[25] Robinson stated that he was prompted to found the EDL after reading a newspaper article about local Islamists attempting to recruit men to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan outside a bakery in Luton.

[63][64] Robinson travelled to watch UEFA Euro 2016 in France and demonstrated with a T-shirt and English flag ridiculing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

[79] In March 2018, Robinson attended court in support of Mark Meechan, who had been charged for a hate crime after posting footage online of a dog performing Nazi salutes in response to the phrases "gas the Jews" and "Sieg Heil".

In 2020, he visited Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, following protests in support of Eleanor Williams, a teenager accused and later convicted of perverting the course of justice by lying about being raped by a grooming gang.

next to a Rape Crisis flyer about specialist services for ethnic minority victims, resulting in hundreds of racist and abusive phone calls to the centre from Robinson's supporters.

[93][94][95] The International Free Press Society is closely connected to the counterjihad movement[96] and Liz Fekete, the executive director of the Institute of Race Relations in Britain, has suggested that it is an instrument for pushing the boundaries of hate speech.

[100][101] In response to the Telford child sexual exploitation scandal, Robinson held a protest in January 2022 where he screened his 73-minute documentary about Muslim grooming gangs, titled The Rape of Britain: Survivor Stories.

[106] Mark Rowley, the outgoing assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the UK's most senior counter-terrorism officer said that there is "no doubt" that material posted online by people including Robinson drove the Finsbury Park terror attacker to targeting Muslims.

At its launch, the members said that it is not a political party but a "cultural movement", whose key issues include "strong borders, immigration, and national identity", "authorities privileging and protecting Islam alone" and "freedom of speech".

[109][110] Other contributors to Hearts of Oak include Niall McRae, the co-author of an Islamophobic and anti-Semitic conspiracy booklet, and Catherine Blaiklock, the former leader of the Brexit Party.

[111] Vice World News found eight separate companies currently or formerly run from the same address whose directors are members of the Orthodox Conservatives, the Bow Group or Turning Point UK.

[111] Robinson and Benjamin pre-recorded a speech that was displayed at a protest on 1 August 2020 demanding the deportation of the men involved in the Rochdale child sex abuse ring.

Richard Inman, the founder of Veterans Against Terrorism, a campaign group with far-right associations, was also a speaker and demanded the death penalty, stating "this rape epidemic" is "carried out by one section of the community", referring to Muslim Pakistani men.

As the protest finished, Stand Up to Racism tweeted, "Several speakers didn't show & the 'highlight' of Tommy Robinson's video message went down poorly [...] Hearts of Oak are going nowhere.

[150][151] Following news of the attack, Maajid Nawaz wrote to the Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling, asking for Robinson's situation to be urgently addressed.

[171] Both sentences were for the offence of contempt of court, which can include speeches or publications that create a "substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced".

[169][173] On 25 May 2018, Robinson was arrested for a breach of the peace while live streaming outside Leeds Crown Court[170][174] during the trial of the Huddersfield grooming gang on which reporting restrictions had been ordered by the judge.

[181] Robinson attracted sympathy from several right-wing politicians in Europe, including the Dutch Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders[174] and the member of the German Bundestag for the far-right Alternative for Germany Petr Bystron.

[184] Demonstrators prevented a Muslim woman from driving a bus,[185] performed Nazi salutes, threw scaffolding, glass bottles, and street furniture at police, and damaged vehicles and buildings.

[187] The anti-fascist advocacy group Hope not Hate said its analysis showed that 68.1% of the signatures were from the UK, 9.7% from Australia, 9.3% from the US, and the rest from Canada, Germany, France, New Zealand, Netherlands, Sweden, and Ireland combined.

[192] In July 2018, Reuters reported that the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, lobbied the UK government on the treatment of Robinson.

Although Robinson has in the past been refused entry to the US, and was jailed in 2012 for using a friend's passport to enter the country, in October 2018 he was invited by Congressional Republicans to speak in Washington, but could not obtain a visa in time.

"[226] His lawyers said Robinson's postings had made him "the focus of countless messages of hate and threats from the extreme right wing" and had led to a police safety warning.

Solicitors representing the victim are pursuing legal action against the social media firm on the basis Facebook was responsible for Robinson's posts as it had given him "special treatment [that] seems to be financially driven".

[226] However, on 26 February 2019, Facebook announced that it had banned Robinson from the service for violating its community standards and "posting material that uses dehumanizing language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims".

[242] On 28 July 2024, Robinson was arrested by Kent Police at the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone under the Terrorism Act 2000, "for frustration of a schedule 7 examination" immediately after his 'Unite the Kingdom' protest at Trafalgar Square.

On 16 August the tweet disappeared, but Robinson then made another post, copying the original screen, which he explained he had deleted to avoid having his X account suspended while he appealed the matter.

[268] That same year, the American/Israeli Middle East Forum think tank (led by Daniel Pipes and described as "fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment"; Kassam was a fellow of the MEF[266]) said it had been funding rallies in Robinson's support and paying legal costs in his appeal against his prison sentence.

[267] For several months in late 2018, he used Facebook's donations feature that was intended for charities to instead collect money for a new conspiracy theory website and to fund legal action against the British government for his own prison treatment.

Over six years, directors of these entities failed to file any annual accounts, with one of the companies (Hope and Pride Ltd) owing £328,000 in corporation tax and employer contributions to HMRC.