Who is Tommy Robinson and why does Elon Musk want him freed from jail?

LONDON —A convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record, Tommy Robinson is well known as the leader of the English far right, inspiring rallies of mostly white, mostly male followers shouting soccer-style chants against Islam and immigration.

It has been jarring then, for many Britons to see Robinson — whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — become the latest cause championed by the richest person on the planet, Elon Musk.

“Free Tommy Robinson!” the billionaire entrepreneur and adviser to President-elect Donald Trump posted to his X social media network Thursday.

Robinson, 42, is serving an 18-month jail sentence for contempt of court, a charge stemming from a libelous video in which he falsely claimed a Syrian refugee teenager was a violent thug. 

Widely disliked in Britain, Robinson’s 19% popularity rating is even lower than Musk’s at 26%, according to the latest findings published in October by YouGov, a British polling company.

“But he will become less fringe if people adopt him — and that’s the risk you have here,” according to Scott Lucas, a University College Dublin professor specializing in British and American politics. “Tommy’s an icon for certain far-right groups — and Musk knows that.”

This is far from Musk’s first intervention in European politics, and he has increasingly opined on the subject since backing Trump’s election win in November. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has largely supported far-right nationalists, most recently in Germany. Their rise on the continent has coincided with Trump’s second term, teeing up the prospect of transatlantic cooperation among this former political fringe.

It is in Britain, however, where Musk has focused most attention.

In recent months, he has accused Keir Starmer of running a “tyrannical police state” and going “full Stalin,” a stark contrast to domestic criticism, which has often seen the prime minister accused of being too centrist and selling out his leftist roots.

Musk also predicted Britain would descend into “civil war” after the August murders of three girls in the northern seaside town of Southport sparked widespread rioting led by the far right. The disorder was partly blamed by both police and politicians on false rumors spread about their alleged killer on X, including by Musk himself.

And on Friday, Musk supported a call for King Charles III to dissolve Parliament, which he technically has the power to do, but in Britain’s constitutional monarchy has not been used against the wishes of a prime minister for almost two centuries 

Many treated this as little more than “muppetry and trolling” as Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, put it on X.

But Musk's interaction with Robinson has raised more eyebrows. Musk first started replying to Robinson on X in August, but that ramped up significantly this week when he began posting about Britain’s “grooming gangs” scandal.

Decadelong investigations into gangs in regional towns and cities across the United Kingdom found groups of mostly men had systematically groomed and raped young girls. 

While “research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white,” according to a 2023 study by the British government, some of these gangs were formed of men of Pakistani heritage, making it the source of outrage among the far right and also Conservative politicians.

“Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?” Musk posted Wednesday, saying he should be “freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell.”

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But Robinson’s October jailing is just his latest encounter with the law.

He was first jailed in 2005 for assaulting an off-duty police officer, and ordered to do community service in 2011 for leading a brawl involving more than 100 soccer fans. He was imprisoned again in 2013 for traveling to the United States on another person’s passport, then again a year later for mortgage fraud. 

Robinson, who took his pseudonym from a soccer hooligan, was also given a five-year stalking protection order in October 2021 after he shouted abuse outside the home of a journalist having learned she was planning a story about him.

Under the conditions of the order, he was prohibited from contacting the journalist or attending any places where the person lives and works, unless specifically invited for an interview. 

During that time, he co-founded the English Defence League, or EDL, which rose out of a disparate network of far-right groups and whose virulently Islamophobic views were praised by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

“I’d personally send every adult male Muslim that has come into the E.U. over the past 12 months back tomorrow if I could,” Robinson said in 2016, and he has described Islam as “fascist,” according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. 

He has also hinted at violent retribution. In 2011, he said that the “the Islamic community will feel the full force of the English Defence League if we see any of our British citizens killed, maimed, or hurt on British soil ever again.”

Robinson is no longer associated with the EDL and has repeatedly stated that he is not racist or Islamophobic.

In addition to his support for Robinson, Musk has also professed support for Nigel Farage, the British Trump ally who leads the anti-immigration Reform UK party. Farage said that Musk has given “serious thought” to making a donation to his political group. While certainly hard right, Reform, which has five parliamentary lawmakers, is considered a far more mainstream force than Robinson.

Some pundits have suggested that Musk’s endorsement of Robinson could harm Farage, who has sought to distance himself from the former EDL man. But can Musk’s apparent fixation with British and European politics actually make a difference there?

“We don’t know, and that’s the question,” said Lucas at University College Dublin, who added that he believed that renewed focus on immigration — a democratic trend sweeping Europe — has at least opened the door. 

“What we know is that British politics has already been damaged,” he said. “So there’s an opportunity for him to move the needle.”