Do You Know the Story of Tommy Robbinson
Caolan Robertson was cameraman, manager and editor to a who's who of the far-right. He says he'south a changed man but can nosotros believe him?
In 1945, Robert Oppenheimer was a world-renowned theoretical physicist. Subsequently, that year, he would become known equally the father of the atomic bomb, for his leading role in developing the world'south offset nuclear weapons. The moniker has stayed, though, the wooden structures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have non. Oppenheimer himself would become on to campaign against the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Interviewed 20 years later, Oppenheimer reflects on that moment in the New Mexico desert. His optics are afar, staring toward a personal retention that is also ane of humanity's defining moments, and sorrow flows from his soul.
"We knew the world would not exist the same," he said. "A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita ."
Information technology looks like Oppenheimer blinks away a tear then continues. "Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed course and says, 'Now I am become Expiry, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose nosotros all thought that, one manner or another."
The video is grainy, black and white, but the viewer can practice nothing simply share in the remorse, conflict and horror of a peachy scientist, confronting his direct interest in the creation of an omnipotent weapon that would impale hundreds of thousands, and permanently exit the human race teetering on the brink of its ain annihilation.
"You're then reasonable," Caolan Robertson repeats as we stroll along the south bank of the Thames. I wouldn't draw myself as a paragon of centrism simply nearly all political positions are moderate when compared with those Robertson is still all-time known for. He is genial, communicative and assertive. His outfit looks directly from a boohoo Human collection. Denim jacket, oversized sunglasses lifted from the 60s, evidently blackness t-shirt. The only affair undermining the considered outfit is the can of G&T he is clutching to take the edge off last night's belatedly 1.
Caolan working his new job at Byline TV (Credit: YouTube)
He was a far-right YouTuber and claims to be responsible for half-a-billion video views. He filmed, scripted and edited video for the likes of Tommy Robinson and American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for two years. During that menstruation Robinson'southward content was cited at trial as an influence on Darren Osbourne, the Finsbury Park mosque attacker. Caolan strongly denies a link between his work and the set on.
Then, in 2019, he got out. "I was at the center of that online right organization, right in the heart of it," he says. "I made a monster with those videos."
What motivates someone to believe racist myths? What role does social media play in the spread of extremist ideas? And where should our threshold for forgiveness lie?
In Caolan'south case, the outset question has a straightforward answer - the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016. Forty-ix LGBTQ+ people died at the hands of Omar Mateen, an Islamist extremist. When Caolan, himself a gay human being, heard about the massacre, he wanted to know more. "I wasn't even political at that fourth dimension," he says. "I went online to notice answers about it. I'g not a boomer, I don't become my data from newspapers and Boob tube, I get information technology from YouTube. I went downwardly this rabbit hole and became obsessed with it."
The globe's second-largest search engine, YouTube, plays a prominent role in this story. Social media is symbiotic with politics, peculiarly its extremes.
Take, for case, the mob's storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January six, America wasn't witnessing a revolution. The oversupply weren't wresting control of their democracy from elites. The majority were at that place for the clout.
Photos of the scene show a throng, their artillery straightened and at an angle out in front. But they're non performing Nazi salutes, the hands weren't extended apartment, they were clasping smartphones.
The modern day salute (Credit: Win McNamee/Getty)
"Everything that y'all practise, if information technology'southward not been live streamed it never happened, everything is driven by phones and by the cyberspace," Caolan says. "Our movement is, was, specifically online, information technology was incredibly online."
This slip between nowadays and past tense is telling. It'southward been 2 years since Caolan alleged he was no longer working for Tommy Robinson, 38, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. "A long time ago" according to Caolan simply not long plenty to end speaking like he'due south nonetheless part of it.
Robinson understood the potential of tapping into online political groups. "I remember when Tommy offset met me he was similar 'This is the most powerful affair I could possibly have' and it was his phone," Caolan says. "He was similar 'This is the hereafter, I don't need the media, I don't need to get out onto the street to speak to people.'"
Caolan grew up in Ireland earlier moving to the north of England and, from an early historic period, internet stardom was a focus. His first taste of notoriety came in 2014, when he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary series, Shut Your Facebook , which claimed to explore "the increasingly uninhibited way we present ourselves online." The interviewees were selected on the grounds of their "outrageous, embarrassing or ridiculous "social media profiles and the series aimed to demonstrate the "implications of their online exploits in the real world." Information technology's a prescient description.
