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For what most people would deem all the wrong reasons but he almost certainly wouldnt, Milo Yiannopoulos has been all over the news in recent weeks. Having built a reputation as the alt-rights most vocal spokesperson and, in his own words, the most fabulous supervillain on the internet the charismatic, Kent-born, gay 33-year-old had his book deal with Simon & Schuster terminated (it was due to be published in June), and was forced to resign from his editor post at alt-right news site Breitbart. Both of these things happened after comments surfaced in which he apparently defended the idea of relationships between older men and younger boys.

But just as his ban from Twitter in July last year (for his role in the abuse of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones) only served to reinforce his enemy-of-the-mainstream status, these events will only make him more notorious. I look forward to making you all laugh, cry and think for many decades to come, he said at the press conference to announce his resignation from Breitbart. Dont think for a moment that anything that has happened in the last 48 hours will ever stop me being as offensive, provocative and outrageously funny as I choose. I am not going anywhere.

Yiannopoulos is perhaps the most high-profile and most extreme of the right's new wave of provocateurs, but he is far from the only one. In the past six months, a wave of UK-based bloggers and writers, all linked by a distaste for liberalism, political correctness and the mainstream media (or the MSM, as they call it) are beginning to rise to not dissimilar levels of prominence.

Milo Yiannopoulos challenged on Breitbart News headlines about Muslims and feminism on Channel 4 News

Youve had a priesthood of pundits working for the established broadcasters and theyve interpreted current events for us, notes Douglas Carswell, the first elected Ukip MP, whose book The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy compared what is happening now to the Reformation. Suddenly digital means that anyone can present an analysis on current events... and its created the space for a lot of insurgent opinion. Now, some of that opinion is pretty appalling. But dont blame the insurgents: theyre a consequence of the priesthood of pundits being so out of touch and one-sided.

The term alt-right was coined by the president of the US National Policy Institute and white supremacist, Richard B Spencer, in 2008 he founded alternativeright.com in 2010 and since then has come to describe a broad group of people on both sides of the Atlantic. They may not agree on quite what 'alt-right- means (indeed, there is no completely settled definition) but all of them are relatively young and adept at using social media; they are pro-Trump, pro-Brexit, and anti-feminist; they have a strong taste for outrage-for-its-own-sake over any particular political leanings; and they see themselves as part of a new counterculture. They promote each others content through their own channels. All of them have growing numbers of followers. All of them, appearance-wise, are the antithesis of the aged skinheads you might traditionally associate with the right. All of them also, you suspect, do not intend on going anywhere any time soon. So who are Britains key players?

(Wigmore/Finn/Splash News)

Raheem Kassam

Standing furthest to the right literally, not figuratively in that photo featuring the President Elect and Nigel Farage in front of Trump Towers gold door was Raheem Kassam. Previously the former Ukip leaders chief aide, then a Ukip leadership hopeful himself (slogan: Make Ukip Great Again), he is currently editor-in-chief of Breitbart UK. He has conducted sympathetic interviews for Breitbart with people such as Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League and subsequent founder of anti-Islam organisation Pegida UK.

Kassam, 30, was born in Hammersmith and raised in Hillingdonas the son of Tanzanian immigrants. He was educated at Bishopshalt comprehensive in Uxbridge and went on to study politics at the University of Westminster in 2004. There, after apparently witnessing the number of students intoradical Islam (the Islamic State militant known as Jihadi John was two years below him), he began to turnhis back on the Ismaili Muslim faith. And then he became politically anti-Islam.

He began blogging, and was working in a call centre when he was approached by Steve Bannon, then executive chair of Breitbart, now Donald Trumps chief strategist, and a man who Kassam insists is not a white nationalist not far right, or an extremist.

Hes an obsessive; he doesnt really have other interests, says a long-time associate of Kassam.

Hes pretty much fallen out with everybody hes ever worked with over money... but hes a sociable type who likes the good life: dinner, brandy... but not drugs.

Kassam has a penchant for combative, wilfully shocking tweets (he has more than 50,000 followers), the most notorious being one in which he suggested Nicola Sturgeon should have her legs taped shut to stop her reproducing. He did not respond to requests for an interview.

Paul Joseph Watson

Raised on a Sheffield council estate and since relocated to a flat in Battersea, before the US presidential campaign Paul Joseph Watson, 35, was a relatively unknown blogger for US conspiracy theorist Alex Joness Infowars site (Hot Women in Ads Banned to Please Fat Feminists is an example of a past title).

