all black walking French streets.
The footage was shared by British Islamophobe Tommy Robinson, who posted a video to Trump’s social media platform Truth Social on February 17, allegedly showing a group of French far-right vigilantes “out hunting for Antifa in Paris.” His claim could not be independently confirmed. Deranque’s death resulted in a flurry of far-right protests and activism in France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, and even the United States and Canada.
Outrage Fueling Far-Right Activism
Since 2023, there have been a series of highly politicized crimes committed by, or alleged to be committed by, migrants that have sparked outrage and violence in Europe.
One of the most egregious and tragic was the murder of three girls and the injuring of ten other people by seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana on July 29, 2024, in Southport, England. After the attack, and before the suspect’s name was released to the public, rumors spread quickly on social media platforms like X that the perpetrator was named “Ali al-Shakati,” a Muslim immigrant new to the U.K. Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, Wales, where he had spent most of his life. Far-right networks used the incident to mobilize protests outside of a mosque, housing for asylum seekers, and car checks to confirm passengers were white.
Online posts blamed “mass migration” for the killing, claiming that “children are being slaughtered at the alter of uncontrolled mass migration” and that “Open Borders advocates have blood on their hands.”
Days of violent clashes between anti-immigrant protesters and police followed. Many of the protests turned violent, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
In the U.S., American white supremacists amplified footage of the unrest and violence. This included members of the neo-Nazi Terrorgram network, an online community that distributes instructions and encourages others to carry out targeted acts of violence against non-white communities.
Immigrants Targeted in Multiple Countries
In multiple jurisdictions flash point events, like the tragic killings in Southport, and simmering issues like concerns over immigration and refugees, are being used as justification for extrajudicial action by far-right groups.
In Sweden, four members of the Aktivklubb Sverige (AKS – Active Club Sweden), the Swedish chapter of the international network of neo-Nazi, white-only workout clubs, used what reportedly began as a pub crawl in Stockholm to assault three people of immigrant background in quick succession. The Active Club model was first developed by U.S. white supremacist Robert Rundo.
The three attackers, all between the ages of 21 and 23, received sentences of six months and up to three years for the assaults. They will also be required to pay damages.
“At least two of the men made Hitler salutes during the night in question,” the Stockholm district court said. “All of the plaintiffs have a different ethnic background than the defendants. According to the verdict, all of the crimes for which the men are convicted have hate crime motives, with the exception of the vandalism.”
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, footage posted online showed groups of men patrolling city streets, questioning and confronting people of color. Demanding to see identity documents, their victims were threatened and told to leave the city.
While some of these patrols have engaged in violence, there are others that are more symbolic, but intimidate and reflect the ability of the far right to mobilize people onto the streets.
In Reykjavik, Iceland, a dozen men wearing black shirts with the Templar Cross, often used by white supremacists as a sign of European cultural superiority, marched through the city’s downtown. Part of a group calling itself “Skjöld Íslands” (Shield of Iceland), its participants claimed to be protecting Icelandic culture and values while opposing the presence of asylum seekers.
In the Netherlands, somewhat similar to what has happened in Poland, vigilantes gathered at the German border, looking for asylum seekers they intended to turn back.
Given the constant scapegoating of immigrants by far-right parties and influencers, the targeting of immigrants and minorities is likely to continue.
