Politics
Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images
Tommy Robinson is arrested in 2013.
- Tommy Robinson, the British far-right activist, has been suspended from Twitter.
- The social network has banned a number of high-profile far-right accounts in recent months as it tries to crack down on hate speech.
- Robinson, 35, is the cofounder of protest group the English Defence League.
Twitter has banned Tommy Robinson, a British far-right anti-Muslim activist.
Visitors to the Twitter profile of Robinson, who cofounded far-right protest group the English Defence League (EDL), are now greeted with a generic message saying "this account has been suspended."
Twitter did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. But in recent months, the social network has banned a string of far-right accounts and activists as it attempts to crack down on hate speech and abusive behaviour.
In December 2017, it banned Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, the leaders of anti-Muslim group Britain First. According to anti-extremist organisation Hope Not Hate, it has about 1,000 members and has occupied the gap left by older far-right groups the BNP and the EDL. The group is banned from Luton, parts of Kent, and all mosques in the UK.
Robinson - real name Stephen Lennon - had around 413,000 Twitter followers prior to his suspension, according to an archived version of his profile. In 2014, he was jailed for mortgage fraud.
Additional reporting by Shona Ghosh.