At the end of June, the Canadian psychology professor and culture warrior Jordan B Peterson uploaded the 462th episode of his phenomenally successful podcast (8.13 million subscribers at the last count). It was called Why the Establishment Hates This Man: Tommy Robinson.

Robinson, for those who are not familiar with the far-Right activist currently at the heart of the riots taking place across Britain, was introduced by Peterson in his written blurb as “a British journalist and activist who first became an establishment target after reporting on the grooming gangs in London [sic]. From then on, he and his family have suffered sacrifice and punishment for attempting to out those who are enabling the grotesque brutality of Islamic extremism.”

That description reframes some crucial details. As Peterson acknowledges in the interview itself, Robinson, 41, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is the former leader of the far-Right English Defence League (EDL).

Based in Luton, he was a member of the BNP (2004-5), joint vice-chairman of the far-Right British Freedom Party (BFP), and became involved with the development of Pegida UK, a branch of the far-Right German group (now defunct). 

For years he openly whipped up hate against Muslims, describing Islam as a “disease” and a “threat to our way of life”, before apologising for provoking fear among British Muslims and claiming in 2013: “I don’t care if they want to practise their religion. It’s when they’re not integrating, and asking for special treatment.”

Latterly, Robinson has written books and made the film Silenced about his views – a film that appears to have boosted his status among many on the Right concerned about controversial figures being barred from airing their views in public.

In the film, he repeated false claims that a Syrian refugee boy had regularly attacked white girls in his school before he was water-boarded by another pupil (the film was banned from being screened although it has been broadcast on X and also at a demonstration).

In 2021, he was found to have libelled the Syrian refugee and ordered to pay £100,000 plus legal costs; he was also subjected to a five-year stalking prevention order for harassing a journalist and her partner.

Robinson has been repeatedly jailed, including for entering the US illegally and interfering with the trial of a sexual grooming gang at Leeds Crown Court in May 2018.

There have also been two convictions for assault, one against an off-duty police officer and the other for headbutting a man.

And now Robinson is being blamed for inciting the riots that have followed the murder of three girls at a dance club in Southport on July 29 (an accusation he denies). 

While people have been naming the EDL as a key player, that organisation no longer exists. What unites the violent protesters are loose online networks, activated by deeply cynical influencers and galvanised by false reports on social media that the person responsible for the stabbings was a Muslim asylum seeker. 

In the ensuing chaos, Robinson has been tweeting daily to his 900,000 online followers from a hotel in Cyprus where he has been on holiday, posting inflammatory remarks and images of the violence. On Tuesday, talking to Alex Jones, the Right-wing American show host and conspiracy theorist, Robinson claimed that “Keir Starmer has purposely provoked the violence” in order to introduce legislation that restricts civil liberties.

Robinson has become an improbable talisman to members of the American Right. Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist, has called Robinson “a hero” and described him as “the backbone” of Britain. But Robinson’s interview with Peterson, with his massive global reach, has taken Robinson’s profile to a new level. That Peterson sympathetically explored his “work” and life with him for almost two hours was a huge coup for Robinson. 

Peterson focused on Robinson’s campaign to expose grooming gangs in the North of England and what he sees as various incursions by authorities on his personal freedom. He questioned him about his anti-establishment campaigning, and what is billed as Robinson giving a voice to the disaffected.

He has been invited back for a second podcast.

During the interview, Robinson publicised his July 27 rally in Westminster. It went on to attract between 20,000 and 30,000 people and at times, 500,000 were thought to be watching online. Attendance was significantly larger than expected, say analysts who monitor Robinson.

People not remotely associated with the far-Right, but fans of Peterson, have been recommending the episode. “Just listen to what the man has to say” seems to be the general gist of the recommendation, shaping Robinson as misunderstood and a campaigning journalist denied his freedom of speech. There have been more than 18,000 comments: “Peterson has done more in the past week for the silenced English than the BBC have done in 20 years,” says one; “The most lied about man of British modern times,” says another.

One man, aged 35, wrote “I had always associated Tommy’s name with the hooliganism, racism and far-Right activism. Now I’m actually tearing up listening to him.”

Peterson, in one episode of his show, appears to have done more to paint Robinson in a favourable light than any advertising campaign could do.

The use of X has been crucial to Robinson’s relatively sudden elevation to prominence. 

