Dover was no “spontaneous protest” – it’s an organised group and we know who they are

Patriot Platform is an organisation established by Danny Thomas, aka Danny Thommo, an associate of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), which had its first meeting in July this year. Thompson variously describes himself as “Devoted Christian; Proud Dad; Entrepreneur; Defender of Faith & Country.” 

Patriot Platform presents itself as a grass-roots organisation for Britons fed up with the direction the country is taking. According to its website, Patriot Platform’s members “are the sons and daughters of this island who still believe in freedom, fairness, family, faith and a fierce love for our homeland. We see our country slipping away – our streets changed, our traditions eroded and ordinary people pushed aside in their own land.”

It is a fringe organisation, but Patriot Platform has nonetheless spent the summer months promoting its message through various “patriot”-themed Facebook groups, as well as through Thompson’s various social media accounts. He has some 300k followers on Instagram and another 100k on X.

His posts include videos in which Thomas addresses groups of men and tells them that it’s time to act. In one, posted on 3 September, he tells a collection of clapping supporters that “for too long we’ve been marching down fucking roads, waving flags and thinking somehow it’s going to save us… something different needs to occur. This isn’t about me, or you, it’s about every woman and girl in Britain and making them feel safe.”

In an irony common to many who share Thomas’s apparent concerns, according to investigations by Hope Not Hate, several of his “hand-picked” lieutenants within Patriot Platform have criminal convictions connected to violence against women. 

One, Kevin Jones, “pled guilty to dangerous driving, two counts of wounding and two counts of assault committed during a drug-fuelled frenzy… after he demanded his partner have sex with him and she refused… There were children upstairs in the house at the time.”

Another, Adrian Clarke, admitted an an 8 August “protest” in Thanet to having done “bad shit in [his] past which [he’s] not proud of… we’ve all done stupid shit, but if any of these other people want to sit out there and say ‘oh you’re a domestic abuser’, what do you think these people on the boats have a better criminal record than me? You having a laugh?”

Thomas himself, meanwhile, was previously associated with the “Raise The Colours” movement which saw St George’s Crosses being unfurled (and daubed) all over the UK last summer. 

Hope Not Hate’s summary of Thomas’s previous “career” notes that “as Lennon’s former bodyguard and now close aide, Thomas has been prominent on the British far-right scene for almost a decade. He previously spent time in prison for his part in a botched kidnapping attempt over a drug dispute, and has built a resume of bans across Dover, Ramsgate, Folkestone and the entire country of France due to his activism.” 

A cursory look at social media, particularly X, following Saturday’s events would have shown multiple accounts with “Patriot”-themed handles and Union Jack avatars waxing lyrical about Patriot Platform and the success of the action.

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Accounts like “AJ Audits” – a prominent “auditor” or “citizen journalist” who has made a career from “reporting from migrant hotels” – urged his viewers not to believe the lies that the mainstream media were set to peddle about the protests and the wider movement. 

Patriot Platform has been careful to keep itself largely under-the-radar, outside the specific circles of hyper-online nationalists. Part of the reason for events in Dover coming as an apparent surprise is the movement’s lack of official presence on social media. It doesn’t have an Instagram feed, or a Facebook Page, or an X account. Instead, its only official online presence is its website, which is effectively just an onboarding and data capture funnel. 

Visitors are encouraged to sign up to the movement with their email address and telephone number, with activity then organised in secure, often encrypted, channels such as WhatsApp and Telegram. Members are then urged to distribute details organically through looser, unbranded “Patriot Groups” on Facebook. 

A cursory look on the platform finds dozens of such groups, with hundreds or thousands of members, most set to “Private” and most describing themselves in vague terms involving having “had enough” and wanting to “take our country back”. 

It’s not entirely clear what the end game is here, beyond more protests, but there’s also a clear fundraising component. Thomas’s social media profiles all link to a fundraising page that shows just under £8,000 donated since Patriot Platform’s launch in July. 

The lack of any significant police pushback to events in Dover suggests it is likely more such “protests” will take place, organised by a growing right-wing movement which seems to have realised that it is easier and more effective to organise behind the scenes than in plain sight. 

Thanks to a combination of a proliferation of social and digital channels and the reemergence of “dark social” networks made up of private messaging rings and encrypted communities that resist monitoring by third parties, this sort of activity has never been easier to arrange or harder to track.