'I worked with Tommy Robinson, he doesn't care about truth – only money'
| Updated:
A former far-right journalist and colleague of Tommy Robison shares what he learned working with the extremist activist.
In brief...
- Robinson has used social media to stir up hate in the UK, particularly against Muslims and asylum seekers, while pursuing fame and financial gain.
- Caolan Robertson, a former colleague, describes how Robinson became obsessed with money and chaos, contributing to social unrest in the UK.
- He says social media, particularly X (formerly Twitter), is a platform for spreading misinformation, with figures like Elon Musk amplifying it, leading to widespread radicalisation and social division.
Listen to this article
“He doesn't believe half of it, but it doesn't matter, because the truth is totally irrelevant to him.”
Convicted criminal Tommy Robinson has been a powerful presence in the UK during recent weeks, using social media to stir up hate in the UK, largely against Muslim people and asylum seekers.
He has close to a million followers on X, and has been posting on the Elon Musk-owned platform while holidaying in the Mediterranean.
But this is what Robinson (real name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon) has always dreamed of doing, according to a former colleague who says he was radicalised by far-right content online.
"He just totally thrives in making the UK look terrible and fleeing whenever, whenever anything bad happens," Caolan Robertson – who previously created extremist content with Robinson, and ran his personal website – tells Lewis Goodall on The News Agents.
Tommy Robinson thrives off making the UK look like a disaster, says former colleague
He says the situation he has found himself in recently, tweeting from a sun lounger, while the UK faced race-riots, is what Robinson "romanticised and fantasised" about doing years ago.
"I think he's somebody that will genuinely disrupt social cohesion in Britain, somebody that is tweeting the things that he's tweeting.
"He's somebody that doesn't care about the truth and somebody that doesn't care about anything other than blowing up their own profile, regardless of what happens to Britain, is extremely dangerous, and I think it's going to get far worse."
Robinson has been named as a key agitator in recent riots in the UK, which saw scenes of violence on the streets of UK towns, as far-right thugs hurled stones at Mosques, attempted to burn down a hotel housing asylum seekers and caused damage to private property.
Who is Tommy Robinson?
Tommy Robison (real name Christopher Yaxley-Lennon) is a far-right activist, who has been involved with the British National Party and co-founded the English Defence League (EDL) – both of which are considered extremist right-wing organisations.
He has denied any involvement in the racist riots which have taken place across the UK in August 2024, but has been actively sharing anti-Muslim sentiment on social media, encouraging followers to "rise up" in the wake of the Southport murders, as well as continuing to share anti-Muslim sentiment and unverified claims about Muslim people in the UK online.
He has done this from a holiday in Cyprus, and more recently Athens, having left the country while on bail over contempt of court charges.
Despite relentless campaigning against migrants in the UK, in June this year he was arrested in Canada on a suspected immigration offence.
Caolan believes his personal radicalisation began after the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, the mass-murder of 49 people in an LGBTQ+ venue by an Islamic extremist.
He says he came across right-wing videos on YouTube when looking for details of the shooting, and other issues he cared about, and began working as a journalist and presenter for a right-wing production company, which is where he met (and worked with) Tommy Robinson for the first time.
He says as friends distanced themselves from him as he shared his right wing views, he "doubled down", watching even more content on YouTube.
"I generally felt like what I was doing was right. I felt like it was the truth," he adds.
"I felt I was pushing free speech in a country where you couldn't say anything anymore.
"I felt like, genuinely, Islam was a threat to LGBT rights, to women's rights. I felt I was doing all this from a progressive standpoint."
He describes some of his beliefs at this time as "completely unhinged".
"When I first met Tommy, he was pretty much driven by ideology," Caolan continues.
"He had just got out of prison, the EDL had just been disbanded. He wanted to get online for the first time. He wanted to utilise the internet, and he wanted to spread his message.
"He hated Islam, and he had a million reasons for that. But over time we became extremely successful."
He ran Robinson's website, saying the pair were making thousands of pounds from it, saying the income "changed" Robinson.
"He sort of stopped believing in the stuff that he did originally, and basically became obsessed with cash and travel."
"He became more and more unhinged over time – and I think it was basically money and fame that did that.
"From the beginning, he wanted to escape the UK, to cause as much chaos as possible, which is literally what we're seeing now, and become like a refugee in the US so that he could live a luxury life there. I remember him talking about it endlessly."
He says he was deradicalised when he came face to face with some of the people he'd worked to demonise while working on far-right content, meeting women and children fleeing war in Turkey, having previously believed most migrants to be "fighting age furious, angry young men ready to take over Europe".
"It took me literally going across the world to see that refugees weren't like monsters that were portrayed on my news feeds, to start stepping back," he says.
"Most people don't have the opportunity, and most people don't have a position where they can actually experience those things.
"So I'm pretty pessimistic about it, and as we spend more time online and more time getting all of our information from our news feeds, and literally, all of our world views from our news feeds.”
However, he also says that "the questions that I had were valid, but the answers were wrong" and believes there should be more scrutiny of Islam in the media.
"Twitter has normalised far-right views. They are being diffused down from the very top - Musk himself"
He describes social media, Twitter/X in particular, as a "free-for-all of misinformation,", saying "there's nothing the UK government can do" to stop more people becoming influenced by Robinson's output.
Elon Musk, who has close to 200 million followers, has amplified misinformation from Tommy Robinson online.
"I know firsthand how that works and how those small steps to radicalisation work," he says.
"There are going to be loads more versions of me in the future."
He says he has sympathy for some of the people radicalised by online content, having experienced it first hand, and describes those affected as "victims".
"There's a sense of desperation in the UK. There are a huge number of people in the UK who are completely isolated," he insists.
"They are completely separate from the political system, who are completely let down by everybody, who are also victims to misinformation.
“I don't think that those people are evil or bad or there's anything wrong with them."
Why is Tommy Robinson so popular?
Joe Mulhall, director of research at nonprofit organisation Hope Not Hate describes the "horrifying scenes" on UK streets as the reality of Robinson's politics "manifesting on our streets".
But he says it's understandable how what Robinson preaches might appeal to some people in this country.
"Politics is not meeting the material needs for their lives," he tells Lewis Goodall. "And he provides a very simple, monocausal explanation for why that is.
"He turns around and says: 'It's because of asylum seekers and it's because of Muslims,' and for some people, that's a very appealing message.
"I think it's that ability to create really simple answers to very complex questions that's made him so appealing."
Listen in full on The News Agents.
