"Groups of men from all over the country are joining us to form a resistance group. Something is going to happen soon, and it's going to send shockwaves through the country." These are the words of British far-right activist and influencer Daniel Thomas, aka "Danny Tommo," to a group of heavily muscled white men, published in a September 2 video on the activist's YouTube channel.

In the video, Danny Tommo is shown "recruiting" future members of the "Patriot Platform," a new nationalist group he founded and leads. Its main objective: to "protect British women and children" from a supposed foreign threat, exacerbated, according to them, by immigration. The video is captioned in English: "Well done, lads from the Northwest! This is how a movement grows. #PatriotPlatform."

Four days later, on September 5 and 6, the same "Patriot Platform" led demonstrations with hundreds of masked activists dressed in black, flocking to the port cities of Dover and Portsmouth in southern England to block the arrival of migrants. Unlike his group's members, Danny Tommo appeared unmasked on his X account, sharing and supporting the demonstrations.

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'Fascist symbolism'

"We've crossed a line in this idea of ​​intimidating foreigners. This group is embracing violence, its physical appearance reminiscent of a paramilitary militia taking the law into its own hands. This fascist symbolism is quite terrifying," warns Laetitia Langlois, a lecturer in British political studies at the University of Angers.

These anti-immigration demonstrations in the United Kingdom are not new. In August 2024, violent clashes fueled by hate speech erupted after the murder of three schoolgirls in a knife attack at a dance school in Southport, northwest England. Disinformation surrounded the attack, which was in fact carried out by a British citizen whose parents had migrated to the UK before his birth. However, initially, information circulating on social media blamed the attack on a recently arrived migrant who crossed the Channel on a small boat. Hotels housing asylum seekers were then targeted by protesters. In the summer of 2025, similar violence occurred in Epping, in the east of the country, following accusations of sexual assault against an Ethiopian migrant in the town. He was later found guilty of these accusations and eventually deported from the UK.

"So far, we have mostly seen large, peaceful demonstrations, organized by figures on the British far right, accompanied, on the fringes, by acts of violence," explains William Allchorn, research director at the Institute for International Policing and Public Protection Research (IPPPRI) at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

"We’ve never seen self-defense movements of this scale before. The big difference is that their members are better trained and better organized than anything we’ve seen so far," he adds.

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Proximity with Tommy Robinson

Daniel Thomas boasted on X on August 12 that he had more than 45,000 registrations on the online platform. So where do these men who claim to be "ready to fight" for the safety of their people come from?

The very recent "Patriot Platform" was formed in June 2026 from the aggregation of various nationalist movements, primarily from southeast England, where most migrant boats arrive after crossing the English Channel. Among these groups are the Kent Patriots, the South London Patriots, and the North West Patriots.

According to William Allchorn, these groups have been carrying out local actions for several years, breaking into migrant shelters to film the inside, or even starting fights.

"The anger of members of these movements crystallized around the issue of hotels being used to house refugees in the summer of 2025. There were these very large national demonstrations, led by figures like Tommy Robinson. Daniel Thomas simply saw that there was a 'market' to exploit," the scientist explains.

"Danny Tommo" has been involved for several years in far-right, anti-immigration groups. He was notably a member of the group Raise the Colours, which gained notoriety in the summer of 2025 with a campaign encouraging people to raise British and English flags across England, before spreading to the French coast. These actions led to him being banned from entering French territory last January.

He is also reportedly close to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, who was behind, among other things, the march of 110,000 to 150,000 people organized in support of the death of American Trump supporter Charlie Kirk in September 2025.

"Danny Tommo wanted to break free from the influence of Tommy Robinson," comments Laetitia Langlois. "He brought together this constellation of far-right groups with the aim of carrying out highly visible actions. And he succeeded," she adds.

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Influence of the MAGA sphere

Beyond anti-immigration rhetoric, the Patriot Platform relies on a Christian nationalist vocabulary, in line with that used by Donald Trump and his administration. In the introduction to his X account, Daniel Tomas even presents himself as a "guardian of the faith. I pledge to defend my family and my country. I place my trust in Jesus Christ, our Savior," he writes. This crusading and Islamophobic discourse is accompanied by the idea of ​​positioning himself as the "savior" of what they argue is a declining West.

"It’s very militaristic language. Migrants are described as men of fighting age, with the idea that the nation must be defended against them," analyzes William Allchorn.

According to Daniel Trilling, journalist and author of "If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable?" (Picador), the MAGA [Make America Great Again] sphere has deliberately contributed to making this vocabulary more visible in order to serve its own narrative about the decline of the West.

"Over the past two years, the American right has made significant efforts to impose its vision on the United Kingdom and support far-right influencers. Elon Musk himself openly supports British far-right figures, sharing posts and boosting X profiles," the journalist notes.

In August 2024, the CEO of X commented on posts about anti-immigrant protests. "Civil war is inevitable," he wrote on his social network. The UK government then called these comments "unjustifiable" and his behavior "irresponsible."

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Ambivalence with Reform UK

Laetitia Langlois points out, this nationalist and identitarian discourse is in fact well-rooted in Great Britain. "It is because Nigel Farage [the leader of the Reform party, and a prominent Brexit campaigner as well as a figure of the British far right, editor's note] has normalized the discourse of hostility towards immigration and the defense of Western Christian values ​​that these groups thrive in an environment with very favorable conditions," she explains.

The Patriot Platform maintains an ambivalent relationship with Reform UK, the far-right, anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage. He has been careful to condemn the violence in Dover and Portsmouth, in order to better bolster his own role: "Only the Reform party will turn the ships back," he wrote on September 6, on X.

"There's a kind of back-and-forth between the mainstream and fringe extremist movements like the Patriot Platform. On the one hand, the Patriot Platform is exploiting this general climate of xenophobia; on the other, it's trying to shift the debate even further to the right, making Reform UK appear ineffective," explains Daniel Trilling.

While the Patriot Platform claims to want to operate outside of any political institution, it has already shown, in its three months of existence, that it can influence public debate. "The Patriot Platform's street actions and Reform UK's political actions operate in completely separate spheres, but they can reinforce each other," concludes Daniel Trilling.

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This article was published originally in French on September 12 on France 24