Elon Musk is widely known for responding to posts on X with heart emojis. He has sent dozens of these reactions just this year alone, frequently replying to fans praising his electric vehicles or reacting directly to posts shared by his mother.
But earlier this week, Musk extended that heart emoji to Tommy Robinson, a high-profile far-right anti-Islam activist from the United Kingdom. For most of this year, Musk largely stepped back from engaging with UK politics as he focused on his work with the U.S. government’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Now, however, he has reinserted himself across the Atlantic, leveraging his wealth and massive platform to elevate far-right extremist voices.
“A HUGE THANK YOU to @elonmusk today. Legend,” Robinson posted on Monday, immediately after the first day of his two-day trial at London’s Westminster Magistrate’s Court. The case centers on a charge tied to UK counter-terrorism law, and Robinson confirmed this week that he claims Musk has funded his legal defense.
Robinson, whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act after refusing to grant police access to his cellphone in July 2024 while attempting to leave the country. Lead prosecutor Jo Morris told the court this week that law enforcement believed “there may be information relevant to acts of terrorism” stored on the device at the time of the stop. Robinson has pleaded not guilty, argues the stop itself was unlawful, and a ruling in the case is expected next month.
In a video posted to X ahead of his trial this week, Robinson stated that Musk had agreed to cover his defense costs. Robinson did not disclose how much Musk has contributed to his defense fund, but Mark Stephens, a prominent British solicitor who previously served as legal counsel for Julian Assange, told WIRED that if Musk covers the full cost of Robinson’s defense, the total bill would come to “easily half a million pounds [$665,000], maybe more with appeals.”
Neither Robinson nor Musk responded to requests for comment on the claims.
At the start of the year, Musk posted constantly about British politics, before his work with DOGE consumed almost all of his public attention. But following his tumultuous departure from Washington, his renewed focus on European politics is once again creating political chaos. A WIRED analysis of data from Bright Data shows a sharp drop in the number of UK-focused posts Musk published after January this year. After he left DOGE in May, the volume of his UK-related posts rose dramatically again by August.
Experts believe Musk’s recent outpouring of support for the UK’s far right is part of a coordinated effort to destabilize the region’s political order, all to block strict new regulations — such as the European Union’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act — that would penalize X.
The Digital Services Act, passed in October 2022, requires large social media platforms like X to act quickly to moderate disinformation and remove illegal content, including hate speech. The UK’s Online Safety Act also requires platforms to remove illegal content, while imposing strict mandatory age verification checks for users. Failure to meet these requirements could result in massive fines for X — up to 6% of global annual revenue under the DSA — and the platform could even be fully blocked across the region. When Musk posted “The bird is freed” in 2022 after completing his takeover of the platform, Thierry Breton, then EU commissioner for internal markets, quote-tweeted the post to respond: “In Europe, the bird will fly by our [European Union] rules,” adding the hashtag #DSA.
Even so, one of Musk’s first actions after buying Twitter was gutting the company’s trust and safety department. He also granted a “general amnesty” to all accounts previously banned for harassment, abuse, and spreading misinformation.
Robinson, a former member of the fascist British National Party (itself a splinter group from the National Front, which grew out of the interwar British Union of Fascists) and co-founder of the anti-Islam English Defence League, was one of the most high-profile figures seeking account reinstatement. He was permanently banned from Twitter in 2018 for violating the platform’s hateful conduct policies.
Musk reinstated his account in November 2023. “I am grateful to @elonmusk for giving me my voice back at such an important time,” Robinson said in response.
Around the same time Robinson was allowed back on X, the EU began ramping up pressure on Musk over alleged failures to meet DSA requirements. The EU later issued a formal letter warning Musk about high levels of disinformation on X related to the Hamas attack on Israel. Musk responded on X by asking Breton to “list the violations you allude to on X, so that that the public can see them.”
The breakdown of Musk’s relationship with EU regulators preceded his increased efforts to promote and amplify far-right accounts, including Robinson’s.
At the time of his 2018 ban, Robinson had roughly 413,000 followers on Twitter; today, his account has 1.7 million followers. Much of that growth is attributed to X’s algorithm prioritizing his posts, and he has also received direct amplification from Musk himself. Musk’s first notable foray into UK politics came during the racist riots that broke out across the UK in summer 2024, when he shared multiple posts from Robinson.
After the UK riots, Musk became increasingly focused on British politics: he spent the following months posting critical of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and amplifying dozens of extreme, fringe figures from the UK’s far-right community. In one August 2024 instance, Musk reposted a message defending the actions of Sam Melia, a member of Patriotic Alternative, one of the UK’s largest active white supremacist groups. “The way that Twitter now operates, the toxicity of that platform is a godsend to people like Tommy Robinson, because Musk has turned Twitter into a weird conglomeration between a bespoke, far-right platform with some of the impacts and reach continuing of a mainstream platform,” says Joe Mulhall, director of research at British anti-racism and anti-fascism group Hope Not Hate.
Robinson was sentenced to 18 months in prison in October 2024 for contempt of court, after he continued posting misinformation about a Syrian refugee that led to death threats against the refugee’s family. Musk kept posting heavily about UK politics after that. In the first week of January 2025, Musk posted almost 200 times about UK “grooming gangs.” He publicly suggested that government officials should be jailed, reposted a claim that Musk had asked King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and install a new government (a power British monarchs do not hold under UK law), and added that he “earnestly hopes” the matter is considered. Musk also ran a public poll asking his followers if the US should “liberate” the UK from “their tyrannical government.”
In recent years and months, Musk has engaged with far-right leaders across the European continent: he met Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago, signaled public support for Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and hosted a livestream with Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on X.
“Musk’s political interferences in Europe, whether that's supporting the AfD in Germany or associating with various forms of far-right populist politics in the EU, should be seen as an attempt to change the balance of power within Europe,” says Damian Tambini, a policy fellow at the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. “[Musk is trying] to undo some of the regulation, which is going to have a pretty fundamental impact on his platforms, and particularly the ability for him to use them as propaganda platforms.”
In September, after Robinson was released from prison in May, Musk appeared virtually at a rally in central London organized by Robinson.
Musk again called for a “dissolution of parliament” and a “change of government,” before telling the audience: “whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, you either fight back or you die, and that’s the truth.” British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called the language Musk used in the speech “abhorrent.”
Update: 10/29/2025, 10 AM EDT: WIRED corrected the spelling of the second reference for the EU's Digital Services Act.