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Speaker 1: M. What's poorly introducing my podcast? I'm Robert Evans hosted

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, the podcast with the worst introductions in

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Speaker 1: the podcasting game, and also the podcast where we've talked

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Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history. So the

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Speaker 1: introductions are at least uh in line with the terrible

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Speaker 1: nous of the human beings we talked about. My guest

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Speaker 1: today is conflict journalist uh and host an operator of

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Speaker 1: Popular Front, which is a podcast about the nerdy modern

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Speaker 1: details of war. Jake Hanrahan, how you doing, Jake good? Good, good,

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Speaker 1: thank you? Yeah you and I we just spent closing

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Speaker 1: it on two weeks in Iraq and Syria together a

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Speaker 1: little bit earlier this year. Um. Yeah, we talked to

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Speaker 1: a lot of nice people there, and today we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about somebody who sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah Tommy Robinson. Yeah, um,

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Speaker 1: how would you describe Tommy Robinson? And like a sentence

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Speaker 1: or two to just some one who wanted a quick

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Speaker 1: description of who this dude is. He's like this like

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Speaker 1: hard right wing quasi football Hooligan's kind of a joke, um,

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Speaker 1: but it's also you know, has caused hell for the

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Speaker 1: last like god, my like ten years. I remember in

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Speaker 1: school even hearing about him, just being like, who the

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Speaker 1: fuck is this guy? You know, Yeah, he's been at

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Speaker 1: this ship a while. He's kind of like like a

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Speaker 1: low rent Oswald Mosley. Um yeah, really really low rent. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Oswald Mosley was not a high rent Oswald most exactly.

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Speaker 1: It's like the woodlouse of the Oswald Mosley. You know

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Speaker 1: it's down there. All right, Well, I'm going to get

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Speaker 1: into it. So yeah, you know, I'm just gonna read

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Speaker 1: this story and and and you'll comment, and you know,

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Speaker 1: one of your side jobs here, Jake, is going to

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Speaker 1: be to mock me viciously when I mispronounced one of

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Speaker 1: your country's ridiculous city names. I'm ready. Yeah, the one

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Speaker 1: I keep having trouble with. It looks like like Ster

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Speaker 1: but I know that's wrong. Lester, Lester, it's absurd. That

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Speaker 1: actually is absurd. But that's like my area, man, like

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Speaker 1: East Midlands. It looks like Lester. Yeah. Well we will

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Speaker 1: be talking about the Midlands at a couple of points

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Speaker 1: to um. Yeah, yeah, that is where some of this

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Speaker 1: is set. So. Stephen Christopher Yaxley was born on November nine,

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Speaker 1: two in Lutton, England, is it Luton or Luton Luton, Luton,

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Speaker 1: Luton and Luton, England. In interviews, he tends to focus

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Speaker 1: on the fact that his parents were with Irish immigrants

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Speaker 1: into the country. He later told The Telegraph everything in

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Speaker 1: Luton is the son of immigrants, whether it be Irish,

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Speaker 1: West Indian, Ghanaian everyone I know. His mom worked at

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Speaker 1: a bakery and his dad worked at a Vauxhall car

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Speaker 1: plant in Luton. I've never heard of that manufacturer, but

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Speaker 1: they're a funk now, I guess. But yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: like a big industrial employer in the town. As an adult,

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Speaker 1: Y actually has repeatedly emphasized the level of poverty and

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Speaker 1: hopelessness that was endemic to the community he grew up

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Speaker 1: in and two dozen sixteen, he's self published an autobiography

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Speaker 1: titled Enemy of the State, which I have not read

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Speaker 1: because I didn't want to give this guy money since

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Speaker 1: it was a self published book. However, I did read

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Speaker 1: a number of reviews of the book. One of them

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Speaker 1: was a surprisingly positive review by a guy named Daniel

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Speaker 1: Falconer who's at the book reviewer for the London School

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Speaker 1: of Economics. He chastised the books flawed in an accurate

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Speaker 1: analysis of Islam, but he praised Tommy Robinson's writing on

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Speaker 1: the economic state he and his peers grew up in

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Speaker 1: writing quote that portrait is bleak. Indeed, economic vulnerability, social breakdown,

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Speaker 1: and political neglect or themes that surfaced time and again. Importantly,

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Speaker 1: the drug use, crime and serious violence that frequently accompanied

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Speaker 1: these broader problems are never abstract for Robinson. Their lived

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Speaker 1: realities for him and for his broader community, and he's

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Speaker 1: not shy of describing them and disturbing detail because, as

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Speaker 1: he says, these things are boundary of shape me in

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Speaker 1: some way. Growing up hearing the stories and experiencing the

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Speaker 1: reality of life on the streets. You couldn't help but

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Speaker 1: have it touch your life in somewhere or another. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that's um, I don't know, like you you talk

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Speaker 1: about when we were chatting about like where you come up,

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Speaker 1: you talked a lot about like the kind of poverty

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Speaker 1: in that particular chunk of the UK, which is not

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Speaker 1: the chunk that I think you know most Americans. It's

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Speaker 1: like London. Yeah, it's kind of what you hear about.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean there is one thing

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Speaker 1: you can say that like he is right about that

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Speaker 1: that like how bad that you know, I live where

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Speaker 1: he's from. It's like three train stops away, you know,

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Speaker 1: like forty minutes, and it's not a lot of difference.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's my area and my where he's looting.

