Robinson’s Pathetic Melodrama
The lies of Robinson’s weaselly little cult, if that isn’t a euphemism, collapse fairly quickly. Robinson spent a short period in HMP Onley, a “category C” prison. There is no mosque in the jail, and under a third of its inmates are Muslims. Robinson was under protection the entire time. His complaints while in jail indicate that he protested of “mental torture” in part so that he could demand “extra spends” and “enhanced” status and privileges.
Nonetheless, mainstream platforms echoed Robinson’s story of martyrdom. Far-right provocateur Raheem Kassam was shopped around the news by public relations firm CapitalHQ. He duly appeared on the BBC, as did Rebel Media boss Ezra Levant. As Owen Jones points out, if such interviews were supposed to challenge the far right’s mouthpieces, they failed abysmally. Kassam was allowed to style himself as a legal commentator, and his connection to Breitbart and the far right went unmentioned.
The irony is that Robinson’s supporters are exactly the sorts of people who typically decry Britain’s prisons as “soft touch” “holiday camps.” Here they compared a short stretch in a low-security prison to the global kidnapping and torturing rings linked to Guantánamo Bay. For a man who has served several jail terms, usually for violent offenses, this is weirdly melodramatic. Britain’s jails may be rough and overcrowded, but this mass conversion to the cause of prison reform would perhaps be less absurd if they honestly admitted why Robinson was jailed to start with.
In a softball interview with Robinson after his release, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson claimed that he was arrested for “attempting to cover the trial of a sexual grooming gang in the UK, for speaking out loud in the sidewalk.” Bannon likewise claimed that he was jailed unfairly, on a harsh application of a technicality regarding reporting restrictions. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle claimed not to be “remotely a fan” of Robinson, but asserted that he had been arrested for “simply being Robinson.”
Many of his supporters are more careful. UKIP leader Gerard Batten, who shares Robinson’s Islamophobic obsessions, told Infowars that Robinson was trying to protect “the victims of the industrialized r*pe gangs that we’ve got operating up and down this country now.”
But even he half-apologetically coughed out a disclaimer about Robinson breaking the law. Islam-baiter Douglas Murray, writing in the National Review, claimed that Robinson had been “persecuted” for “exceptionally brave” citizen journalism but admitted that he had committed an offense.
The reality is rather pathetic. Robinson knowingly endangered the trials of individuals potentially guilty of serious sexual assault against minors. In the first case, in May 2017, he brought a camera into the courtroom. British courts do not allow photography or filming, in order to preserve fair trials and prevent jury intimidation.
Robinson’s interest in the trials did not owe to some deep concern over sexual violence against children. When leading English Defence League (EDL) member Richard Price was locked up on child pornography charges, Robinson stood by him, and EDL members organized a campaign in his defense. But in this case the suspects were Asian — and many were Muslim.
Robinson has long cleaved to the Islamophobic right’s lunatic theory identifying “links” between Islam and p***philia. He tried to make racist propaganda out of the trials for Canada’s far-right Rebel Media. The judge duly handed him a suspended sentence. The following year, while still serving the suspended sentence, he committed the same offense, knowing full well he would be arrested.
As Britain’s top source of populist racism, the Sun, pointed out, Robinson’s willingness to wreck these trials didn’t make him a hero but a “nasty thug and a grandstanding idiot.” Surprisingly — perhaps showing proprietorial concern for its own racist racket — the Sun was the only outlet to take such an uncompromising line.
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/tommy-robinson-fascist-bbc-prison-sentence