“Free Tommy Robinson!” » Billionaire Elon Musk once again attacked the British authorities and Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, in a burst of messages on X, in which he notably demanded the release of this far-right activist. But who is he?
Real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Tommy Robinson was born in 1982 in Luton, north London, England. He is the son of Irish immigrants. At the end of October, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for violating a 2021 court decision which prohibited him from repeating defamatory remarks against a Syrian refugee.
Hooliganism and anti-Islam
This emblematic figure of the British far right is the co-founder in 2009 of the small Islamophobic group from the hooligan movement, the English Defense League. A movement that he led until 2013. Previously, or in parallel, he also joined several far-right, even fascist, parties, such as the British National Party, in 2004, or the British Freedom Party.
Tommy Robinson has been convicted on several occasions, notably for disturbing public order. In 2005, he notably attacked an off-duty police officer. In 2011, he was convicted of hooliganism and received a 12-month suspended prison sentence. He was also banned from attending Luton team matches for three years. His criminal record also includes mortgage fraud and a conviction for “fraudulent use of passport”.
He sometimes presents himself as a journalist, producing “anti-establishment” documentaries on the Urban Scoop platform, or sharing information on his social networks where he has several hundred thousand subscribers. He has also been banned several times from social networks, including Twitter in 2018 for hateful behavior. But the anti-Islam influencer has been reinstated since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022.
In April 2019, Tommy Robinson also tried his hand at more conventional politics by running as an independent candidate in the European elections. With limited success: the experiment ended with a score of 2.2%.
He is regularly supported by figures from the European far right, like Steve Bannon, former strategy advisor at the White House under Donald Trump.
Fueling the racist riots of the summer
Above all, the activist remains an important voice on the English far right. He was notably accused of stoking the anti-migrant violence which broke out this summer. These racist riots targeted mosques and migrant accommodation centers and broke out following the knife attack which cost the lives of three girls on July 29 in Southport, England. The profile of the suspect, a 17-year-old teenager wrongly presented as a Muslim asylum seeker, had been the subject of online rumors, which were partly denied.
“Why is Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement for telling the truth? », asks Elon Musk. Since Labor returned to power in July in the United Kingdom and the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim riots which shook the country this summer, the person close to Donald Trump has increased his comments on British news, judging that a “civil war » is “inevitable” in the country. He says foreign investors are now fleeing the country.
He especially attacks the government of Keir Starmer, accused of repressing the rioters too harshly and of running “a tyrannical police state”. But the conservative opposition is also worried about his connections with the anti-immigration Reform UK party, whose leader Nigel Farage he recently met in Florida.
