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LONDON — Tens of thousands of anti-migrant protesters marched through the center of Britain's capital in record numbers over the weekend, showcasing the grip of nationalist sentiment across Europe and the growing appeal here of MAGA-style politics.
According to police estimates, around 110,000 joined the Saturday protest - an unexpectedly high turnout that anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate said represented the largest far-right protest in the country's history.
The weekend rally was marked by extremist anti-migrant rhetoric and violent assaults against police officers, 26 of whom were injured as some of the protesters kicked, punched and launched projectiles, the Met Police said in a statement. In an email Sunday, police said they arrested 21 men and three women for offenses including affray, violent disorder, assaults and criminal damage.
The long-planned rally was organized by the British anti-migrant [personality] Tommy Robinson, who announced last week that it would double as an exercise of free speech in memory of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was shot dead Wednesday in Utah. His killing sent shock waves throughout not just the United States but also the populist right globally.
Speaking to a rowdy crowd, Robinson used racially charged language to frame himself as an outspoken opponent of immigration and to repeat the white supremacist "great replacement" theory - which baselessly argues that a shadowy group of leaders is working to displace White people - while also framing himself as a British ally to MAGA.
"There's only one country in the world, one government, that's fighting for all of our free speech. It's not our government. It's certainly not the European Union. It's the Republican Party in the United States. It's JD Vance. It's Donald Trump," he said.
Tommy Robinson "is able to touch into a sense of disquiet and grievance in our society," said British Business Secretary Peter Kyle in an interview with the BBC Sunday. "These are moments that are klaxon calls to us in public life to redouble our efforts to address the big concerns that people right across our country have."
Protesters came from across Britain with photos to honor Kirk's political legacy and chant his name, alongside signs bearing anti-migrant slogans and flags that enveloped central London in a sea of red and white - the colors of the St. George's Cross and the Union Jack. The flags have been used in recent anti-immigration demonstrations across the country to call for Britain's borders to be shut, and to protest the government's use of hotels to temporarily house asylum seekers.
Billionaire and former Trump ally Elon Musk also addressed the crowd via video link, framing the country's debate over immigration in existential terms and calling for a change in government. "Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die," Musk told the crowd.
Kyle said Musk's comments were "slightly incomprehensible" and "totally inappropriate."
In a statement Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the violence against police officers and any intimidation of people based on their background or ethnicity. "Britain is a nation proudly built on tolerance, diversity and respect. Our flag represents our diverse country and we will never surrender it to those that use it as a symbol of violence, fear and division," he said.
Around 5,000 people attended a "Stand up to Racism" counterprotest, police estimated.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, rose to prominence in 2009 as a leader of the English Defense League, which became known for drawing soccer fans to anti-Islam protests around Britain, many of which have erupted into violent clashes with the police. He served his most recent prison sentence for repeating a libelous claim that a Syrian refugee schoolboy had attacked English girls, and has been previously jailed for assaulting a police officer and using a false passport to enter the United States.
He remains a political pariah in mainstream British politics - with Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party, publicly eschewing him for being too extreme and no British lawmakers attending Saturday's rally.
"It's the largest protest from this kind of political movement - Tommy Robinson and the sort of right that is further right than electoral politics," said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank focusing on immigration and race, in a phone interview Sunday. But he cautioned that the large size did not reflect widespread popular support for Robinson so much as an indication of his newfound ability to energize his base.
"It shows how fired up you can get people, [but] it doesn't tell us your public reach," he said, pointing out that protests for other unsuccessful causes in recent years - such as the 2019 rally for a second Brexit referendum, which attracted up to 1 million people - dwarfed Saturday's rally in size.
"There's very good evidence that there has been no increase in the appeal of Tommy Robinson in the last 10 to 15 years among the general public," Katwala said.
Nevertheless, he is attracting far more supporters onto the streets than he was able to in protests in the early 2010s, which numbered in the hundreds or low thousands.
This has, Katwala said, been energized in part by the rise of the MAGA movement across the Atlantic, with Musk using his influence to back Robinson - among a list of nationalist and anti-immigrant figureheads in Britain and Western Europe to have received his support. In 2023, Robinson was reinstated on X after Musk bought the site, reversing the platform's 2018 decision to suspend his account for breaching its rules on hateful conduct.
"That's made a lot of difference to his ability with allies to bring out 100,000 people," Katwala said. "He's got for the first time an amplification machine to pitch the argument to all of the group that might be open to it, rather than to the group that you can reach through organized politics."
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