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Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka ‘Tommy Robinson’ has been found guilty of harassment causing fear of violence against two Daily Mail journalists.
The harassment started after the pair tracked him to a Cyprus hotel during the riots that followed the Southport murders, and reported that he was stoking race riots from his sunbed.
I’m delighted by the news. Thrilled, even. Here’s why.
An Unwelcome Visitor
Just over seven years ago, after I published articles questioning ‘Tommy’s’ income streams and helped fund Jamal Hijazi’s defamation suit against him, he paid me a nocturnal visit.
Twice, he hammered on my door, ranting sweatily to his Facebook Live audience. The second visit was shortly after 5am. During the broadcasts, he accused me of revealing his address and, quite unbelievably, sending armed ‘antifa’ after him.
The consequences were immediate. As a journalist with a particular worldview, I’m no stranger to hate mail. Criticism is part of the job. Yet this was something else entirely.
For the next month, a slew of death threats arrived through my letterbox, alongside neo-Nazi literature and, memorably, a USB stick that would have fried my computer had I plugged it in.
A few deeply misguided individuals even turned up at my doorstep. Among them was a pre-‘Top G’ Andrew Tate, who rattled around in my glass bins before posing for a photograph with his rented Bugatti in my driveway.
The ensuing uproar, coupled with a Bedfordshire police force that seemed deeply reluctant to act, ultimately drove me to leave my job and move to Germany.
Seven years later, the abuse periodically reignites. Whenever ‘Robinson’ gets worked up about journalists, particularly at rallies, my social media channels are flooded with another wave of hateful messages. More often than not, they threaten a kicking or worse should I ever dare return to British shores.
So yes, you can safely consider me satisfied with the jury’s verdict last week at Southwark Crown Court.
Tommy Robinson and the London News Website Linked to a Putin-Backed Propaganda Network
Far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was appointed as an ambassador to an unregistered charity connected to a Russian ‘black PR’ operation
A Long-Awaited Reckoning
But this case matters far beyond my own personal experience.
For years, ‘Robinson’ has wielded social media like a truncheon, with precious little in the way of consequences.
For more than a decade, when he hasn’t been inciting hatred against one minority or another – depending on who’s paying – he has liberally used his platforms to target individuals and organisations that dare to criticise him.
The list is long. It includes community activists and ordinary social media users who have challenged him, as well as figures such as HOPE not hate’s Nick Lowles and fellow journalists like The Independent’s Lizzie Dearden.
Others haven’t even needed to criticise him directly to incur his wrath. One personal trainer received around 250 threatening calls a day after ‘Robinson’ objected to her offering fitness classes for Muslim women.
For a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, he has done a damned good job of silencing others.
When one individual can direct the hatred of thousands of followers towards a single critic, placing them in real danger, the free and ordered society we like to think we live in begins to look like a charade – especially when it’s done in front of an audience of millions and, even more unbelievably, all written down.
This conviction is a long-overdue corrective, and hopefully a warning to others tempted to adopt the same tactics.
Robust disagreement is the foundation of a functioning democracy. Online mob rule and social media gangsterism are not; they erode it in subtle yet devastating ways the implications of which we are still discovering.
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More to be Done
Now that we’re beginning to hold those who incite online lynch mobs accountable, we must also address the role of the tech giants in such intimidation campaigns.
For years, they’ve walked a fine line between ‘platform’ and ‘publisher’, invoking whichever distinction best suits their interests. I have to say, they’ve done a very good job of it.
But when their algorithms amplify figures such as ‘Robinson’, helping them direct vast audiences of enraged netizens towards individual targets, the platforms providing that megaphone cannot simply wash their hands of the consequences when people get hurt.
Making social media platforms accountable is a far larger battle than the one against firebrands such as ‘Robinson’, and it may never be fully won. But putting some of their most destructive users in the dock, bringing them to account and documenting the platforms’ role along the way is a good start.
I’m happy with that.
‘Robinson’ will be sentenced on 16 December and faces up to ten years in prison. I’m sure that weighs heavily on him. I expect a sudden fundraiser or three, and increasingly irate screeds on X, as the date approaches and he ponders an indeterminate time inside.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep pottering around my corner of Germany. On the 16th, as he learns his fate, I’ll be raising a cold beer to the time he had me in his sights, and to the hope that he’ll no longer be able to target others.