On July 29, the day of the attack on a group of young girls in Southport, far-right influencer Tommy Robinson repeated on X the false rumour that a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived on a canal boat was the perpetrator. On the site, where he has almost a million followers, he repeatedly linked the stabbings to the Muslim community and said that the government was “gaslighting” the public about the events. In the days following the attack, his X posts received an average of around 54 million views a day.
Robinson has become the figurehead of Britain’s decentralised or ‘post-organisational’ far right: rather than trying to lead a political party, he builds his support by spreading his views online. His ideas clearly resonate with many Britons. Several thousand supporters marched in his ‘patriotic rally’ in London on Saturday 27 July, the largest far-right demonstration since the collapse of the EDL. And he is receiving vocal support and financial backing from the US, where he has become a darling of Trump supporters and the libertarian right.
Who is Tommy Robinson?
The 41-year-old’s real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire, a town with a large Muslim minority. He trained as an aircraft engineer at Luton Airport, but in 2005 he attacked an off-duty police officer during a drunken argument, resulting in a 12-month prison sentence. He had joined the far-right British National Party in 2004. By that time he had long been associated with football gangs linked to Luton Town FC (his nom de guerre is said to be borrowed from a notorious Luton Town hooligan). In early 2009, the Islamist extremist group al-Muhajiroun loudly protested in Luton against a parade of members of the Royal Anglian Regiment returning from deployment in Afghanistan. In response, Robinson and others associated with football gangs founded the English Defence League (EDL), which held demonstrations against Islam across England.
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What happened to the EDL?
In its early years, the EDL grew rapidly, holding protests in areas with large Muslim populations, sometimes numbering thousands of people, which often resulted in violent clashes. Then in the early 2010s, the EDL went into decline due to internal divisions and after it was revealed that its members had links to Norwegian white supremacist and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Robinson was convicted of assaulting one of its members in 2011 and received a suspended sentence. In 2013, he underwent an unexpected political conversion and left the EDL, citing the “dangers of right-wing extremism”, which was supported by the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam. This was short-lived, however: Robinson returned to far-right politics and attempted to set up a British offshoot of the European anti-jihad organization Pegida.
What has Robinson done since then?
He has made a name for himself as a journalist and online influencer. From 2017, he was a correspondent for Rebel News, a far-right Canadian website, making films about the “grooming gangs” run by Asian men in northern cities. While working as a reporter, he was twice found in contempt of court for making prejudicial claims about grooming cases in public. In 2019, he stood as an independent candidate for North West England in the European elections, receiving just 2.2% of the vote. He has since turned away from electoral politics.
What does he believe in?
The two main themes of his thinking are opposition to immigration and opposition to Islam. In a recent interview, he put it this way: “We are losing our culture. We are losing our identity. We are being replaced. In most big cities, we are becoming minorities. We are being driven out of our own country, our own cities.” In 2016, he said: “I am not far-right, I am just against Islam. I think it is backward and fascist.” He developed this argument at length in “Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam,” a 2017 book he co-authored. His social media feeds keep returning to the criminality of immigrants – and Muslims in particular.
Robinson also believes that Western elites have been plotting against ordinary people to allow this immigration. He also often says that Britain has a “two-tier police force” that is “tough” on white offenders but soft on criminal migrants. Robinson believes that the mainstream media has been complicit in this by not reporting these issues fairly.
Should his views be censored?
Robinson generally shies away from directly inciting violence and has never been prosecuted for doing so. But his influence has long been linked to far-right violence. The wife of Darren Osborne, who carried out the 2017 Finsbury Park mosque attack, said Osborne had “seen a lot of Tommy Robinson stuff online” and had been “brainwashed.” Robinson was banned from Facebook and Instagram in 2019 for “posting material that uses dehumanizing language and incites violence against Muslims.” He was banned from Twitter in 2018 for violating its rules on “hateful conduct”: he had, to give just one example, liked a post calling for “waging war on Muslims.” But after the site was bought by Elon Musk, Robinson’s account was restored late last year.
Police are reportedly investigating his role in the unrest. He could be at risk under the new Online Safety Act, which criminalises the transmission of false information that is likely to cause “significant psychological or physical harm”.
What about Robinson’s legal problems?
In addition to his two convictions for assault, Robinson was sentenced to ten months in prison in 2013 for entering the US using another man’s passport. The following year, he was sentenced to 18 months for mortgage fraud. In 2017, he was convicted of contempt of court for recording a report outside a trial at Canterbury Crown Court in which he referred to the defendants as “Muslim child molesters” – before the verdict was handed down. He received a suspended sentence, which became a nine-month prison sentence, after reporting live outside Leeds Crown Court during a similar trial; not only did he again broadcast prejudiced comments, but he also confronted the defendants, risking the failure of the trial.
In July 2021, Robinson was ordered to pay £100,000 in damages for defaming Jamal Hijazi, a 15-year-old Syrian refugee who was severely bullied at his school in Huddersfield; Robinson had baselessly claimed that the boy would “violently attack” English girls. He then repeated these claims in his film Silenced, which portrays him as a martyr for free speech. Robinson was due to appear in the High Court in late July for breaching an injunction preventing him from releasing the film. Instead, he left the UK for Cyprus; he has not yet returned. Robinson’s tax affairs are also reportedly under investigation.
