Who is Tommy Robinson, Britain's far-right Islamophobic influencer? (2024)

A propagator of anti-immigrant rumors

Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is Britain's best-known far-right Islamophobic figure. The 41-year-old is accused of amplifying the false rumor that sparked the recent racist riots in the United Kingdom. On July 29, three girls died in a knife attack during a dance class in Southport, northeast England. Several children and adults present were also injured. Robinson relayed the false information that the alleged murderer was of Muslim faith and had just arrived via the English Channel on a small boat. Police stated that the 17-year-old was born in Cardiff, Wales, and that his family originated from Rwanda.

An extremist obsessed with Islam

Yaxley-Lennon borrowed the name Tommy Robinson from a football club hooligan in his hometown of Luton, in order to disguise a lengthy criminal record: He has been sentenced to several prison terms for assaulting a police officer and contempt of court. Initially a member of the far-right British National Party, in 2009 he co-founded the English Defense League (EDL) to protest against the presence of a small Salafist group in Luton. The movement denounces "Islamist fascism," but declined in the early 2010s, after the revelation of links with Norwegian criminal Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in July 2011. Robinson left the EDL in 2013 due to the "dangers of far-right extremism," but the self-styled journalist continued to support conspiracy theories about elites concealing the truth about the supposed dangers of Islam.

Former Twitter banner rehabilitated by Elon Musk

With an account on X with nearly a million subscribers, Yaxley-Lennon has a considerable sounding board. He was banned from the platform in 2018, for "violating" rules against hate speech. But after buying Twitter and renaming it X, billionaire and ultra-libertarian Elon Musk reinstated the activist's account at the end of 2023. Since then, Yaxley-Lennon's presence on the platform has grown considerably. On July 27, he managed to rally thousands of supporters at a demonstration in Westminster, in the heart of London, against immigration and for "patriotism," before going into exile in Cyprus following a court summons.

A fugitive exiled under the Cyprus sun

In early August, the British media revealed that Yaxley-Lennon was tweeting not from the Midlands or the north of England, where the anti-migrant rioters chanting his name have been most violent but from a hotel costing over €450 a night in Cyprus. According to The Times, he is the subject of an arrest warrant for failing to appear before a judge on new contempt of court charges. And as reported by The Guardian, he is now one of the people being investigated by the police for spreading false information, which fuelled the riots.