Meet the Far-Right Influencers at Tommy Robinson’s Rally

Between 100,000 and 150,000 people descended on central London on Saturday for the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, organised by far-right agitator and anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.  

There was a distinct flavour of hard-right evangelical Christianity at the march, mixed with the beery football hooliganism more commonly associated with events fronted by Robinson. Attendees shouted far-right slogans – with some men simply chanting “NF” [National Front] – and carried union jacks, St George’s and Israeli flags. 

Others held placards bearing the face of assassinated rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, and slogans such as “Keir Starmer loves rent boys”, “stop the boats” and “send them home”. A Palestinian flag was torn to shreds on stage. A woman of colour was filmed being chased by attendees shouting “smack her”.  

Police arrested 25 people taking part for offences including affray, violent disorder, assaults and criminal damage, and reported that 26 officers were injured – four seriously. 

Beyond US tech billionaire Elon Musk – who joined via video link to call for the dissolution of parliament, saying that “you either fight back or you die” – who were the speakers who drew such a large crowd to London?

Tommy Robinson.

Let’s start with Robinson himself, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – a far-right activist and convicted criminal bankrolled by US pro-Israel money. A former member of the British National Party (BNP), he co-founded the English Defence League (EDL) in 2009 and led it until 2013. 

Between 2017 and 2018, Robinson appeared in videos for Canadian site Rebel News after being hired as their British correspondent, thanks to cash from US tech billionaire and Zionist Robert Shillman. 

Robinson was able to professionalise his image and rebrand himself as a ‘journalist’ by receiving a ‘Shillman Fellowship’, which is run through the anti-Islam nonprofit the David Horowitz Freedom Centre. He received an estimated £85k from 2017 to 2018, according to the Observer. 

In the past 20 years, Robinson has served five prison terms. He was first convicted in 2005 of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and assault with intent to resist arrest against an off-duty police constable, kicking the officer in the head as he lay on the floor. 

He was jailed in 2013 for entering the US using a passport that didn’t belong to him, and in 2019 for contempt of court over his interference in a grooming gang trial a year previously – leading to him begging for asylum in the US on conspiracy theorist and supplement-hawker Alex Jones’ Infowars show. 

In 2021, Robinson received a five-year stalking prevention order for harassing a journalist and her partner, and was also found to have libelled a Syrian schoolboy in Huddersfield. Robinson then repeated the libel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court in October 2024. 

At the ‘unite the kingdom’ event, Robinson told the crowd: “It’s not just Britain that is being invaded, it’s not just Britain that is being raped. Every single Western nation faces the same problem: an orchestrated, organised invasion and replacement of European citizens is happening.”

Éric Zemmour. 

French far-right politician Éric Zemmour was convicted for inciting racial hatred in 2022 after telling CNews channel two years earlier that child migrants were “thieves, killers, they’re rapists”. “That’s all they are,” Zemmour continued. “We should send them back.” 

Zemmour came fourth in the first round of the 2022 French presidential election. 

Zemmour was fined €10,000 in April after being convicted of contesting crimes against humanity. Zemmour had claimed that Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain “saved” French Jews rather than aiding their deportation to death camps. 

At the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, he repeated the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, speaking of “the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture”. Zemmour also said: “You and we are being colonised by our former colonies.”

Eva Vlaardingerbroek. 

Dutch Zionist and far-right activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek describes herself in her social media bios as the “Schieldmaiden of the far-right”. 

Vlaardingerbroek is a conservative Christian and avowed anti-feminist. She has described her political fight as a “spiritual” one against forces she would “definitely describe as evil”. In 2023, she told the National Catholic Register that feminism and gender ideology stop women “from getting married, starting families and becoming truly happy and fulfilling their (moral) duty”. 

Vlaadingerbroek is a regular on GB News and German rightwing channel Achtung, Reichelt! She also argues that the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory is real.  

At the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, Vlaardingerbroek said: “We are fighting this time because they are demanding the sacrificing of our children on the altar of mass migration.”

Wearing a ‘generation remigration’ T-shirt – a reference to ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of anyone not white – she said: “The fruits of mass immigration are insecurity, impoverishment, and cultural decay […] We are witnessing the rape, replacement and murder of our people.” 

Brian Tamaki.

Ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist Brian Tamaki is the leader of Destiny Church in New Zealand – a Pentecostal church he founded in the 1980s. 

