Tommy Robinson's Self Martyrdom Reinvention and the Football Lads, a Wake Up Call !.

looking increasingly that "Tommy Robinson" 's latest persona, that of incarcerated Martyr to a cause might well play rather well. He has used so many names, Tommy Robinson is just the one he has decided to stick with. His real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon isn't really good for a street fighting man, and I think I'm allowed to say as a gay man sounds a little bit whoopsie. It sounds like a presenter on the Chelsea Flower Show or that nice young man who comes round to do your gran's hair. He chose the name of a football hooligan and that act of self-reinvention speaks volumes.

I imagine most people reading this will know his past, here I want to deal with his present, his future plans and the challenges they present.
His most recent large-scale public appearance politically was at the Democratic Football Lads Alliance event The Day for Freedom, and I think it's useful to look at his effective self-incarceration
Mr Yaxley-Lennon's recent incarceration might be a good career move.

It is looking increasingly that "Tommy Robinson" 's latest persona, that of incarcerated Martyr to a cause might well play rather well. He has used so many names, Tommy Robinson is just the one he has decided to stick with. His real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon isn't really good for a street fighting man, and I think I'm allowed to say that as a gay man myself it sounds a little bit whoopsie. It sounds like a presenter on the Chelsea Flower Show or that nice young man who comes round to do your gran's hair. He chose the name of a football hooligan and that act of self-reinvention speaks volumes.

I imagine most people reading this will know his past, here I want to deal with his present, his future plans and the challenges they present.
His most recent large-scale public appearance politically was at the Democratic Football Lads Alliance event The Day for Freedom, and I think it's useful to look at his effective self-incarceration in that context. I don't think he was planning to be banged up for 13 months but I think he was certainly hoping it would be 3 or 4. What he did was a flagrant contempt of court which inevitably would result in him getting banged up, he probably thought his guilty plea might mean he would get substantially less.

 For a full analysis of the legal reasons he got himself into jail, I'd refer you to the excellent article by the Secret Barrister here.

His Honour Judge Norton laid it on the line when he did exactly the same stuff at a previous trial.

 “This contempt hearing is not about free speech. This is not about freedom of the press. This is not about legitimate journalism; this is not about political correctness; this is not about whether one political viewpoint is right or another. It is about justice, and it is about ensuring that a trial can be carried out justly and fairly. It is about ensuring that a jury are not in any way inhibited from carrying out their important function. It is about being innocent until proven guilty. It is not about people prejudging a situation and going round to that court and publishing material, whether in print or online, referring to defendants as “Muslim paedophile rapists”. A legitimate journalist would not be able to do that and under the strict liability rule there would be no defence to publication in those terms. It is pejorative language which prejudges the case, and it is language and reporting – if reporting indeed is what it is – that could have had the effect of substantially derailing the trial. As I have already indicated, because of what I knew was going on I had to take avoiding action to make sure that the integrity of this trial was preserved, that justice was preserved and that the trial could continue to completion without people being intimidated into reaching conclusions about it, or into being affected by “irresponsible and inaccurate reporting”. If something of the nature of that which you put out on social media had been put into the mainstream press I would have been faced with applications from the defence advocates concerned, I have no doubt, to either say something specific to the jury, or worse, to abandon the trial and to start again. That is the kind of thing that actions such as these can and do have, and that is why you have been dealt with in the way in which you have and why I am dealing with this case with the seriousness which I am.”

In case he hadn't got the full measure of it, the Judge really spelt it out.

"You should be under no illusions that if you commit any further offence of any kind, and that would include, I would have thought, a further contempt of court by similar actions, then that sentence of three months would be activated, and that would be on top of anything else that you were given by any other court.

In short, Mr Yaxley-Lennon, turn up at another court, refer to people as “Muslim paedophiles, Muslim rapists” and so and so forth while trials are ongoing and before there has been a finding by a jury that that is what they are, and you will find yourself inside. Do you understand?”

I think this is where the expression "walking into it with your eyes wide open" becomes quite apposite. 