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Speaker 1: That's like out to London but on Midlands. But still

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Speaker 1: it's it's just the kind of deprivation is just unlike

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Speaker 1: anything you can really think of, because it's it's not

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Speaker 1: like so bad that it's like dystopian or anything, but

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Speaker 1: it's just just so boring. There's just nothing to do,

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Speaker 1: do you know what I mean. The only thing people

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Speaker 1: do is like you know, basically when you come out

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Speaker 1: of school, you're either going to work in the factory

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Speaker 1: or be a drug dealer. You know. It's it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a it's grim, yeah, and it seems like one

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Speaker 1: of the few things to do outside of those occupations

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Speaker 1: is get into fights over whatever it is you find

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Speaker 1: to get into fights over. Yeah, And that's a big part. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like in school for me, like just growing up, it

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Speaker 1: was just I've got my head kicked in so many

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Speaker 1: times just from like you know, just just that was

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Speaker 1: what happened. You would just hit a certain age and

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Speaker 1: it's just right, you fight now, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: It's weird, man, it's not nice. Yeah, yeah, it sounds

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Speaker 1: it sounds shitty, and it sounds like uh, Tommy Robins

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Speaker 1: had had similar kind of experiences in his in his upbringing.

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Speaker 1: Although I should note that several reporters have found evidence

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Speaker 1: that Robinson comes from a more well off background and

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Speaker 1: then he tends to portray himself he definitely spent a

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Speaker 1: lot of time in Luton or Luton and grew up

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Speaker 1: there as a kid. Um, but there's also evidence that

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Speaker 1: like his family was one of the wealthier families in

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Speaker 1: the area. Emma moss Lee, reporting for Vice, spoke to

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Speaker 1: several people who grew up with and around him. One

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Speaker 1: of those sources claimed that he uh came up quite

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Speaker 1: well off as a result of his stepfather's family business,

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Speaker 1: which is like a plumbing business. So it kind of

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Speaker 1: seems like he was one of the more well off

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Speaker 1: people in a very poor area. Um yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but like yeah, perhaps, but even you know, even being

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Speaker 1: well off around these areas, it's not it's not the

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Speaker 1: well off that you would think, like, certainly it's not

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Speaker 1: in the Hampton's you know what I'm saying yeah, and

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Speaker 1: he clearly had the same issue with like nothing to do,

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Speaker 1: so like why not fight? Yeah? Now. In his autobiography,

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Speaker 1: Tommy recalls growing up with an assortment of non white friends,

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Speaker 1: particularly Muslims. I found a very positive review of his

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Speaker 1: autobiography by a far right author on medium. The article

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Speaker 1: is titled night of the Realm, which is how the

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Speaker 1: guy refers to Tommy Robinson. Here's how that writer summarized

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Speaker 1: Tommy's recollection of his childhood friend group. Quote. In the book,

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Speaker 1: he describes his early years of a bright yet lad

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Speaker 1: racing through unchallenging schoolwork, easily distracted, and always up for

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Speaker 1: a scuffle. Already in his teens, he saw Muslim friends

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Speaker 1: he'd grown up with reaching age and then drift away

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Speaker 1: into big groups of Muslim youths. But a commonplace playground

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Speaker 1: tustle would see dozens of Muslim men rally soon after

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Speaker 1: brawl's injuries and the police called um. Now. This is

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Speaker 1: like an angle that Robinson pushes a lot in his

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Speaker 1: media appearance. This idea that, like as a kid, he

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Speaker 1: came to realize that whenever there were fights, Muslims reacted

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Speaker 1: with a group mentality and they would all habitually defend

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Speaker 1: each other. I found another quote from Tommy Robinson, this

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Speaker 1: time in a Telegraph article, stating, quote, the mentality they

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Speaker 1: have I realized when I went to the World Cup.

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Speaker 1: When an Englishman out there gets in trouble, every other

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Speaker 1: Englishman defends him. It's the mindset you're away from home

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Speaker 1: and he's your brother, and that's a brotherhood they have.