During the pandemic, Tamaki said the spread of Covid was a sign the world had “strayed from God”. In Decemebr 2023, he organised a pro-Israel rally outside parliament, and said there was no place in New Zealand for “Palestine/Hamas sympathisers” in a statement released beforehand. In the same year, he blamed the devastation from Cyclone Gabrielle on porn, gay rights and abortion. 

Since 2022, Tamaki has led the Freedoms New Zealand Party. He has run for political office several times – but never been elected. Earlier this year, he marched in Auckland saying that “the spread of non-Christian religions is now out of control” in New Zealand. 

Tamaki – who is of Tainui heritage – repeated this sentiment at the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, shouting: “Ban any type of public expression in our Christian nation from other religions. Ban halal, ban burkas, ban mosques, ban temples, ban shrines.”

Tamaki’s Destiny Church group put on a haka [ceremonial Maori dance] at the march, calling it a “battle cry that honoured Charlie Kirk and declared Christ to the nations”.

Ant Middleton. 

Ant Middleton is a former special forces and royal marines soldier turned reality TV star turned far-right commentator. 

Best known for being the chief instructor on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins from 2015 to 2021, Middleton was convicted of the unlawful wounding of a male police officer and the common assault of a female police officer in a nightclub in Chelmsford, Essex in 2013. 

He appeared at Reform UK’s party conference this year, after the government’s Insolvency Service announced in March that Middleton and his wife had been banned from becoming company directors for four years following the failure of his Sway and Starting Ltd company to pay more than £1m in tax. 

Middleton announced his intention to run for mayor of London at Saturday’s rally.

Avi Yemini. 

Avi Yemini is an Australian-Israeli ex-IDF soldier and a far-right commentator who describes himself as a “proud Zionist” and “proudly anti-Islam”. He has admitted to killing civilians while serving in the Israeli military. 

Yemini is generally seen as a deliberate provocateur. At a demonstration against Robinson’s imprisonment in 2018, he declared himself to be “the world’s proudest Jewish Nazi” – though he later said it was an “obvious joke”. 

Yemini pleaded guilty in 2019 to assault for throwing a chopping board at his former wife that hit her on the forehead, and to harassing her with abusive messages. 

Like Robinson, Yemini is also linked to Canadian outlet Rebel News, becoming its Australian correspondent in 2022. 

Ezra Levant. 

Media entrepreneur Ezra Levant – described as “Canada’s Jewish Steve Bannon” – is the founder of Rebel News. 

Levant had to pay out big sums for libel in both 2011 and 2014 – the latter after he defamed a young law student as a serial liar, a bigot and a Jew-hating “illiberal Islamic fascist”. 

Levant was also arrested by Toronto Police for breaching the peace at an anti-Israel protest in 2024, after which he announced his intention to sue the police. 

At the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, Levant called for the end to a “bizarre preference for foreign people and foreign ideas over national ideas”.

Laurence Fox.

Former actor turned rightwing activist Laurence Fox set up the Reclaim party in 2020 and unsuccessfully stood for London mayor in 2021 and the London assembly in 2024, losing deposits worth a combined £15,000. 

Fox posted an image of a swastika made from the Progress Pride flag in 2022, and photo of himself in blackface in 2023, claiming to have “racially transitioned”. He was sacked from his GB News job in 2023 for a misogynistic on-air rant about a female journalist. 

In 2024, he was ordered to pay £90,000 in damages to both drag artist Crystal and former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake after libelling them by calling them “paedophiles”. 

Fox was charged in April with two counts under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 for allegedly sharing ‘upskirt’ intimate photos of TV personality Narinder Kaur without her consent. 

Petr Bystron. 

Czech-born German MP Petr Bystron is a member of the Bundestag for the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). 

The AfD is the first far-right party to win a state election – the eastern state of Thuringia – in Germany since the second world war. 

At its party conference in January, leader Alice Weidel embraced the term ‘remigration’ just a year after mass protests were sparked by senior AfD members discussing the concept with Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner, who was later banned from entering Germany. 

Terry McMahon.

Irish film director, producer, writer and actor Terry McMahon had a small role in 2005’s Batman Begins, and wrote and directed the 2014 drama Patrick’s Day, which won a number of awards.  

McMahon has publicly supported anti-trans campaigner and TV writer Graham Linehan, condemning what he calls the “attempted destruction of one of our greatest artists” after Linehan’s arrest earlier this month. 

