Elon Musk, Sen. Mike Lee and others have taken to X to call for Tommy Robinson’s release from solitary confinement in the U.K., engaging in what’s become a larger debate about free speech and censorship.
In late October 2024, Robinson, founder of the English Defense League and an anti-immigration activist, was arrested and later sentenced to 18 months in prison after releasing the documentary, “Silenced,” per CNN.
The film referenced “false accusations against a Syrian schoolboy who was attacked” in a widely shared video on social media in 2018 and “spread false allegations accusing him of being a violent thug,” CNN and BBC reported. Robinson paid the video’s subject, Jamal Hijazi, £100,000 in damages and was ordered to not repeat the accusations.
Robinson’s documentary also discusses issues of grooming and abuse in the U.K., and he continued to share it after its initial release in 2023.
In late July, 2024, Robinson played the documentary at a large rally in Trafalgar Square in London. When he traveled to the border of the U.K. the next day, he was arrested in Kent under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
In an interview with Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson in August, Robinson described what happened. “They seized my phone, they can seize all electric devices, then they sit me down for six hours under interrogation where you do not have the right to remain silent,” he said. “So I sit there under an interview for six hours, answer the most absurd questions about why there can’t be a two-state solution in Palestine and what my opinion is about that.”
When the officers asked who helped organize the late-July rally and what they were planning next, Robinson explained how the questions were “absolutely no business of the British state, but here they are infringing on our rights and my rights, and especially my rights as a journalist.” When they asked for Robinson’s phone password, he refused.
BBC reported, Robinson “has been separately charged with failing to unlock his phone for police when he was stopped and questioned at a port under counter-terrorism powers.”
British authorities say Robinson was sent to prison because he defied a court order by posting the documentary.
“‘Aidan Eardley, representing the solicitor general, told the court that “this is not a case about Mr. Yaxley-Lennon’s political views… It is a case about the disobedience to a court order, and the undermining of the rule of law that goes with that,’” CNN reported.
Robinson’s time in solitary confinement has stirred a larger debate on free speech among American politicians on X, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Elon Musk. Responding to Musk’s post calling to free Robinson, Lee wrote, “Free Tommy Robinson!”
Musk asked, “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?”
Similarly, Lee responded Wednesday evening to a post about Peterson’s interview with Robinson, writing, “What @jordanbpeterson exposes in this interview is breathtaking. This is the UK—our mother country—imprisoning a man for speaking the truth.”
Robinson has recently gained attention among other politicians as well, including Australian Sen. Ralph Babet, who has asked for permission to meet and interview him.