Banned from the platform in 2018, the activist was allowed back in 2023 by new owner Elon Musk. 

Robinson, in return, has called Musk “the best thing to happen to free speech this century” and personally thanked him for “giving a voice for the truth”. In the past few days, Musk has allowed Robinson’s banned documentary Silenced to rack up over 33 million views on X.

Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, explains: “Tommy Robinson simply couldn’t have achieved his incendiary impact this summer without Elon Musk. For most of the last four or five years, Robinson was cut off from large mainstream audiences. He had over 400,000 followers on Twitter before his ban in 2018 – but he had only a tenth of that reach on Telegram while banned from [these] biggest platforms. He has expressed enormous personal gratitude to Musk for ‘giving me my voice back’. He now has nearly 900,000 followers on X – a 20-fold increase in reach to what he had on Telegram. He has got 33 million views on his pinned tweet – of the Silenced film.

“That reach will probably get him into trouble when he goes back to court, as he is under an injunction not to show it after losing the defamation case [of the 15-year-old].”

Tortoise, the slow news website, has calculated that Robinson’s 268 posts over last weekend had been seen over 160 million times by late Monday afternoon.

Robinson himself published analysis that showed his posts had been viewed 1.2 billion times in the three months to August, with 4.5 million viewing his profile.

“Robinson’s broad public reputation has always been quite toxic: the public disapproved of him by a 7:1 margin in 2019, for example,” says Katwala. “His association with football hooliganism and street violence mean he will never have the mainstream reach of somebody such as Nigel Farage, who has always treated Robinson as toxic. Remember, Farage quit UKIP because his successor let Robinson into the fold.

“What the Jordan Peterson interview and his X platform are doing is giving him a much bigger reach – where he might hope that one in 10 people give him a hearing, even if he remains toxic and dangerous to most people.”

A British tourist is expected to be fined thousands of euros after he carved the initials of his name and those of his daughters on the wall of one of Pompeii’s most famous attractions.

The 37-year-old from Derby reportedly used a blunt object to carve the letters, JW, LMW and MW and the date August 7 on the frescoed wall of the ancient House of the Vestals, while scrawling the word ‘Mylaw’ beside the entrance.

Pompeii security staff reported the man to police and the public prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Torre Annunziata has opened an investigation.

When asked for an explanation, the man is said to have apologised, saying he wanted to leave a mark of the family’s visit to the world-famous Unesco World Heritage site.

“After his arrest, he was mortified,” a local police source told The Telegraph. “He said he wanted to leave something of himself there. He apologised for what he did but he will have to pay.”

Located south-east of Naples, Pompeii was buried in the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

It is one of Italy’s most popular tourist sites and attracts about four million visitors a year. The House of the Vestals was once an imposing luxury villa famous for its water features in the Roman era.

Earlier this year, the Italian parliament approved tough new fines, ranging from €15,000 to €60,000 (£13,000 to £51,000) for anyone found guilty of causing damage to a site of historical, cultural or artistic interest.

But the risk of a hefty fine does not appear to be deterring tourists from leaving their mark on Italy’s ancient monuments, especially during peak season.

In June, a tourist from Kazakhstan was caught carving the letters “ALI” on the plaster of Pompeii’s House of Ceii, while a Dutch tourist was cited for drawing graffiti on the walls of an ancient Roman villa in the archeological ruins of Herculaneum near Naples.

Last summer, a young woman was also caught carving a heart into a column of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, which dates back to the 12th century.

“Unfortunately, even today we find ourselves commenting on an uncivil and idiotic defacement inflicted on our artistic and cultural heritage,” Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy’s minister of culture, said at the time.

A Bulgarian national living in Bristol, last year, provoked outrage after he was filmed carving names into an inner wall at the Colosseum in Rome.

Ivan Dimitrov, who claimed he was unaware of the antiquity of the 2000-year-old amphitheatre, was fined and faces a possible prison sentence of two to five years.

Rapper Nelly was arrested for possession of ecstasy at a casino in Missouri on Wednesday morning.

The three-time Grammy award winner, 49, was taken into custody at about 4.45am local time and was cited for having four ecstasy tablets and no car insurance.

Nelly, whose real name is Cornell Iral Haynes Jr, was arrested inside the Hollywood Casino in St Charles, Missouri, after an identification-verification check when the drugs were allegedly found on him.

