Britain First have been causing something of a stir of late. At least online they have, anyway. “THE MOST POPULAR POLITICAL FACEBOOK IN EUROPE, 51 MILLION PEOPLE REACHED IN LAST 7 DAYS!” boasts their page, which has accumulated an impressive 575,000 ‘likes’, almost 100,000 of which have appeared since October. That’s a frightening amount of people considering that the organisation’s former leader and ex-BNP big-dog, Jim Dowson, quit in July of this year stating that the party was becoming “overrun with racists and extremists”. What’s more, the emergence of UKIP as a political force risks facilitating the rise of far-right groups such as Britain First, whose patriotic demagoguery conflates immigration-based discourse with out-and-out racism.

So just how wary should we be of this self-fashioned “street defence organisation”? Well, if their recent performance on the streets of Rochester is anything to go by, not very. A rather desperate post-demonstration attempt to blame police “bully-boys” for “totally sabotaging” their day-out morphed into a tragic accusation of failed democracy and police brutality.

On the contrary, what actually happened on Saturday in the north-Kent town where Britain First’s Jayda Fransen will contest the upcoming by-election, was a manifestation of 'the power of the people' in action. Three hundred or so locals, outnumbering their opponents six to one, stood firm and demonstrated the public opposition that far-right hate groups simply refuse to acknowledge. The fact that there was just a single arrest paints quite a different picture to the propaganda Britain First would have you believe. The party was left red-faced after using a picture purporting to show the “Labour/Muslim thugs” demonstrating against them on Saturday, which was in fact taken during the 2009 G20 protests in London.

It is online, however, that the party have found their most potent platform. A sift through the comments section on their Facebook page is an enlightening experience (almost as worthwhile as visiting the hilarious parody page “Britain Furst”). Given the moderators’ readiness to ban any dissenters, even those posing perfectly legitimate questions, it is worrying that comments such as “a good muslim [sic] is a dead one” and “scummy p***s should be stoned to death” are allowed to remain, and further, gather likes from like-minded fascists.

"BUT NOT RACISTS!", they are keen to point out. Indeed, a popular theme of their social-media rhetoric is the proud but oh-so-misguided declaration that hatred of Islam is fine because it is a religion, and therefore not a race. It is this perverse misinterpretation of blatant hate speech which is reflected in the party leadership, albeit not as explicitly, by events such as the patronising and glaringly hypocritical "mosque invasions" carried out across the country and regularly paraded on their page.

The success that Britain First has enjoyed on social media has not yet transferred onto the streets, nor will it reach the ballot box on Thursday. Time will tell if they will ever see this transition, or instead simply fizzle out, along with their quixotic belief that they represent 'the people'. Ironically, perhaps the strongest piece of evidence suggesting it will be the latter can be found on Facebook itself: “ISN'T IT FUNNY HOW LABOUR, COMMUNISTS, MUSLIMS, LIBERALS, TRANSEXUALS, TORIES AND HIPPIES ALL JOIN FORCES TO OPPOSE BRITAIN FIRST TODAY?”, spouted their page on Saturday evening. Yes, Britain First, isn’t it funny…