"These are not the views of the BBC"

So what's John Sweeney up to these days, now that (like John Humphrys) he's free of the BBC? 

Well, THIS:

Tommy Robinson makes out that he's a Great British patriot. But look at what he said in Bavaria. 

Here's a one minute film entitled "Tommy Robinson and the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society".

Watch it. https://t.co/il1UbEAvTL pic.twitter.com/qtxc44THzM
— John Sweeney (@johnsweeneyroar) October 5, 2019

In the video, "Tommy Robinson and the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society", John Sweeney calls Tommy Robinson a "Nazi c**t" and shows him speaking to an audience in Bavaria, clipping him saying "German people have for too long lived in the guilt of Adolf Hitler" and setting that alongside chants of 'Oh, Tommy, Tommy!' and scenes of TR being violent.

So, is this Tommy Robinson praising Hitler at the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society? 

Well, digging around, things aren't quite what the ex-BBC man is implying they are. 

(I know! Who'd have thought it?)

It turns out that Tommy Robinson isn't talking to the Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society (gosh!) but to a audience at last October's Grenzschutzkonferenz (Border Protection Conference) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where senior figures from various right-populist parties from across Europe gathered. 

And even from the clipped bit, it's not hard to work out that TR is probably about to go on to tell Germans to move beyond the guilt of Adolf Hitler, be proud of themselves and their culture again and look to the future.

(And, come to think of it, talking of Hitler's guilt doesn't sound very 'appreciative' of him, does it?)

So, John may unstandably be deeply bitter about Tommy Robinson...(though he evidently prefers wine to bitter)...but will his reputation - or what's left of it - survive too many more stunts like this?

Update: Pugnazious at B-BBC has much more on this bit of Sweenian fake news, citing a very interesting blogpost elsewhere from a left-wing blogger. That blogger ends his piece by writing:

On Twitter, the video has been lauded as a defiant gesture against Robinson, but I can’t say I’m impressed by the lazy buffoonery, which comes across as compensatory for Sweeney’s self-evident failure. The video gives the impression that Sweeney has unearthed the clip, when he’s done nothing of the kind, and many Twitter users have taken his “Adolf Hitler Appreciation Society” designation at face value – meaning that Sweeney, whatever his intentions, has effectively dumped misinformation onto social media that Robinson and his supporters will in all likelihood capitalise on. 

In short, Sweeney’s latest antics are actually a hindrance to subjecting Robinson and his associates to proper critical scrutiny.