Maryland Heights police said, “We arrested him for failure to appear on an old traffic charge.”

Lawyers for Nelly, best known for his 2002 hit Hot in Herre, which peaked at number four in the British charts, denied the drug charge.

‘100 per cent confident case will go nowhere’

“Mr Haynes was not charged with drug possession. He was arrested for no proof of insurance from 2018 on a warrant issued December 2023 that he received no notice. Mr. Haynes was targeted by an overzealous, out of line officer,” lawyer Scott Rosenblum told US Weekly.

“After winning several jackpots, at a venue where Mr. Haynes frequently visits and entertains at its amphitheatre; instead of just supervising the transfer of Mr. Haynes’ winnings, this officer felt compelled to needlessly run a check for warrants.”

“I am 100 per cent confident this case will go nowhere. And we will be asking for an inquiry into this officer’s conduct,’ Mr Rosenblum added.

US media have obtained a mugshot of Nelly, whose singer wife Ashanti is expecting a baby. He secretly married the star, 43, last year. The rapper was released on Wednesday.

It is not Nelly’s first brush with the law. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour possession of marijuana in 2015.

Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped Nelly’s tour bus because of non-conforming department of transportation stickers. A state trooper smelled marijuana and searched the bus.

Two people have been arrested and three of Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna were cancelled after police said they had disrupted an Islamist plot to attack the venue she was set to play at.

Many people in the small community of Ternitz had to be evacuated as one of the suspects, aged 19, was arrested. The other suspect was detained in Vienna.

Reports said local authorities acted after receiving a tip off from another country’s intelligence services. The teenager is said to have recently sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.

“With confirmation from government officials of a planned terrorist attack at Ernst Happel Stadium, we have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety,” Barracuda Music, an event organiser in the city, posted on Instagram on Wednesday evening.

Swift was scheduled to perform in front of 60,000 fans at the Ernst-Happel Stadium in Vienna on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for the international leg of The Eras Tour.

Speaking at a press conference in the capital, police said the two men were sympathisers of the Islamic State.

“The two suspects became radicalised by the internet, a 19-year-old citizen of Lower Austria made an oath of allegiance to the current leader of IS at the beginning of July,” police said, according to the Associated Press.

It is DEL the ED said the teenager was an Austrian citizen of North Macedonian descent.

Officials said the two suspects had undertaken “concrete preparatory measures” for a terrorist attack after police suspected explosives were stored at the home of the suspect in Ternitz.

Police also said that chemical substances were secured at the home of the teenager and were being evaluated.

“From the current standpoint of the investigation we assume that the target of the attack were events in the Vienna region,” police added.

In the US, officials who had been briefed on events said the authorities in Austria were looking for an additional individual or individuals who may have some knowledge of this planned attack.

Reports suggested the plot was stopped and the teenager arrested after a tip-off from foreign security authorities.

Franz Ruf, the public security director at Austria’s interior ministry, said that authorities were aware of “preparatory actions” for a possible attack “and also that there is a focus by the 19-year-old perpetrator on the Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna,” the Austria Press Agency reported.

News that the concert could have been a target for terror sparked outrage among leaders in Austria.

“It is incredibly sad and bitter that the concerts had to be canceled. We must not let ourselves be intimidated by madmen,” Christoph Wiederkehr, the deputy Mayor of Vienna wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer also wrote on social media, saying “the situation was very serious”.

“Thanks to the intense cooperation…the threat was recognised early and a tragedy was averted. Islamist terrorism threatens our security and freedom in many Western countries.”

Meanwhile the news sparked a flood of disappointment from fans of the star.

One fan, Chiara, 19, who is from Vienna, told local media: “It’s so sad that they’re trying to use the concert for their agenda. Taylor Swift and the community stand for love, friendship, and support.”

Another fan, Hanna, 30, also from Vienna, added: “I want the money back, I want to see Taylor. I’ve been looking forward to this for a year. Why do people have to ruin something so innocent?”

The cancelation of the concerts, part of a global phenomenon that has seen the 34-year-old American star pack stadiums around the world, came hours after authorities said security measures for the Swift concerts would be stepped up. Mr Ruf said that there would be a special focus among other things on entry checks and concertgoers should plan a bit more time.