At the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, McMahon said: “Degenerates in both of our beautiful but broken countries came for our kids, maligning mothers and fathers as mangy muts and malevolent mongrels. Maybe they were right… Maybe we are dangerous dogs.” 

He went on to say that everyone present was “unified in the core truth that our political, social, ethical and moral way of life is now under sustained attack,” and unfurled the Irish tricolour flag. 

Filip Dewinter. 

Filip Dewinter is a leading figure in the rightwing Flemish nationalist and separatist Vlaams Belang party – a rebrand of Vlaams Blok, which was forced to disband in 2004 after violating anti-racism laws. Its ideological roots trace back to Flemish nationalist movements that included Nazi Germany collaborators.  

Vlaams Belang is strongly anti-immigration, as well as vehemently anti-Islam and pro-Israel – despite Jewish discomfort with its history. 

At the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, Dewinter said: “Islam is our real enemy… You have to get rid of Islam. Islam doesn’t belong to Europe. Islam doesn’t belong to the UK.”

Morten Messerschmidt.

Far-right leader of the Danish People’s Party and former MEP Morten Messerschmidt regularly speaks about how he believes Denmark has become unsafe due to immigration. Earlier this month, he said the country’s “new reality” was one of “rapes, assaults, murders and Islamic infiltration”. 

In August, Messerschmidt said Muhammad becoming the most popular boys name in England “testifies to a country that has lost the battle against Muslim mass immigration”. 

Messerschmidt told crowds at the ‘unite the kingdom’ event that he stands with “millions who see their country sliding into cultural darkness,” and said he cares “as a Dane” because “we share, we defend and we fight for the same very values that found the western society of democracy of civilization”. 

Ben Habib. 

Former MEP and deputy chair for Reform UK Ben Habib is now chair of rival far-right party, Advance UK. Advance UK – which has yet to register with the Electoral Commission – sponsored the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, and Robinson joined the party last month. It is also supported by Musk. 

Pakistani-born property investor Habib quit Reform in November 2024, citing “fundamental differences” with leader Nigel Farage over issues including Brexit, the party structure and immigration – specifically that Habib backs “mass deportations”. He is a supporter of Rupert Lowe, who was booted from Reform in March and now sits as the independent MP for Great Yarmouth.

On breaking with Reform, Habib said: “I’m not in it for political advancement… I’m doing this because I have an absolute belief that the country is facing an existential threat.”

Addressing the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, Habib said that “we must not forget” that Britain is a Christian country.” 

Ada Lluch.

Spanish influencer and Donald Trump supporter Ada Lluch’s social media accounts are characterised by modelling shots and posts about how “European females” are “literally terrified” of speaking out against mass immigration. Lluch is a prolific poster, calling for “remigration now” and saying “when I see a white person wearing a Palestine keffiyeh I immedietaly [sic] know they are retarded” this month alone. 

Lluch also mocked “Greta Thunberg and her ugly friends” earlier this month, calling the flotilla mission to break the siege on Gaza and deliver aid to Palestinians a “scam”. 

Lluch posted on 17 September that people can call her far-right if it means “I want to live in a country where I don’t have to worry about being raped by third-world migrants”. 

In comments mirroring those of Vlaardingerbroek, Lluch told the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally: “The government is taking our money and financing the great demographic replacement of our nation.”

Katie Hopkins. 

The former Sun and MailOnline writer who once compared asylum seekers to “cockroaches” has also been a recipient of Shillman’s money. 

Hopkins was a contestant on the Apprentice in 2007 and on Celebrity Big Brother in 2015, and in 2016 became a presenter for LBC – a role she later lost over comments regarding the Manchester Arena bombing. 

She has been embroiled in significant legal issues, with MailOnline forced to pay damages to a Muslim family in 2016 after she falsely accused them of having extremist links. Hopkins was also forced to pay damages and legal costs to food writer Jack Monroe over defamatory comments made on social media. 

In her speech at the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally, Hopkins said: “I remain the biggest bitch in Britain… I don’t care what religion you are. Just don’t try and take your religion and shove it down the faces of my children or my people.”

She continued: “I don’t care what biological sex you think you might be. You can identify as a light if you want to – I’ll take a lightbulb and shove it up your arse if it makes you happy.”

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and Canadian psychologist-turned-influencer Jordan Peterson were billed to speak, but ended up being no-shows.