The reason for Caolan's inclusion was his part in creating a social media gossip series. Imagine a collaboration between Geordie Shore and Topman, full of fights, drinking and ostentatious living. "At that place was this golden community of people on the internet who had fame and I wanted to be a part of it," a 17-year-old Caolan says in one episode before joking that he'south suffering withdrawal symptoms for not having drunk champagne in three days.
The premium alcohol and five-star hotels necessary to portray a luxury lifestyle landed Caolan in £five,000 of debt simply he learned a valuable lesson about how to engineer ascendancy: "We'd have arguments and relationship break-ups - just loads and loads of drama - and I was getting loads more fans and followers."
Rows, the collapse of a relationship, these are traumatic experiences, albeit inside the confines of reality TV, but you sense that meaning is irrelevant to Caolan. They are, instead, narrative devices, tools concocted to go on people watching, like those deployed by the producers of Beloved Isle .
Beside the Thames, its waters rendered opaque by the clouds, he reiterates this belief. He'due south planning to utilise confrontation and theatrics to get his new work for Byline Television, the video adjunct of Byline Times , a progressive publisher that made its proper name scrutinising coronavirus contracts, to pop on YouTube, using the same camera equipment originally gifted to him by right-fly fans, worth tens-of-thousands of pounds. Still producing content, just with different politics.
Arie W Kruglanski is a psychology professor at the University of Maryland in the US, who specialises in extremism and radicalisation. He told me that it's non unusual for an extremist to change their ideology: "You tin can be radical on the right, yous can be radical on the left, you can be radical religiously, in your lifestyle, sport. You can exist fond to love.
"There are many different kinds of extremism that differ in their content, but what extremism usually means is focusing on i affair. Female parent Theresa willed 1 thing, to be a good person, a humanitarian. A person on the far-right is focusing on a far-right narrative that fears the purity of their state is in danger."
From a wood panelled office, shelves groaning under heavy books, Kruglanski explains that all human activity stems from a motivation to fulfil a basic need. "The question is, what is the motivation here?" he asks. "Information technology is the mother of all motives, the motive that makes the world go round, what I call the quest for significance - the need to be somebody, to have respect, to have dignity.
"This demand is a major political force. Information technology underlies the Proud Boys, it underlies Blackness Lives Affair, information technology underlies the suffragette movement, the gay move, it underlies all the major revolutions that transformed world history. It underlies to some extent Brexit.
"It too fuels extremism of the kind you're talking about."
A serial of Black Lives Affair protests were held in London following the death of George Floyd (Credit: Alex Pantling/Getty)
This search for identity is realised via narratives and networks, and information technology's possible, indeed common, for those to modify. An private might discover far-right ideas compelling, but if they fall out with their group of friends who hold similar ideals, they may seek out a new ideology.
"If yous are disenchanted, if y'all experience they've betrayed you, that you're gay and they're anti-gay, yous leave," Kruglanski continues. "Simply people who are extreme... volition look for some alternative ideology that promises significance and then will gravitate towards information technology.
"By the style, several of my friends who enquiry the far-right movement are old Neo Nazis, who are at present leading the fight to bring people out," he adds. "They gain tremendous significance from this."
Haunted by the treatment of the LGBTQ+ community at the easily of Islamist extremists, Caolan decided to take action. A popular early YouTube video, from January 2017, saw him nourish a women's march in fundamental London in the wake of Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election. It was watched more than a million times and its comments mock the participants. At present, Caolan admits to selectively editing to make the protesters seem ill-informed.
The upload was spotted by Ezra Levant of Rebel Media, a Canadian far-right news outlet since demonetised by YouTube, who engineered a see upwards with staff member Tommy Robinson. Robinson was presenting videos for Rebel. "He came round to my business firm and was genuinely the loveliest person I had always met at that time," Caolan tells me. "He was really sugariness to me, he was like 'Caolan, you're gay, you must understand, you're under attack by Islam,' and I fully believed him. I was like, that'southward astonishing."
Caolan went on to make, in his words, "some of the biggest documentaries that have been on the right." He directed Lauren Southern's Farmlands , an alt-right film that proposes the thought of a genocide against white South Africans. Information technology was tweeted by the so American president, Donald Trump. Then, InfoWars' Alex Jones commissioned him to make a "documentary '' about free speech.
Wow. Simply... wow. Here nosotros run across the president of the U.s.a. openly endorsing the "white genocide" propaganda of the Southward African white supremacist movement.
