Read Our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
A network of Russian far-right extremists steeped in neo-Nazi antisemitism – created under the umbrella of a sanctioned oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and now openly promoted by Tommy Robinson – has been driving ‘White Lives Matter’ propaganda over the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, Byline Times can reveal.
The organisation promoted by Robinson is part of a wider Russian state-linked campaign to sow division across the UK and Europe,
A Byline Times review of X and Telegram posts by the Brotherhood of Academists, a Russian ultranationalist youth movement which operates under the leadership of the US-sanctioned Tsargrad Society, reveals that the group pushed a white supremacist framing of Nowak’s killing on 20 May – the day media coverage of his killer’s trial intensified.
The material it amplified came from the “Paladins International Sovereigntist League”, a Russian-sponsored alliance of extreme-right organisations from a dozen countries, launched last September in a regional parliament building by the same Kremlin-linked oligarch.
On Tuesday night, as riots spread through Belfast hours after his call for nationwide street protests, the far-right agitator – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – promoted the movement by name to his 1.9 million followers on X, sharing its torchlit ‘Remember Henry Nowak’ ceremony with the words: “Russian nationalists @Academists1721 paying their respects to Henry Nowak and sending a message of United patriotism 🇬🇧 🤝 🇷🇺”.
Robinson posted the video from Russia, where he had spent the previous days meeting Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, in a Moscow hotel bar – a man who has himself given an interview to the Brotherhood.
Analysis of the two organisations’ X accounts and Telegram channels by Byline Times establishes that they were promoting white supremacist propaganda over Nowak’s murder, including the ‘White Lives Matter’ slogan, almost two weeks before the Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage declared that “white lives matter too”.
The Russian Brotherhood group promoted by Robinson is also a virulently antisemitic group, frequently promoting conspiracy theories about “Jewish puppeteers” controlling the West and promoting the neo-Nazi concept of “ZOG” (‘Zionist Occupied Government’).
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.