Donald Trump has retweeted numerous tweets from Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of far-right group Britain First.

The inflammatory posts – one of which appeared to show footage of a boy being killed, and the moment of his death – were apparently endorsed by the President, who retweeted three of them in a row.

To many of his 45 million followers, neither of those names may seem familiar. But to those in the UK, they are well known: Britain First is a now notorious group that has been accused of helping spread Islamophobic and racist content across the internet.

The three posts that the President posted were much in the vein of the work the group usually does. They depicted people who the group claimed were migrants involved in various crimes – and used them to implicitly blame all Muslims for the behaviour.

Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Britain First: the far-right group in pictures A demonstrator with 'Bring back the rope!' sign during a Britain First Rotherham demonstration in 2015 Rex Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen lead a Britain First demonstration in Rochdale on 22 July, 2017 Rex Britain First: the far-right group in pictures In 2016 they staged a small counter demo at Eros. UN Anti Racism, Refugees Welcome march and rally through central London. Rex Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Here a supporter kisses a badge reading " Speak English or Fuck off " on the jacket of a man at a Britain First demonstration in Telford on 25 February, 2017 Rex Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Britain First lead a demonstration in Dudley with a sign reading 'Britain First. No more Mosques!' in 2015 Alamy Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, the leader and deputy leader of far-right group Britain First were charged with causing religiously aggravated harassment in 2016 PA Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Following the Westminster terror attack on parliament in March 2017, Britain First and EDL protesters marched through central London. AFP/Getty Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Many of the protesters reacted along the route during the Britain First and EDL demonstration held on 1 April, 2017 PA Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Members of the Britain First group and the English Defence League rallied in central London in on seperate marches entitled a "March Against Terrorism" and "We Are Not Afriad" following the terror attack on Westminster Bridge and the British Parliament AFP/Getty Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Paul Golding reacts whilst he leads the protest PA Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Britain First and EDL protesters both marched on the same day PA Britain First: the far-right group in pictures One protester during the march held a sign reading 'Political correctness + migration = chaos' on 1 April, 2017 PA Britain First: the far-right group in pictures Protesters held placards during the protest calling for Britain First leader, Paul Golding, to be mayor Getty Britain First: the far-right group in pictures At a Birmingham Britain First protest in June 2017, supporters had to be contained by police, where an estimated 250 supporters of the party were escorted. PA Britain First: the far-right group in pictures 'Britain First' held a rally in November in support of their leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, who had to sign in at Bromley Police Station as part of their bail conditions. Rex

That Islamophobia is just one of the various controversial views that have been espoused by Ms Fransen, who Mr Trump repeatedly retweeted. The group has also called for the restoration of public hanging as a punishment, and members have given their support to religious war in the UK.

Their work has also extended into direct action. Those have included so-called "Christian patrols", in which members walk the street hunting people who appear to be Muslim, and forcing entry into mosques to distribute inflammatory propaganda.

But like many of Britain First's posts, the three posts shared by the President were entirely shorn of context and information. It isn't clear that any of the posts actually depict what is claimed – and many of them have disturbing context that has been removed from the tweets.

They appear to have been selected from a range of posts on Ms Fransen's Twitter page. She spends much of the day posting inflammatory videos and images – and Mr Trump appeared to have selected three out of a variety of numerous posts on that page.

Such posts have made the group very popular on social media among the British far right.

For a long time, the group – which calls itself a political party, though has nobody representing it in any public office – bragged about the huge reach of its Facebook page. In 2015, for instance, it claimed to be the first political party to have reached one million likes on Facebook.

The reach of that page was spread with such videos. Many of them depicted explicitly Islamophobic content and received huge numbers of likes and views, which spread the posts quickly across the site.

But since then the page has run into controversy and problems. That has led to the reach of the group's posts dropping, and it now only has a million followers.

The far-right group has celebrated the fact that Mr Trump has shared the posts.

"THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN'S TWITTER VIDEOS!" it wrote on its official page. "DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

But even some people who have previously supported the President took issue with Mr Trump's retweet. "Yeah, someone might want to tell whoever is running Trump's Twitter account this morning that retweeting Britain First is not great optics," wrote Paul Joseph Watson, an editor at Infowars and a popular right-wing YouTuber.

And Brendan Cox, whose wife Jo was killed in an attack by a far-right extremist last year, said that the President's tweet was an attempt to promote the far-right.