Church and hate: Meet Britain’s biggest conspiracy theorist cleric

Calvin Robinson was sacked from GB News after showing solidarity with his fellow presenters Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton, writes Alan Rusbridger. He can now spread his unpleasant rhetoric about ‘Mohammedans’ and ‘sacramental sodomy’ on the unregulated internet – but why was he ever picked to be a presenter on a regulated news channel?

Robinson believes that ‘Mohammedans’, as he calls them, are trying to take over this country (Alamy/PA)

A couple of weeks ago, at the start of Ramadan, the Archbishop of Canterbury posted a message on Twitter/X wishing all Muslims peace and joy, and giving thanks for the great contribution of Muslims to our society.

Who could possibly be against that? Step forward Calvin Robinson, an esoteric cleric in a tiny Nordic Catholic Church based in Harlesden, northwest London. In Robinson’s view, the tweet rendered Justin Welby unfit to be the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Nordic Catholic Church has a mere 414 followers on X. Robinson, by contrast, has nearly 331,000 followers, dating from his time as a prominent presenter on GB News. Few people notice or care what the Nordic Church thinks about anything. Quite a few people hang on every word uttered by Robinson.

He is, it is fair to say, obsessed with Islam. He truly believes that “Mohammedans”, as he calls them, are trying to take over this country, and that we have to fight back. He thinks the Church of England is weak, cowardly, and obsessed with things like same-sex marriage – or “sacramental sodomy”.

Black Lives Matter (he is himself mixed race) was “clearly a con”. He hates London because it has been “captured”. Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, “clearly hates white people”. Islam is not compatible with British values. And so on.

Since being sacked from GB News after showing solidarity with his fellow presenters, Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton, Robinson and his followers have decamped to the internet, where they are not regulated by the “communists” at Ofcom – not that Ofcom paid very much attention to him when they were supposed to be regulating his output.

Thus you might stumble across him on his own show, interviewing, of all people, Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the English Defence League, where they will chew the fat about the need for a fightback, or crusade, against “Mohammedans”.

Or you might find him on YouTube with his former colleague Fox, defiantly puffing on cigars or pipes as they rail against assorted enemies of the woke variety. Here’s a recent exchange between the two men, as they discuss paedophilia and child trafficking.

Calvin Robinson: “I don’t think Joe Biden is necessarily against the exploitation of children.”

Fox: “Are you trying to say that Joe Biden’s daughter may have misplaced her diary?”

Robinson: “... and that diary may have said she had inappropriate showers with her father at an inappropriate age ... All the footage of him sniffing children and groping children is just disgusting. I don’t know the level of cognitive dissonance that will make you kind of compartmentalise that in your brain to still support him.”

This is the stuff of QAnon. Even weirder was hearing Robinson telling Fox how he’d suffered “interference from the enemy” when he was recently refused entry into Norway to attend a religious conference because he’d forgotten his passport and had tried to get through passport control with his driving licence.

Fox suggests that the devil didn’t want him to go to Norway. Robinson thinks it’s a pattern: you get “enemy interference” when “people come together to try and do good work”.

Well, the internet is full of oddballs, but regulated broadcast channels in the UK are supposed to aim a bit higher. You have to wonder why Robinson – of all the religious figures in this country – was handpicked to be a presenter on a channel that pronounces (like its fellow traveller Fox News) that it is “balanced and fair” and “puts facts first”.

One of the co-founders of GB News is Paul Marshall, a devout Christian Evangelist who, it is now emerging, has been lavishly supporting causes that would transform the religious fabric of the nation. He aspires to own The Daily Telegraph as well as GB News, which would elevate him to the Murdoch class of media mogul in this country.

Marshall is also active on Twitter, if blessed with fewer followers than his erstwhile presenter Robinson. But he was recently embarrassed by the revelation that he was in the habit of endorsing or sharing tweets that warned, for instance, of “the four stages of Islamic conquest”, arguing that Muslim immigration was a form of “infiltration” that would lead to “the establishment of a totalitarian Islamic theocracy”.

One post he “liked” read: “It is just a matter of time before civil war starts in Europe. The native European population is losing patience with the fake refugee invaders.” Another read: “If we want European civilisation to survive we need to not just close the borders but start mass expulsions immediately. We don’t stand a chance unless we start that process very soon.”

Marshall has claimed that his views are not necessarily reflected in the tweets he has liked or shared. But it is difficult not to notice some overlap between the obsessions of Robinson and the material of which Marshall himself signalled a form of active endorsement.

So, is the mission of his channel truly to be balanced, fair and fact-based – or is something else going on? As we near a crucial general election, how can GB News, as a regulated channel, continue to frame 90 per cent of its output through the lens of presenters on a spectrum ranging from Conservative through Reform to Reclaim? If Ofcom won’t apply any real sanctions, then will the Electoral Commission wake up?

Robinson is worth noticing in all kinds of ways, not least in that Marshall’s GB News gave him a platform and credibility that he previously lacked. The channel says it aims to become the UK’s largest news channel by 2028. As Maya Angelou said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”