It is really no surprise he got a heavy sentence(although he will probably be out in about six months), what he did was to seriously threaten the right of a fair trial. 

Judges can get very touchy about anything that impedes the judicial process, like serious contempt or   interfering with witnesses.

They get angry when you start messing with their shit.

Let's cut to the chase here, his actions could have the effect of wrecking an important criminal trial and potentially ensuring that those guilty of serious offences against children go free.

He doesn't report on paedophiles walking free in our communities, his reckless actions help to facilitate it.

I think it's worth looking at the recent attempts to build popular right-wing/fascist movements and the specific rebranding of these movements as defending liberal western values from Islamists and "cultural Marxists."

The whole schtick is how they defend liberal values:free speech,LGBT rights and feminism from the onward march of militant Islamism.

There is a "Free Tommy Robinson" demo coming up on Sat.9th in Whitehall. opposition to it has been called by Stand Up to Racism and Unite Against Fascism, it is important that we have a huge counter-protest. 

This is going to be one amongst many.

The Tommy Robinson DFLA protest in May showed how things have moved on for the far right. There were about 5,00 attending and larger forces than the rump of the EDL were present.
The politics of Génération Identitaire and the Identitarian wing of the fascist movement were very much on display. The presence of Milo Yiannopoulos and a Drag Queen on the platform was indicative of pushing a slicker variant of "inclusive" right-wing populism, although this was clearly not appreciated by many in the audience. In fact as soon as Vanity Von Glow, the drag artist started to sing a large contingent marched off to the pub.
As GQ reported:

"The first incident of the day that highlighted how confused many of the Day for Freedom attendees actually are about the notion of free speech happened about 20 minutes after I arrived. The radical Christian speaker suggested that “God even loves paedophiles” and a group of men there for the march began screaming at him that he “couldn’t say that”. So, it seems there are some limits to free speech."

The line that was being propagated was that it was Tommy and his friends who were the true defenders of free speech rather than the leftist PC mafia. What we know is what they want is the right to be racist but not get called out for it.

One of the problems they have is that they all seemed to enjoy using their freedom of speech to say some thoroughly unpleasant things, but I didn't notice anyone getting carted away by the police for doing so, even when they were shouting "Muslim loving scum" at a WPC.

Amongst the speakers were Gerard Batten, leader of UKIP and Anne Marie Waters of the For Britain Party. This is interesting, as the idea of a UKIP leader sharing a platform with Tommy Robinson would have been unthinkable a few months ago, also of course AMW stood for the UKIP leadership but was too racist even for them. There is, of course, some jockeying for their supporters as their vote has recently collapsed and at the recent elections, they were revealed to be marginally less popular than inflamed haemorrhoids. There has been clearly been a fairly fluid relationship between UKIP and the far right which has been extremely worrying.

The whole thing looked very different from the EDL demos of old. A large screen showed slickly produced videos whilst there were security men mobbing around Tommy Robinson wearing high vis jackets emblazoned with his website logo.
Money had been spent on this. The whole thing was polished, thought out and focused. This was a far cry from the old EDL demos.

I was with the 400 or so others who were at the counter-protest the other side of the cenotaph called by Stand Up to Racism. At one point we were invaded by a group of Robinson's supporters. I was informed afterwards that they were the Chelsea Headhunters.  Someone observed that for a short while our area seemed to be Gammon Central. Whilst the whole thing could have looked like an advert for this summer's Jacomo collection directed by Fellini, it was more serious than that.
We were under attack. People defended our space and they were eventually removed. However, there is a more serious point, to the whole incident. Firstly to dismiss our opponents as "gammon" or "thickos" is too lazy. It could be regarded as offensive to the porcine community and frankly a bit snobbish. Secondly, the people from Breitbart and the Alt-Right are well-heeled and well-connected folks and the people they are attempting to recruit from football supporters networks they regard as their shock troops. Show Racism the Red Card and others are doing sterling work at preventing football supporters from being sucked into the "Football Lads" orbit. You cannot have a coherent argument with people by gratuitously insulting them. This is The Guardian approach to being loftily anti-working class.  People need to lay off the offensive labels.

