Commentary

Right-Wing Hater Of 'Scum' Media Is A Serious Threat

As Tommy Robinson stood on a platform near the Old Bailey earlier this week and labelled the press "scum" and "enemies of the people," it is hard to ignore that the alt-right is on the rise in the UK and we must all be on our guard.

It would be easy to write off the movement as an American issue that has been tackled with the deletion of Alex Jones' site, and other oddballs, from Twitter. It would also be easy to see the hate preacher that poses the biggest threat to the UK and got out of jail this week as Abu Hamza.

He is a very dangerous man -- that is for sure. However, that would be to ignore the other preacher of hate, Tommy Robinson. He feared going back to prison this week as a court reviewed the quashing of his previous prison sentence for contempt of court. In the end, the court kicked the can down the alley and passed it on to the Attorney General. It's a hot potato case that I'm sure most judges would rather pass on.

The irony? Well, for a right-wing speaker who constantly tries to stir up race hatred in the UK while claiming he is censored by the mainstream media, ended up on a platform outside court.

The guy who has no proverbial voice in the media was on a podium outside the court being live-video streamed across social media across the globe. Quite a voice for someone who claims to have been silenced. The stage was erected for him and the road blocked off by police to allow the speech to pass off peacefully. Hardly what happens to a speaker who has been silenced.

Being sentenced to prison and then being let out was the best thing that happened to Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. It enabled him to pose as a victim of a state that wants to prioritise the rights of immigrants, particularly Muslims, over native Brits. 

It's a catchy message because a sizable minority of people want to believe it and they are not prepared to ask questions or to understand the law. The big issue with Tommy is that he defied two court orders on reporting a cases involving alleged grooming gangs.

As any journalist knows, a judge will usually put restrictions on the reporting of such cases to protect the defendants, witnesses and jury while the hearing is taking place. Once the verdict is given, restrictions are usually lifted. Once the case has been allowed to take place out of the limelight of media coverage, it can then be reported on.

Breaking these restrictions is serious, and Tommy first received a suspended sentence before ignoring the warning and earning a second, custodial sentence -- which by definition had to include the earlier suspended sentence.

I still can't quite get to the bottom of how he got this quashed, but it looks like there was a procedural error which may not have made the passing down of the first, suspended sentence as clear as possible. The other sentence was quashed but a retrial was ordered.

From what I can discern, Tommy got out on a technicality, at least on one of the two cases. The filming of people entering the court rooms and reporting on cases that had restrictions placed on them is clear for all to see. It happened, he got sentenced but then he got off.

This has given him the perfect platform of a campaigner who got put down for his convictions, but then had the tenacity to get released. None of this is true.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon took the name Tommy Robinson from a violent football hooligan whose footsteps he followed in before getting involved in race-hatred politics, setting up the (subsequently banned) English Defence League. He has received convictions for football violence, fighting at political rallies and travelling to the US on a false passport because he knew a drugs conviction in his real name would mean barred access for him.

Yes, this is the kind of guy we're dealing with. The point is, he now has a voice due to the bungling of his contempt of court sentencing and the biggest open secret in politics today is he is attempting to become the leader of UKIP. This is the party once led by Nigel Farage which pushed for years for the UK to have a referendum on its membership of the EU. The party was widely condemned this week for allowing the right-wing activist to have lunch in the House of Lords with a UKIP peer. 

This right-wing agitator has moved on from a football hooligan to an alleged breaker of court-reporting restrictions to mob hero who is on the verge of entering politics, via UKIP.

As I say, it would be very dangerous to ignore this rise of the right and assume a couple of bans on American social media accounts has stemmed the tide of hatred. 

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