(Tommy Robinson was previously know as Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, and possibly by other names)
Tommy Robinson is currently locked up on remand under section 7 of the Terrorism Act, and faces other contempt of court charges. Last week he briefly held the number one spot in Amazon’s best selling books with his version of the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Today his supporters are gathering in London.
The Times meanwhile have run a story claiming that he is under investigation by MI5 for his links to Russia.
The Times claims that MI5 are looking into links between Tommy Robinson and Russia, and that Nigel Farage could be implicated. Russia have announced that they will offer sanctuary to people fleeing the woke tyranny of the West. This isn’t the first time links between Russia and British right wingers have come to light: the Commons Intelligence Select Committee produced a comprehensive report detailing Russian interference with the Brexit vote, which the Government preferred to ignore
Frankly I find the idea of Tommy the spy a bit far fetched
But if the Russian’s aren’t bankrolling Tommy where is he getting all of the money from? He is living a life of luxury in Spain on a Irish passport, and travels the world business class meeting some very nasty people. So who is funding him?
The obvious answer is Elon Musk.
One of the people recently jailed for incitement to riot was Wayne O’Rourke. He had more than 90,000 followers on X and earned around £1,400 a month from it, through X/Twitters affiliate programme. The more traffic you generate the more you earn. Tommy has 1m followers, and if he is on the same kind of deal he would be earning £17,500 a month from Elon Musk. This isn’t quite in the Nigel Farage league, but it goes to show that there are lots of very rich, snobby foreign media owners paying lots of money to stir up hate.
During the riots I used X/Twitter to search for information. This is who Musk recommended that I follow:
But there is an even older business model that Nick Griffin used with the BNP.
Griffin would say something racist, or which would land him in court (remember the marmite scandal?). His mate had a call centre in Belfast run by former Protestant paramilitaries, who would ring round gullible right wingers and get them to donate to the legal costs. Griffin would then apologies or otherwise wiggle out of the case and pocket the money. He got rich doing it until someone leaked the BNP membership list which knackered his business model.
Tommy Robinson has a similar talent for getting into trouble, and like Griffin he doesn’t like paying up. His current legal problems lead from a £100,000 bill from a libel case he lost. In the on-line world such appeals for money are even easier than they were for the BNP.
It could be that Tommy is a Russian asset. Or it could just be that he is running the exact same business model as Nick Griffin.
Griffin at least had the common sense to disappear with the money. Stephen Yaxley Lennon seems to find it hard to leave the spot light and the cash behind.
You said of Nick Griffin that “he got rich doing it until someone leaked the BNP membership list which knackered his business model”.
How exactly did it knacker his business model: were BNP members no longer willing to donate once they’d been “outed”?
https://jon-chadwick.com/2020/12/19/corbyn-ltd-and-the-bnp/
So basically any two-bit racist could copy Nick Griffin’s little scam once the membership list was leaked?
Yup, and they did. That was his customer list, with it he controlled the party and made loads of money.
Going back to the original issue of who funds Tommy Robinson, isn’t one of his biggest funders the Jewish-American multi-millionaire Robert J Shillman?
I’m not surprised….