In two tweets on Tuesday, Mark Latham showed that whatever red line may have once existed between the radical right and “moderate” conservative media has been erased. In one, he linked to his new column in the Daily Telegraph, which urged Australians to toughen up. In the other, just two tweets earlier, was a link to his YouTube show, in which he announced that he would be joining the roster at Canada’s Rebel Media.

Latham had a guest to help him with the big announcement – another Rebel Media host who goes by Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League. Robinson – aka Stephen Lennon – has a long history in rightwing groups in the United Kingdom, and has been a prominent agitator against Islam. He briefly joined the British National Party in 2004, which Human Rights Watch called “an openly racist and nationalist party with a history connecting it to active neo-Nazi organisations”. He told the BBC he sought the BNP out because “I was looking [for] somebody to be addressing this Islamic extremist problem”.

Robinson formed the “United Peoples of Luton”, which became the EDL, in 2009. At the peak of its organising at the turn of the decade, the EDL’s street marches were associated with violence and riots. While he headed EDL, Robinson himself said the group attracted neo-Nazis, and that “during the last four years we’ve had in-house battles, physical battles to keep these elements out”. After leaving EDL, in 2015 Robinson founded the UK arm of the German radical right anti-Islam group, Pegida. In that capacity, he told Newsweek, “I’m not far-right. I’m just opposed to Islam. I believe it’s backward and it’s fascist”. One of Pegida’s German leaders was fined last month after describing immigrants as “cattle,” “brutes” and “trash”.

Robinson has also spent long spells in prison for offences including mortgage fraud, using a false passport, “threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour” in the lead-up to a football brawl, and assault. In recent months, on Rebel Media and occasional appearances on the Alex Jones Show, Robinson has adopted an increasingly hysterical tone in discussing terror attacks and the Rotherham sex abuse ring.

None of this is secret. Most of it is right there on Robinson’s Wikipedia page. But none of it perturbed Latham. Indeed, he introduced Robinson as “a powerful voice for what needs to happen in these troubled times”, a “wonderful campaigner”, and a “voice of common sense”.

Their conversation was relentlessly focused on Islam, and the “elites” in what Latham calls the “be-nice faction” who fail to endorse a “hard-edged, vigorous response” to Islamism. (Latham identified Asio Chief Duncan Lewis and London Mayor Sadiq Khan as leading members of this faction).

The interview mainly consisted of Latham providing prompts for a Robinson rant on his favourite themes. Robinson began by bemoaning the fecundity of European Muslims, and suggested addressing it by limiting welfare payments.

He criticised his political enemies in the most excoriating terms, asking rhetorically, “Can we blame Muslims for wanting to commit jihad? Can we blame Islam? Or do we blame the people who have allowed to facilitate it?” He called the British Labour Party “traitors to our country”, and told Theresa May, “You’ve been too tolerant of Islam”. He suggested Labour politicians in England’s north had turned a blind eye to “sexual slavery” because they wanted Muslim votes.

He complained about an alleged ban on St George’s Day in his home town of Luton, asking why it shouldn’t be celebrated along with the rest of “western civilisation”, since “our western culture is far superior, far better”.

Latham did nothing to push back on any of this, and even compared Australia Day to St George’s Day as a celebration of “western virtues” that was “under siege”.

Robinson is just one of Latham’s new stablemates. Ezra Levant, who founded the site, was brought before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for republishing Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Jack Posobiec, another presenter, was a prime mover in spreading the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory which, among other things, led to an armed man showing up at a Washington pizza restaurant.

Presenter Faith Goldy has asked whether Canadian immigration policies constituted “white genocide”. Vice founder and presenter Gavin McInnes last year founded the “Proud Boys”, an all-male “fraternal organisation” which has been appearing at confrontational “alt right” rallies around the United States. Rebel alumna, Lauren Southern, was detained in Italy last month, not long after leaving the site, when she and French “Identitarians” tried to block the passage of a refugee boat in the Mediterranean.

Alexander Reid Ross, antifascist researcher and author, told me that Latham joining Rebel amounted to “linking up with trans-national alt-right commentators who play in the interstices between fascism and the radical right”.

By maintaining his Telegraph column at the same time, the risk was that he would “blur the lines of credibility between far-right and mainstream right”, said Ross. In other similar instances, this had led to the insertion of “fascist themes and figures into mainstream discourse”.

The actions and political stances of Rebel’s presenters have led to a successful Canadian boycott campaign to dissuade advertisers from using the site. Similar tactics have been employed in removing Fox News presenters.

How long until the Daily Telegraph is placed under similar pressure?