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Speaker 1: Every day you get in trouble outside a nightclub here,

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Speaker 1: they'll get out of their taxis, their chicken shot still

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Speaker 1: come from everywhere. They don't need to know each other

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Speaker 1: just because they're a Muslim and you're not. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: okay something, Yeah, I mean, I don't know about that

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Speaker 1: man like bullshit, Like well, I don't know. Maybe it's

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Speaker 1: just Looten is a very very different place actually to

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Speaker 1: where I'm. There's not even a mosque in my town,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Um, oh that actually there is,

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Speaker 1: but it's very small and it's just like they also

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Speaker 1: use it for other things as well, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean. So he's definitely yeah, he's he's an unreliable narrator. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: a little bit, I think. I mean, you know, if

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Speaker 1: your mate gets punched up. I don't think that someone's

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Speaker 1: just going to be like, wait, hang on, he's a Muslim,

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Speaker 1: so I'll defend him. Like it's you know, around here,

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Speaker 1: it's factional between your friends. It's more your friendship group

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Speaker 1: than anything like that. From what I've ever seen, man like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, you know. And I could see

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Speaker 1: like people kind of hanging to friendship groups that are

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Speaker 1: based heavily around race, because that kind of happens in

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Speaker 1: a lot of places and that being but I can't

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Speaker 1: see him in into a fight outside of a nightclub

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Speaker 1: and some guy leaving his kebab shop to just be like,

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Speaker 1: what's time to go beat this ship? My spidy sense

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Speaker 1: is yeah, I know, I mean maybe now just because

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Speaker 1: everyone hates him, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think he's kind of creating. Certainly, I do think

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of truth to what you're saying in

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Speaker 1: that sense, but I think he's also like creating his

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Speaker 1: own perfect version of it, you know what I mean. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: at this point, I have no trouble imagining people crossing

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Speaker 1: the street to get in a shot at him. But

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Speaker 1: we'll explain why the course of this episode. Um so

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Speaker 1: That Telegraph article also includes the claim that Stephen did

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Speaker 1: very well in high school, scoring eleven A C S

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Speaker 1: and something called the g C S C, which I

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Speaker 1: assume is just British school test stuff. Is like what

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Speaker 1: you do and then you go on to college, so

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Speaker 1: it's the first big exam. Uh. Yeah, and he did

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Speaker 1: not go on to college. But he claims repeatedly everywhere

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Speaker 1: that you'll find him talking to media that he did

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Speaker 1: very well in uh, in his school stuff up until

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Speaker 1: that point. Um and uh. He also will usually emphasize

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Speaker 1: that he never needed to study. Um and I. It's

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Speaker 1: one of those things where this is in like every

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Speaker 1: article where Tommy talks about his childhood. And to my knowledge,

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Speaker 1: none of the journalists who repeat this have actually gotten

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Speaker 1: any records and stuff. And I assume that's kind of

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Speaker 1: difficult to do because that stuff is usually uh it's

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Speaker 1: like there probably would be no way to get his

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Speaker 1: high school grades or whatever. But like, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: It's a claim that is repeated that we can't back up.

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Speaker 1: But it's definitely important for Tommy that you know that

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Speaker 1: he did very well in school before he dropped out

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Speaker 1: at sixteen. I mean, I mean, maybe I mean, certainly,

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Speaker 1: maybe I wouldn't know how to even get my g

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Speaker 1: I think I've got one GCSC and I wouldn't even

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Speaker 1: know how to get the paper for it, to be honest.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's not weird

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Speaker 1: that he there's not back up for that. Um and

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Speaker 1: he's he's clearly got a type of intelligence. So I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if he did do all right in school. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: in that Telegraph inner you, Tommy acknowledged that he had

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Speaker 1: problems outside of school, and primarily those problems were his

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Speaker 1: growing love of soccer hooliganism. Uh. As a very young lad,

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Speaker 1: he got involved with the Men in Gear or Miggs,

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Speaker 1: which were apparently an infamous Lutton Town football gang. One

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Speaker 1: of its leaders and most hooliguany hooligans, was a guy

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Speaker 1: who used the nickname Tommy Robinson. The constant street fights

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Speaker 1: were a hallmark of Steven's childhood, and they were also

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Speaker 1: the first time he wound up in direct confrontation with Muslims.

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Speaker 1: He told the Telegraph, look, when I was at school

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Speaker 1: and Rend and Cameron, two identical twins, were some of

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Speaker 1: my best mates. But there were problems with Muslim gangs,

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Speaker 1: and there were fights between the English lads and the Muslims.

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Speaker 1: Whenever you get in a problem at school, it's flooded

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Speaker 1: with Muslim men. They always seem to be waiting for trouble. Um.