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) August 23, 2018
"I loved working with Tommy and Alex," Caolan says assertively, equally if recalling a childhood friendship, its validity unquestionable. "Tommy knew how useful I was to him so did Alex. They would be incredibly complimentary about me. Information technology felt similar nosotros were on an amazing crusade - like we were on the side of adept."
Caolan interchangeably filmed or presented videos with Tommy, they share the screen in the above video filmed in the wake of the Westminster Bridge terror attack. "If you import a civilisation, you get a civilization," Caolan opines. Tommy is more edgeless: "We are at war." Robertson tells me that he felt part of a shared mission, driving across the land to expose "the truth" while members of the public waved from their cars on the superhighway.
It's hard to enlarge the popularity Caolan's work enjoyed. "I walk to work everyday across the Millennium Bridge," he says. "I get recognised at least once a week by someone who thinks that I'1000 withal right-wing. 'Oh mate, continue upwards the good work.' So I definitely entered the public consciousness." He'due south non bragging but I detect a flicker of enjoy, proud of the notoriety.
This real earth impact stems from digital scale. "The New York Times did an cess of the corporeality of views I was attributed to and it was half a billion," he relays earlier in the day while we pic him at work, pausing to sip from a mug. The statistic hangs in the air for a moment, deliberately, the man knows how to work a camera from either side and the finish result is a sense of satisfaction.
At another indicate Caolan checks his smartwatch and claims that his eye charge per unit is 130bpm, he says talking near this "is so stressful." When I ask him to show the photographic camera he recoils, concerned he'll come up beyond as emotionally unstable.
He is hyper self-aware when it comes to his paradigm and perception but in terms of personal culpability, that sensation diminishes. Responsibility is repeatedly put upon social media platforms and their algorithms and his own role rendered nebulous. He says "YouTube were pushing this stuff beyond belief," or argues that the platform shoulders responsibility for not taking his videos down.
YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.
"I wish I could take them downward because I feel like I'thou still radicalising people now. I wish I could tell them all it's bullshit.
"Tommy is a liar. The way he treated me, a lot of it, was just a front. It was an act to abound and make a lot of coin. I thought he cared about saving Great britain, saving young girls from existence raped in Rotherham, but it was about making money."
Since Caolan severed ties with his old colleague, a cord of press reports have fabricated allegations well-nigh Robinson'south "misuse of donations" on "coke and prostitutes." Robinson denies these claims.
Caolan also alleges that Robinson made offensive remarks about his sexuality.
"Towards the finish of working with him, I remember him making actually homophobic comments thinking that I wasn't listening and even straight nearly me."
"Do you think he's racist?" I ask.
"It's a difficult question. A lot of the people I worked with are racist, just Tommy doesn't fifty-fifty have whatever views.
"He merely cares near himself and his coin."
JOE put all of Caolan's claims to Tommy Robinson. He simply replied to some. He said: "Caolan's motives aren't truthful, he'southward not telling the truth. It's bullshit, your source is non reliable.
"He was blackmailed, I'll get you the recording where he specifically says they blackmailed him to make up negative stories and bring down Tommy Robinson.
"Half the stuff he shows journalists, some fucking figure of money from donations is totally bullshit. Just made it up. It'southward nuts."
I text Caolan for a response. The reply: "Lmao, insane... Brand sure you utilise the lmao."
Caolan was at home when he heard about the Christchurch shooting in March 2019. It was the moment of enlightenment, or aversion. L-i people were killed past Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a white supremacist, at two mosques in New Zealand. He live streamed the first office of his murder spree on Facebook.
"My first thoughts were - the aforementioned number of people who were killed in this attack were killed at Orlando by a Muslim," Caolan says. "By going down the far-correct path it leads to the same horrible hate, real earth violence. It felt like a total circle."
He logged into Lauren Southern'south YouTube aqueduct and deleted her 2017 video 'Great Replacement,' which promoted the conspiracy theory of the same name - that white people are being culturally and demographically replaced past other races. He called Alex Jones, and others, to pull out of upcoming work.
"I had done so much damage to society and to the political spectrum that I never wanted to have anything to do with politics once again," Caolan says.
"Just those videos of me are withal live getting more and more views, I realised it'southward not enough to just walk away and leave information technology behind."
Since he stopped working with Insubordinate Media, Tommy and other far-correct figures, Caolan appears, publicly at least, to exist working to counter the narrative of hate he helped spread. This yr, a week after the Capitol riot, he prepare Future Freedom, a foundation aiming to counter far-right narratives and help others to get out them backside.
He also says his work for Byline TV fights disinformation and the racist narratives of his former movement.
