Former EDL leader Tommy Robinson to give talk at prestigious US university

He is due to give a talk titled "The Fall of Europe - Mass Immigration"
Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images
Martin Coulter10 October 2017

Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League, has agreed to speak at a prestigious US university.

The 34-year-old will address Columbia University students on Tuesday night in a talk entitled: "The Fall of Europe - Mass Immigration".

The event is the first of a series featuring far-right guests, organised by the Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR) club.

Mike Cernovich, a leading figure of the alt-right movement, is also due to speak later in the month on October 30.

Tommy Robinson appeared at the Football Lads Alliance 'anti-extremist' march in London on Saturday
REUTERS

A CUCR spokesman called Robinson "an important political figure in England and Europe" who has "championed the notion that radical Islam is incompatible with Western values and the freedoms we currently enjoy".

Robinson has been in and out of prison over the past decade, having been locked up for a drunken assault in 2005, for trying to illegally enter the US with someone else's passport in 2013, and for a £160,000 mortgage fraud scam in 2014.

News of Robinson's appearance at the traditionally liberal Ivy League university, whose alumni includes former secretary of state Madeline Allbright and writer Hunter S. Thompson, is likely to be divisive.

Following an incident at the Natural History Museum on Saturday, in which a car mounted the pavement and hit several pedestrians, Robinson was filmed at the scene talking about "what looks like a suspected jihad attack...black male, possibly a convert, probably will turn out to have been on our watchlist".

Police later confirmed the incident was being treated as a road traffic accident with no link to terrorism.

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