Anyone who’s familiar with our blogging history will know that we are on board with Tommy Robinson’s message, if not his methods. But as it’s his methods, so to speak, that have put him where he is today, we might well find ourselves asking “what’s not to like?”
We should be able to express our fear of the increasing normalisation of Islam and our worry that very soon that particular religion and its followers will have (and here I’ll use a phrase that will always be associated with Enoch Powell) ‘the whip hand.’
Ever since he realised that the creeping Islamization of his home town, Luton, had gone too far, Tommy Robinson has managed to promote himself and his concerns with such passion and energy that he’s elevated himself into a modern-day ‘Enemy of The State’, and all in a relatively short period of time, including a spot of enforced ‘down-time’ at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
For a laugh, let’s contrast his career trajectory with that of fellow Lutonian Stacey Dooley, whose film “My Home Town” also made quite a stir, (a good little film with one or two unintentional laughs) and who went on to become the darling of the BBC, making documentaries about BBC-approved injustices. I think she’s reached some sort of pinnacle; a new project addressing issues around makeup is in the pipeline. Do you think Tommy should go on Strictly? That would boost his image, and no doubt increase the ratings.
I'm sticking my neck out with this post as we've only been drip-fed the information, and the next instalment is promised for tomorrow.
Following a H/T from StewGreen on B-BBC, I took a look at Brian of London’s Twitter, but first I have to digress - please do scroll down if you don’t like digressions.
Digression.
The term “Islamophobia” is casually thrown at critics of Islam so that they can be written off as racists or bigots. But most ‘Islamophobes’ are neither racists nor do they suffer from a medical/psychological condition.
Fear is a perfectly logical reaction to an ideology with supremacist aspirations, a panoply of harsh, dogmatic rules for every aspect of life and which has a strongly antisemitic thread running through it, and the prospect of its ever-increasing hold on the enlightened world is terrifying.
Islam is not a race but an ideology, but no matter, the world we live in now assumes that any blanket-categorisation can be viewed as a ‘race’ if it suits one’s case. And it certainly doesn’t follow that critics of Islam are, of necessity, antisemitic as well, though they could be. Even if Jews are not officially defined as a race but as a ‘people’, antisemitism is true racism because it is a hatred of a ‘people’ merely because they are who they are. So please stop equating antisemitism with Islamophobia.
End of Digression.
Anyway, back to Brian of London, who lives in Israel and belongs to the website Israellycool. He has ‘come out’ as a supporter of Tommy Robinson, which many Jews and Zionists are reluctant to do for fear of being further tainted by association, as if being a Zionist and/or a Jew wasn’t unpopular enough already. (oy)
Through Brian of London’s links to Tommy’s Facebook videos and other outpourings, we see that both he and Tommy have employed the language John Sweeney uses in his clumsy and crass analogy, and are regurgitating it as if it were not an analogy at all, but a straightforward exposure of Sweeney’s opinion of Tommy himself and / or Tommy’ as a symbol / representative of the entire ‘race’ of ‘working-class white males.’
Of course, Sweeney wasn’t actually calling the unfortunate working-class *Danny* “a cannibal from the Amazonian….err ….Amazionia,” nor was he really describing him as ‘from outer space’, but his analogy was certainly constructed to convey a message, that the presence of a working-class male in the BBC’s ‘Newsnight Green Room’ was a matter of curiosity, and worth going along to gawp at. In other words, he was telling his interlocutor, whoever that was, that he saw *Danny* as “other”.
We can’t be expected to take responsibility for all our fans and followers or the vocabulary they use to express their views. John Sweeney thinks the typical working-class male is inarticulate and can only muster “Fuck off” by way of retaliation. That’s derogatory and nasty, but do remember, some of Tommy’s followers look like ‘reverse Momentum,’ in that they’re the mirror image of semi-literate Corbynite fanatics, and they do him no credit.
I’m uneasy about Tommy Robinson and Brian of London aiming a somewhat unfair, manipulated and out of context accusation against Sweeney, which they may have intended to be a deliberately recycled iteration of the BBC’s own disingenuous tactics. If so, well and good. For their sake, I hope this is what they’re doing and that they take pains to make it absolutely clear that it’s a tables-turned, ‘back atcha’ kind of tactic, and not an accidental repetition of the BBC’s own mendacity. If not, it weakens their case rather than strengthens it because two wrongs don’t make a right, do they?