His belief is that the radicalisation he previously propagated can exist outweighed on the moral calibration, or counteracted, with content of a different political persuasion. Whether that's possible isn't immediately obvious.
The sun scorched the skin of those attending Tommy Robinson's 2018 Day For Freedom a lobster scarlet. A stage sprawled across Whitehall in London. A PA organization amplified speeches that railed against Islam and its perceived incursion into Britain.
Ali Dawah is a Muslim YouTuber. He found virality confronting the likes of Uk Offset's former leader, Jayda Fransen, or Tommy Robinson, with a challenge to debate. Wandering the streets of London with a Quran on an iPad kept in a satchel bag, he routinely embarrassed the far-correct's figureheads.
In a much-watched episode, Fransen and the current United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland Starting time leader, Paul Golding, are trapped in the antechamber of Bromley police station between Dawah waiting outside and the locked corridors of law enforcement across. Later on hours they are permit out a side door and Dawah chases their motorcar down the street. The viewer can only conclude these fearless gratis speech advocates are not interested in exercising it.
Dawah was invited to speak on phase at the Day For Freedom. Organised in role by Caolan it was the zenith, or nadir, depending on your politics, of the Uk's alt-correct movement. Ostensibly a celebration of gratuitous voice communication, Dawah would accost the crowd of EDL supporters, and others, about Islam, to show their force of delivery to the principle.
On arrival he was denied admission to the backstage area, fenced off with its own security. He was instead left to stand up in the crowd. Chants of "paedo" started to ring out. When the police tried to motility Ali and his friend out and away, violence ensued. The kind of melee anyone who's been to a football lucifer will recognise. Pretenders throwing a punch before running back x paces, shoving, relentless bellowing.
"What happened at the outcome tells me a lot nigh the person who organised it," Dawah says. "To me I ever thought, y'all know what, Tommy Robinson would always accept some kind of ethics or principles - he doesn't."
But far from harbouring a grudge over what occurred that mean solar day, Ali has found information technology in himself to forgive Caolan, if not Tommy.
"I run into Caolan as a bit of a victim. I genuinely believe the guy was groomed," he tells me. "He seems like a changed man… Caolan is someone who has been taken advantage of, aye he's doing all the media propaganda, but I come across Tommy Robinson equally the figurehead.
"When my wife is walking down the route I fear for her, I don't know who is gonna come and have her hijab off her, who is gonna punch her. That's why Tommy Robinson and Caolan are two separate things, for me, fifty-fifty though they both took part in it."
The sun breaks through and my journey with Caolan through key London culminates in Westminster. I wanted to take him out of the digital globe and into the real one. In the summer of 2020, I reported on a far-right demonstration there, itself a response to the Black Lives Affair protests subsequently George Floyd's murder.
I watched a human break a photographer'southward olfactory organ. My colleague was assaulted while filming the crowd charge towards the Cenotaph. They chanted Tommy Robinson'due south name. I inquire Caolan to watch the footage on the spot where it happened.
The crowd is very hostile to whatever media and reporters. This photographer is just one instance. Looks like a cleaved olfactory organ. pic.twitter.com/kgoXDYaLx4
— Oli Dugmore (@OliDugmore) June 13, 2020
"Those people are just scum," he says. "I didn't know that would happen. I but didn't think it would happen.
"It feels super guilty. The just reason I tin slumber at dark, genuinely, is that I'm actively working against it now."
Then, does he recollect he should be forgiven?
"I recall my work speaks for itself now. To dismantle it and pull it down, which is something I didn't take to practice, I could have changed my name and disappeared.
"It's difficult and scary. There are parts of London I won't go to because I've fabricated myself a target.
"I think I should be forgiven merely I'thou not doing this for forgiveness. I'g doing it considering I desire to contrary what I've done. Merely if you're asking that question, I would say and then."
In the terminate, though, information technology is not the accused who gets to grant forgiveness. It's those who've suffered. I'g left wondering how much Caolan'south ain criticism of Robinson, that "he doesn't think anything," can exist practical to himself.
Unlike Robert Oppenheimer, Caolan Robertson didn't know. In the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub shooting, he didn't know the online media he began to consume was extreme. When he began creating his own far-correct content, he didn't know who Tommy Robinson was. And after producing days and days worth of extremist video, disseminating racism and hate, he didn't know it would move others to violence. Whether that's conceivable, is for you lot to decide.
Source: https://www.joe.co.uk/politics/caolan-robertson-tommy-robinson-edl-byline-tv-266122
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