An Essay In Fascist Tactics.

The whole thing, however, was a revelation of Tommy Robinson and the mechanics of fascism. Whilst he was bleating about freedom of speech and his liberty and the rights of "Freeborn English men", his bully boys were attempting to punch up his opponents having a peaceful protest literally behind the stage he was pontificating from.

If this was a scene from a left-wing Costa-Gavras film of the mid-sixties people would roll their eyes.

Could there be a more glaring analogy of the values and tactics of Nazism?



As his old comrade, Nick Griffin once said when talking of a by election victory for the BNP in 1993.

"The electors of Millwall did not back a postmodernist rightist party, but what they perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan "Defend Rights for Whites" with well-directed boots and fists."

When we discussed the demo afterwards in the pub absolutely nobody felt that what was required was me to write a witty yet observant article about the events of the day. (Extraordinary.) The main observation could be summed up with the expression:

"There aren't enough of us."

There was, of course, the Windrush demo the day before, however, although there were plenty of Trade Union and community banners there was not a sufficient turnout. The black bloc who were mobilising 120 plus for demos on Kent a couple of years ago also hardly mustered 20. The whole thing was reminiscent of the movement's reaction to the emergence of the English defence league some years ago.

There were people then who argued that we must solely concern ourselves with the BNP and that the EDL was a public order problem that should either be disdainfully ignored or left to the Police. Unite Against Fascism had to have prolonged arguments at the time to get people to wake up to the threat. It was only through a prolonged war of attrition of repeated counter protests that the movement was able to break the back of the EDL.

This week there was a large demo in Whitehall in support of Mr Yaxley-Lennon and support for him all over social media. At the protest, one speaker compared him to Nelson Mandela and another-I kid you not-read out the Pastor Niemöller poem.

Whilst it may be tempting to snigger at this, the support he's getting is another matter. About half a million people have signed online petitions demanding his release. Even Samantha Markle. Meghan's half-sister has signed, and people thought her dad was going to be the embarrassing relative. On the plus side, it means Prince Philip will have somebody to talk to at family get-togethers.

I remember how we thought that the EDL had died a death and suddenly their fortunes were  lifted by the perfectly understandable public outrage over the brutal murder of Lee Rigby. I know the comparison between TR and Lee Rigby's death is tasteless, however, I am making it due to the hysteria over Robinson's incarceration and its exploitation by the far right.

There is the very real possibility of a Nazi breakthrough in Britain. We have seen the consequences of Theresa Mays "hostile environment "and the scandalous treatment of the Windrush generation and the weaponisation of the Brexit vote by racists. Donald Trump's "very fine people" comment about Nazis in Charlottesville and his demonisation of football players taking the knee as "sons of bitches".
In Europe, there is not just the spectre of Marine Le Pen in France, but also the rise of a huge fascist movement in Poland and the use of antisemitism by the far right wing populists in Hungary. There has been a huge growth in Fascism across the whole of Europe.

Wake Up and Smell the Vitriol.

There is a real potential for a Nazi revival, whether it is from Football Lads Alliance, DFLA or some combination, or even some completely new grouping coming forward. We have many of the ideological factors necessary coupled with the immiseration of many due to government austerity policies.

There is clearly an attempt to use Europe style Fascist Identity Politics of the Generation Identity type to fuse it all together.

It is important not to just debunk TR's phoney victim status by disseminating excellent posts like the one by the secret barrister but to get serious mobilisations off the ground again.

Sharing antifascist memes about Charlottesville and what's going on in Europe or even articles like this is a good start but it's only a start.

It is important to get numbers out on Saturday but that must be just a beginning.

There needs to be a serious debate within the Labour movement and within Trades Unions and our community organisations.

All the fascist organisations that have been defeated in this country have been defeated by pressure from outside. The NF by the Anti Nazi League in the 1970's and the BNP and the EDL by UAF in recent years.

There is now the urgent task of everybody working with Stand Up to Racism and UAF in building a fightback.

It's time to get organised again.

It's later than you think.