‘You can’t have an opinion, you’ll get locked up like that Lucy Connolly,” says a shopper in Nuneaton town centre, giving an indication of how well known this childminder from Northampton is in some circles.

Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor, unexpectedly became a cause célèbre for the far right last year when she was jailed for posting “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards” on social media, after falsely believing the Southport attack was carried out by a Muslim asylum seeker.

And now Connolly, who described herself as a “political prisoner” when she was released from jail last week, could be catapulted to international fame. On Wednesday Nigel Farage plans to raise her case with allies of Donald Trump on a visit to the US Congress, as “a symbol of Keir Starmer’s authoritarian, broken, two-tier Britain”.

The US has criticised the UK’s Online Safety Act, which aims to regulate online content and will affect social media companies – most of which are headquartered there. The vice-president, JD Vance, said the UK government was going down a “very dark path” over free speech.

The White House previously said it was “monitoring” Connolly’s case back in May, adding that the US “remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression”.

Connolly was arrested and charged with distributing material with the intention of stirring up racial hatred, which carries a maximum seven-year sentence. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison, but served less than a year.

She would later portray it as something that could happen to anyone. But court documents tell a different story about Connolly, who had repeatedly made what the judge in her trial described as “racist remarks” in multiple social media posts.

This included a comment on a video posted by Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, of a black man being attacked. Robinson claimed this was for masturbating in public, and Connolly responded “Somalian, I guess. Loads of them”, followed by a vomiting emoji.

Another tweet, five days after the Southport murders, implied “illegal boat invaders” were “unvetted criminals” and would lead to people being “attacked, butchered, raped”.

In the case she was jailed for, evidence was shown in court that she deleted the post after it had been viewed 310,000 times and reposted 940 times, and only when she became aware of the public backlash.

She told a friend the post had “bit me on the arse lol” and that if she was caught she would “play the mental health card”.

The fact that someone only days later actually did set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers seemed to be of no significance to Connolly, who had “little insight into, or acceptance of, her actions”, according to the judge who rejected her appeal. She believed she had personally been made an example of by Starmer.

Her husband, Raymond Connolly, later accused the prime minister of having “picked” his wife as “the poster girl of the far right”. Connolly herself has done little to discourage this.

In the only two interviews Connolly took part in after her release from prison, with Dan Wootton, the former GB News presenter, and Allison Pearson, a Telegraph correspondent, she denied being far right, going on to use a tactic that is becoming more common: denying the concept even exists.

To Wootton, she said: “In fact, this far-right thing is just not even a thing, is it really? Let’s face it.”

He replied: “It’s a way to deride patriots.” Connolly responded: “It is.”

Money had begun flowing towards Connolly from the right early on, with the legal expenses for her appeal paid by the populist Tory peer Toby Young’s Free Speech Union.

Patriotic Alternative, a far-right group, said they sent her family £1,000. And almost £170,000 has been raised to date in a public campaign through a fundraising platform run by Reclaim the Media, an organisation set up by the far-right agitator Laurence Fox.

Politicians on the hard right have rallied round Connolly, keen to seize on her case as evidence of a hypocritical “two-tier” justice system, a conspiracy theory that white or right-wing people are treated more harshly by authorities.

Gavin Phillipson, professor of law at University of Bristol said: “It’s so selective, people just seize on one or two cases and then build a whole narrative about two-tier justice on that without looking at the overall picture.”

Comparisons in Connolly’s case were drawn with that of the Labour councillor Ricky Jones, who was cleared of encouraging violent disorder after saying far-right activists should have their throats cut.

Unlike Connolly, Jones pleaded not guilty, was accused of a lesser crime and ultimately convinced the jury he had not intended to start a riot.

Nevertheless, accusations were made by a number of politicians including Chris Philp, the Conservative home affairs spokesperson, who said on X: “The development of two-tier justice is becoming increasingly alarming.”

Phillipson added that the notion among the right that there was some kind of new clampdown on freedom of speech under Starmer was “bonkers”, given the law Connolly was convicted under was introduced by the Thatcher government.

Andrew Chadwick, a professor in the department of communication and media at Loughborough University, said cases like Connolly’s were valuable to the right because they gave an “emotional impact in a way that’s very difficult to do” when talking about an issue such as freedom of speech.

“It’s an interesting case, because one of the things that the right is looking for, and the far-right in particular, is kind of the voices of everyday ordinary people who can bring what often seems to be a very kind of abstract debate down to street level,” he said.

Chadwick said that particularly in the US, and more recently in the UK too, “the right seem to be very adept at kind of focusing in on individuals who then become kind of figureheads, really, for a broader movement”.

He said the link between Reform in the UK and the US Republican party was now quite well established but “becoming more and more important in this picture”.

“Farage is looking for points of connection that enable him to present himself as a friendly ally to the Trump administration and to try to enhance his legitimacy as well using these kinds of tactics,” he said.

Phillipson said: “The US is actually the unique outrider in being extremely libertarian and permissive on freedom of speech, and no other major democracy has followed it in that way.”

He said he thought many people in the UK did not want there to be “licence to spout complete lies and hatred”.

Though Farage would use Connolly to further his own agenda in Washington, there would be space for Connolly if she wanted to build a bigger public profile, Chadwick said.

He added: “If she wants to come out as an activist herself and start making public statements and enhancing her profile even more, then I would imagine she’s going to have quite a receptive group of people, not just at street level, but actually in elite politics on the UK populist right.”