Thread by @fascinatorfun

“Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that more than 40% of the tweets came from the US, 30% from the UK and other significant volumes from Canada, the Netherlands and nine other countries” including (another study) several linked to Russia.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/d…

2/ A Philadelphia-based thinktank, the Middle East Forum (MEF), acknowledges it has spent c$60,000 (£47,000) on Robinson’s legal fees and demonstrations staged in London earlier this year. A senior MEF executive has been closely involved in preparations for this weekend’s march,

3/ A US tech billionaire, Robert Shillman, financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed in 2017 by a rightwing Canadian media website, the Rebel Media, on a salary of about £5,000 a month.

@RealBristolNews @Redrum_of_Crows @mattprescott
The same Rebel?

4/ * A small Australian rightwing group, Australian Liberty Alliance, says it has helped fund Robinson, but did not disclose how much.

* A New York City-based thinktank, the Gatestone Institute, has published a succession of articles supporting Robinson’s cause.

5/. The David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), a California-based thinktank that describes itself as a “school for political warfare”, has published a series of pieces defending Robinson, and has lobbied for him to address US politicians.

6/. Gatestone has received more than $2m in donations, including $250,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation, which is funded by Donald Trump’s top donor, Robert Mercer, and run by the billionaire’s daughter Rebekah.

7/ MEF received $792,000 from a foundation led by Nina Rosenwald, the co-chair of American Securities Management, once dubbed “the sugar mama of anti-Muslim hate”.

8/ The DHFC received $1,638,290 from five wealthy benefactors, 1 believed to be among the biggest-ever donors to the Republican party.

Adeleson? Koch?

9/ Robinson, whilst complaining about racist smears, “has been filmed saying things like: “Somalis are backward barbarians”; British Muslims are “enemy combatants who want to kill you, maim you and destroy you”; and refugees are “raping their way through the country”.

10/. A second analysis, by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) thinktank, discovered social media backing from a cluster of 600 accounts it identified as being aligned with the Kremlin. Pro-Robinson tweets accounted for three of their top five most-used hashtags on 27 May,

11/ and most pointed users to articles on the rightwing websites InfoWars, Breitbart and Voice of Europe, according to the researchers.

12/. “The clustered focus on the Tommy Robinson case in late May suggests that Russian-linked accounts saw his arrest as a clear opportunity to amplify political divisions both in the UK and abroad,” said Bret Schafer, a social media analyst at the US-based ASD.