The glowing reception contrasts with the tone often adopted by President Donald Trump and his officials toward mainstream politicians across Europe, a frequent target of public criticism.
Dame Sara Khan, the British government’s former counter-extremism commissioner, said she was “disappointed” to see Robinson hosted at the State Department.
“This is an individual who has fueled significant violent disorder on our streets,” Khan, who was also appointed under Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson as an independent government adviser on social cohesion and resilience, told NBC News in an email.
“He has a history of criminal convictions as long as my arm” and is “widely despised by overwhelming sections of the British population,” she said.
Polling by YouGov last year found that 61% of British adults held an unfavorable view of Robinson, while 12% held a favorable view of him.
Robinson and the British Foreign Office did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Once the owner of a tanning salon in his hometown of Luton, a town outside London, Robinson was first jailed in 2005 for assaulting an off-duty police officer. Other convictions have included mortgage fraud, contempt of court, and attempting to circumvent a travel ban into the United States by entering the country using someone else’s passport.
The activist first came to prominence as co-founder of the English Defense League, a protest organization that vowed opposition to Islam and intermingled with the country’s soccer hooligan scene.
In recent years, he has amassed millions of followers across X and YouTube, billing himself as an independent journalist focused on the issue of “grooming gangs” — children being sexually abused by groups of men.
Robinson’s high-water mark came last September when his “Unite the Kingdom” march attracted more than 110,000 people to the streets of central London, according to police estimates. Elon Musk, who reversed Robinson’s ban from the X platform in 2023, joined the rally via video link, telling the crowd that “violence is coming” and “you either fight back or you die.”
For years, Robinson and others accused the government and officials of covering up grooming gang cases carried out by people of South Asian heritage.
His claims have been frequently amplified by Musk, who has used his X megaphone to broadcast the issue worldwide.
An independent, government-commissioned report last year, conducted by Britain’s former victims’ commissioner, found “clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men” and that organizations had been “avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist.”
The government has since established a national inquiry, with Shabana Mahmood, the interior minister — whose parents are of Pakistani origin — criticizing an “abject failure by the state” on the issue.
Robinson’s critics challenge the idea put out by Rittenhouse and others that he is a “free speech” champion, noting his 2019 contempt of court conviction for public interventions in a criminal grooming gangs case.
“What Robinson does do is hide behind the banner of free speech and weaponize it to justify spreading racist and antidemocratic beliefs,” Khan said.
