For months, Bill McKibben was followed by people with cameras. “To be watched so much” wrote the US climate activist, “is a kind of never-ending nightmare.” His stalkers were after an attack story, any action they could spin as hypocrisy, any words they could twist into a scandal.

The organisation behind the cameras, America Rising, calls itself “every Democrat’s greatest fear”. Its partner company led the smearing of Hillary Clinton in 2016. And it set up shop in the UK in 2017.

That’s when openDemocracy first stumbled upon Super PACs in Europe. And now, during the UK election, we’re spotting scary signs that Britain’s influence industry is picking up the nasty tricks of this shadowy trade.

America Rising is a Super PAC – at least, one part of this opaque, multi-layered organisation is. These controversial groups are a new mutation of the political action committees, or PACs, that have long infected American politics. Notorious for their smears, disinformation and murky finances, Super PACs campaign in elections at arm’s length from parties – allowing their preferred politicians to appear clean.

Political parties, NGOs and media organisations can be held to account at least partly for their behaviour in elections. SuperPACs can slash, burn and smear, then slide into the night, and disappear.

Uncovering Super PACs in Europe

This spring, I spent a few days at an ultraconservative gathering in Italy posing as a clueless, posh potential funder. A jovial US political operative called Darien Rafie took me under his wing. Rafie had built the Republican Party website and worked for various pro-Trump Super PACs. One of his groups was running a petition to “Thank president Trump for stopping transgender insanity in the military”.

He was also, I learned, an advisor to CitizenGo, a Spanish online army which trolls, inflames and polarises. It bullies trans people, fights domestic violence laws, denounces ‘feminazis’ and forces abortion clinics to close.

CitizenGo bus in New York

At the same conference, CitizenGo’s tweed-wearing, iconoclastic director Ignacio Arsuaga bragged to me about his group’s links to far-right parties across Europe, and offered to spend my (fictitious) ‘six figure’ donation on smearing their opponents.

He introduced me to a senior figure from Spain’s far-right party Vox, who compared CitizenGo to a Super PAC. He also suggested that, as a foreigner and therefore unable to donate directly, I could help Vox by funding CitizenGo.

How they are shaping this election

Up and down the country, we’re beginning to see something a lot like Super PACs shaping this UK election.

They aren’t all on the same side. By far the biggest spender on Facebook ads is the pro-EU group Best for Britain, which has thrown nearly three-quarters of a million pounds at sponsored posts over the past year. The legal limit for non-party spending on election campaigning for the year before the vote is £480,000 – though, as Best for Britain points out, many of its ads are non-partisan voter registration messages, which don’t count.

On the other side of the Brexit rift, Leave.EU quickly established almost as much Facebook traction as Labour. With nearly a million Facebook likes, the group – founded by the millionaires Arron Banks and Richard Tice – pillories pro-EU politicians. Like America’s most notorious Super PACs, it courts controversy, incites rage and drives debate.

In a recent post – shared 7,000 times – the pro-Tory group reused an image of refugees from a notorious poster unveiled by Nigel Farage during the Brexit referendum, an image widely compared to Nazi propaganda.

openDemocracy has revealed that both Tice and Banks have offshore connections. Both deny any wrongdoing.

Both Leave.EU and People’s Vote can claim one thing, though: they existed long before the election, and have genuine grassroots support. That’s not true of the clusterbomb which has blasted propaganda over the internet in recent weeks.

The pro-landlord website ‘Right to Rent, Right to Buy, Right to Own’ has spent £6,000 on Facebook ads attacking Labour housing policy. Tens of thousands have seen them.

When I first rang the woman behind the ads, Jennifer Powers, she implied she was new to politics. She later admitted to me that she’s an associate at Competere, a trade consultancy set up by Shanker Singham, a well-connected right-wing lobbyist who also works at the neoliberal Institute for Economic Affairs.

In fact Powers has 20 years’ experience in politics and lobbying, including time working for the Conservative Party. She is an associate at the lobbying firm Public First, whose founder is, according to the investigative website Powerbase, “known for his promotion of deceptive astroturf campaigns for business interests”. She said that the adverts were paid for by “myself and donors” but wouldn’t say who those donors were. She told me that she would tell the Electoral Commission. But the Commission hasn’t published any details yet.

Campaign Against Corbynism has found more than £10,000 to spend on Facebook adverts, often focussed on allegations of anti-Semitism. Its founder, James Bickerton, briefly worked in public relations and is now a reporter at the Daily Express. He wouldn’t name any donors, citing fear of abuse, but said he had launched the site from his bedroom. “We firmly believe Corbyn, and those around him, are a threat to core liberal-democratic principles in this country,” he said.

Reignite, whose co-founder was a digital strategist at Vote Leave, has spent nearly £8,000 attacking Corbyn and promoting Brexit. Founder Sam Frost said they're funded by small donations, averaging £11.79. Parents’ Choice, run by a former Tory MP, opposes Labour’s education plans and has spent £15,000 on Facebook ads. Cornerstone Global Associates got a story into the Daily Mail arguing Corbyn would damage UK trade with the Middle East.

I asked Cornerstone who funded the report, they said: “We occasionally publish reports... those are entirely self funded... The risk reports, including the Corbyn risk on Middle East trade, are based on extensive, first hand and impartial research. Our client base is extensive and includes clients from the UK, US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, South Africa, Singapore”. Parents’ Choice didn’t respond to my request for a comment.

Capitalist Worker, a Facebook page which has spent £15,000 on anti-Corbyn ads, is run by Maximillian Young, Conrad Young and Brian Monteith. Max Young is deputy editor of a website which largely publishes ‘articles’ by staff at dark-money-funded neoliberal think tanks and is chaired by Simon Gentry of the lobbying firm Newgate Communications. Conrad Young works for an advertising agency. Monteith is a Brexit Party MEP, former Tory MSP, Leave.EU staffer and lobbyist, known as ‘The Blue Trot’. Neither Monteith nor Young responded to my requests for a comment.