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Eugene

(61,592 posts)
Fri Dec 7, 2018, 04:17 PM Dec 2018

Revealed: the hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson

See also in Editorials & Other Articles: How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain (George Monbiot)

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Source: The Guardian

Revealed: the hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson

Guardian investigation shows how cash, legal support and millions of tweets underpin anti-Islam activist - but Facebook removes his ‘donate’ button

Josh Halliday, Lois Beckett in San Francisco and Caelainn Barr
Fri 7 Dec 2018 16.00 GMT

The British far-right activist Tommy Robinson is receiving financial, political and moral support from a broad array of non-British groups and individuals, including US thinktanks, rightwing Australians and Russian trolls, a Guardian investigation has discovered.

Robinson, an anti-Islam campaigner who is leading a “Brexit betrayal” march in London on Sunday, has received funding from a US tech billionaire and a thinktank based in Philadelphia.

Two other US thinktanks, part-funded by some of the biggest names in rightwing funding, have published a succession of articles in support of Robinson, who has become a cause célèbre among the American far right since he was jailed in May for two months.

-snip-

The investigation has established that:

• A Philadelphia-based thinktank, the Middle East Forum (MEF), acknowledges it has spent about $60,000 (£47,000) on Robinson’s legal fees and demonstrations staged in London earlier this year. A senior MEF executive has been closely involved in preparations for this weekend’s march, though the thinktank said she was there in a personal capacity.
• A US tech billionaire, Robert Shillman, financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed in 2017 by a rightwing Canadian media website, the Rebel Media, on a salary of about £5,000 a month.
• A small Australian rightwing group, Australian Liberty Alliance, says it has helped fund Robinson, but did not disclose how much.
• A New York City-based thinktank, the Gatestone Institute, has published a succession of articles supporting Robinson’s cause.
• The David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), a California-based thinktank that describes itself as a “school for political warfare”, has published a series of pieces defending Robinson, and has lobbied for him to address US politicians.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/07/tommy-robinson-global-support-brexit-march

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