Then he posted a video entitled The Truth About Hillarys Bizarre Behaviour, which claimed that Clintons weird seizures, psychotic facial tics, over-exaggerated reactions and coughing fits could be the side effects of strokes, and that her outbursts were likely linked to years of persistent drug abuse. The video went viral and was picked up by the National Enquirer, which led to Is Hillary having health problems? becoming the second biggest search on Google that week, despite the fact that there is no evidence for any of Watsons claims.

On Twitter, he is a hugely divisive presence with over half a million followers. He claimed last week that the actual number of attendees at the anti-Trump march in London last month was 2,000, and offered to pay for any journalist claiming Sweden is safe to stay in the crime-ridden migrant suburbs of Malm.

In addition, hes a staunch defender of Yiannopoulos, claiming that no journalist has done more to expose actual paedophiles. Having previously referred to the Evening Standard as absolute slimeballs, Watson has little interest in engaging with the mainstream media.

Michael Heaver

Until recently, 27-year-old Michael Heaver was Nigel Farages chief press adviser. He rose quickly through the Ukip ranks, having joined the party as a 17-year-old.

As of 17 January this year, though, he has been editor of westmonster.com, funded by Arron Banks, the biggest financial backer of the Leave campaign. Heaver also runs the site out of Bankss leave.eu offices in SW1. Unlike other alt-right bloggers, Heaver still drinks in Westminster haunt the Marquis of Granby with other politicos.

The site is very much inspired by the way Breitbart has tapped in to the alt-right sensibility. After the Brit Awards last week, for example, it lambasted the vile Donald Trump/Theresa May-baiting performance by multi-millionaire luvvie Katy Perry.

Educated at Coleridge Community College in Cambridge (which he calls one of the countrys worst state schools), Heaver scored highly enough in his GCSEs to secure a place at Hills Road Sixth Form College, regarded as one of the best in the UK.

While there he won the Schools Question Time Challenge to secure a place on a Question Time panel alongside Iain Duncan Smith and Douglas Alexander, against whom he more than held his own.

He is what he appears to be, says a long-time associate. A Ukip hardliner. Hes authentic. Chippy. And very paranoid about Westminster.

Matthew Tait

The host of the first alt-right London social in October last year, well-spoken business studies graduate Taitjoined the British National Party at the age of 18, founding a new branch in his native Maidenhead in 2004.

In stark contrast to other members of the alt-right, Tait identifies as an environmentalist, and initially intended, as an already-politicised teenager, to join the Green Party.

Unconvinced by what he read about them, though, he instead joined the BNP, having gone on its website, initially, as a joke. Tait left the party in 2010 and eventually assembled a group of like-minded people who, on deciding that a political party was not the way forward, launched Western Spring: a website representing the interests of White people everywhere, but in particular the interests of the White people indigenous to the British Isles.

Tait is now a regular speaker at meetings on both sides of the Atlantic, and was present at the notorious alt-right conference at Washington DCs Ronald Reagan Building in November, just after Donald Trumps victory, which saw some attendees giving triumphant Nazi salutes. After the event, he was ushered outside by Richard B Spencer, past the waiting press. He did not take questions.

Colin Robertson

Introducing this Scottish YouTuber to the same conference audience, Richard B Spencer described him as just the kind of person we want in the alt-right (he also said that the assembled crowd could see Robertson and himself as two of a kind, as kind of the hipster whisperers).

Only recently revealed to be Colin Robertson, 34, from Linlithgow, he was previously known only as Millennial Woes despite the fact that all of his videos feature him against a dark black background, talking directly to camera (titles include The Smugness of the Worldly Liberal).

Robertsonwas a socialist as a teenager, then a libertarian, then a paleoconservative. His epiphany came in the mid-2000s when he arrived at art college in London and found his multiracial halls of residence dizzying and horrible.

He began his YouTube channel at the beginning of 2014. It drew attention very quickly, to the point where, in the aftermath of Trumps triumph, he was being invited to speak in the US and to the extent that he recently celebrated reaching 25,000 subscribers on his channel. He claims that 4,000 of these came in the aftermath of his identity being exposed in the mainstream media. Enjoy being replaced by the alternative media, and thank you for the free publicity, his most recent video said.

Robertson may be based in Scotland but the reverberations of his huge, growing online presence can be felt keenly in the capital.

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Are these the faces of London's young 'alt-right'? - Evening Standard