Tommy Robinson has spent much of late February and March touring the United States, and it has revealed much about his true politics. He has been rubbing shoulders with senior figures in the Trump administration, election deniers, self-declared enemies of democracy and, most recently, men convicted for their leading roles in the 6 January 2021 insurrection.
It is a measure of how dramatically the political weather has changed that a man who was previously barred from entering the United States on account of his criminal record was this time immediately welcomed at the State Department.
Criminal record
Robinson has multiple convictions including assault and mortgage fraud, and in October 2024 was sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court after repeating false and defamatory allegations against a Syrian refugee.
Under normal immigration rules, this record would see him turned away at the border. Instead, on 25 February, he posted a photograph of himself at the State Department in Washington.
His host was Joe Rittenhouse, a senior State Department adviser and MAGA propagandist, who posted online that he was “honored” to welcome Robinson, calling him a “free speech warrior.”
Rittenhouse’s broader network is itself deeply controversial: he has been linked to efforts to facilitate the return to the US of the founders of Tenet Media, a right-wing outlet exposed for receiving funding from Russian state media to spread Kremlin disinformation.
The State Department declined to explain what Robinson discussed or who else he met.
Latter the same day Robinson appeared as a studio guest on the ‘Human Events Daily’ show hosted by Jack Posobiec, one of America’s most prominent far-right influencers.
Posobiec has been noted for his occasional promotion of white nationalist rhetoric, and told attendees at a conservative conference in 2024 that his goal was to “overthrow” democracy entirely, declaring “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavour to get rid of it.”
Robinson later described Posobiec as a friend who had “always had his back from across the pond.”
Election deniers
Shortly beforehand, on 19 March, Robinson had attended an “Election Integrity Summit” – in effect, a gathering of election deniers – convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former National Security Adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts before receiving a presidential pardon.
At the summit, Flynn told Robinson that the aim was to ensure election activists were “not operating in our own little bubbles,” and has since called on Trump to declare a national emergency to seize control of US elections.
The gathering also included senior Trump administration officials, among them a White House lawyer tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 election result, and the Department of Homeland Security official responsible for election integrity.
Election-denial bankroller
Also present at the Flynn summit was Patrick Byrne, the millionaire former Overstock.com chief executive who bankrolled efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and spoke at the 6 January rally which became an insurrectionary attempt to overthrow the election.
Whilst in Washington, Robinson filmed a widely shared video alongside Congressman Randy Fine, a Florida Republican who has led the creation of a “Sharia Free America” congressional caucus and who has a documented history of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The association culminated on 19 March, when Robinson delivered an early morning private briefing on Capitol Hill, titled “Sharia in the Land of the Free”, to a small group of members of Congress.
Though billed as a meeting rather than a formal hearing, Robinson treated it as a watershed moment, tagging the Prime Minister in his post about it and claiming his presentation would “show every mistake made by past governments.”
Alarming company
The Florida leg of the tour which followed brought yet more alarming company. Robinson is listed as a speaker at the Stay Awake America National Tour, a two-day event being held today and tomorrow at a church in Port Saint Lucie, which saw Robinson rubbing shoulders with some of the most toxic, extreme elements on the American far right.
Advertised speakers at the event include:
- Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Capitol attack and sentenced to 22 years before being pardoned by Trump in January;
- Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder convicted on the same charge and sentenced to 18 years, likewise pardoned by Trump;
- Tina Peters, the Colorado election official convicted on seven counts, including four felonies, for tampering with voting machines;
- Ivan Raiklin, the former Green Beret who conceived the scheme by which Mike Pence could have refused to certify the 2020 election result and who styles himself the “Secretary of Retribution”; and
- Judy Mikovits, the former scientist who became one of the most prominent spreaders of Covid-19 conspiracy theories through the viral video Plandemic.
An earlier trip to Florida had included an appearance at the Zionist Organization of America’s Florida Superstar Gala, highlighting troubling links between sections of the American pro-Israel right and European anti-Muslim activists.
The tour has not been without further incident.
During it, Robinson amplified a post on X that appeared to call for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be killed.
It followed a post from Elon Musk about the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, where Musk said “Another one bites the dust”.
In response, Columbian-born far-right influencer Valentin Gomez Noriega posted: “Keir Starmer is next” – a comment which Robinson reposted to his 1.9 million followers without comment.
Anti-democratic roll call
The roll-call of Robinson’s American fan club tells its own story. His hosts and fellow travellers include a State Department official linked to Russian disinformation networks, pardoned insurrectionists who led an armed militia to the Capitol, a convicted election saboteur, a man who plotted to overturn a democratic election result, and men who have called for democracy itself to be abolished.
Whatever Robinson once claimed to be, from working-class patriot to free speech martyr, the company he now keeps makes his true, anti-democratic politics impossible to misread.