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Speaker 1: So again, that's like a line that he he makes

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Speaker 1: that point a lot about the way that he thinks

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Speaker 1: these people react. Um. Now, for what it's worth, that

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Speaker 1: vice profile uh claim talked to some other people who

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Speaker 1: grew up around Tommy and claims that his falling out

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Speaker 1: with those twins wasn't a result of them joining a gang,

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Speaker 1: but was because they didn't invite him to a wedding. Um.

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Speaker 1: So who knows uh? From Timmy was eleven and still

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Speaker 1: named Stephen. Twenty nine year old man named Mark Sharp

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Speaker 1: was beaten to death by a group of five Muslim

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Speaker 1: men while getting kebab for his daughter. The killing seems

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Speaker 1: to have been tied to road rage rather than any

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Speaker 1: racial motivation, but the fact that the attackers were from

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Speaker 1: Bangladesh made it an inciting incident for racists in the area. Um,

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Speaker 1: I know, is that one you heard about? Mark Sharp's murder? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I know about because I mean to be honest, Um,

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Speaker 1: it's not a lie that like there's certain groups that

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Speaker 1: it's like, okay, like don't mess with them, you know

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Speaker 1: what I mean. And you know, and it's like Bangladesh,

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Speaker 1: she's um, the Somalians, like, you know, the gangs. It's like,

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Speaker 1: don't funk with him. So there is an elemental truth

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Speaker 1: to the fact that, yeah, there are like these kind

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Speaker 1: of gangs of certain ethnicities and it's like, you know,

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Speaker 1: they will just stab you to bits, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean. And it's not based on racism. It's just

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Speaker 1: based on what has been happening around the area for decades,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But it

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the Mark Sharp case was a result

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Speaker 1: of that, Like it seems like this guy got into

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Speaker 1: some traffics. Yeah. Yeah, you can just get stubbed to

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Speaker 1: bits for nothing here, like you know, people like literally

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Speaker 1: just want to stub you for nothing. It's it's it's

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Speaker 1: so sick, it's disgusted. Yeah. See here in the in

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Speaker 1: the civilized United States, just shoot people. Yeah yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're more gentlemanly. You know, we look on our enemies

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Speaker 1: in the face and just stab them and run off.

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Speaker 1: You know. We we kind of spray and pray with

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Speaker 1: an a R fifteen into a crowd. So yeah, I

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Speaker 1: guess I prefer y'alls way. But well, we've got acid

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Speaker 1: attacks actually you do have that. That's that's a big one, now, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's yeah, Yeah, that's a big one in the UK.

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Speaker 1: And I'm I'm super excited for when somebody finally synthesizes

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Speaker 1: a drone with an acid attack. That's going to be

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Speaker 1: a great day. Yeah, it will happen. It will absolutely happen. Um,

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Speaker 1: So yeah, Stephen left school at sixteen. The Telegraph just

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Speaker 1: notes that despite his academic ability, nobody encouraged Robinson to

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Speaker 1: stay on for sixth form. Rather than continue his academic career,

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Speaker 1: Tommy decided to apply to study aircraft engineering at the

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Speaker 1: Letton Airport. The Voxhall plant where his father worked had

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Speaker 1: closed down right around the same time he graduated, and

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Speaker 1: the airport was basically the only blue collar game left

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Speaker 1: in town. Now, the Voxhall plant closing may have had

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Speaker 1: an impact on young Stephen's attitudes towards Muslims and decades past,

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Speaker 1: Letton had been a major hub of industry which had

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Speaker 1: drawn in a large immigrant population. Stephen's mother's family had

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Speaker 1: immigrated in from Ireland, and throughout his childhood, increasing numbers

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Speaker 1: of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims had also moved in. By

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Speaker 1: the year two thousand, when Stephen was eighteen and the

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Speaker 1: factory closed, Muslims made up fifteen percent of Luton's population.

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Speaker 1: Um today they make up like a quarter in Ltton

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Speaker 1: is one of the very few British towns where white

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Speaker 1: Britain's are an ethnic minority. So like eight as jobs

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Speaker 1: are getting tight and his dad loses his job, is

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Speaker 1: when there's like this flood of immigrants in from like

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Speaker 1: Muslim speaking countries. So it's one of those things where

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Speaker 1: Tammy doesn't claim that haven't had an impact, but you

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Speaker 1: look at it and you're like, yeah, that seems like

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Speaker 1: it might have had an impact. Yeah, I mean it

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Speaker 1: would piss you off, right, Like you're some kind of

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Speaker 1: angry young man and that happens, it would piss you off.

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Speaker 1: I think the thing with Luton is that there's the difference.

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Speaker 1: So I look at it and I think, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: But like where I live, it's so small, Like if

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Speaker 1: you're broke, if you're poor, you're just poor. It's not like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you're in the Muslim bit or you're the black bit

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Speaker 1: or the white bit. Like everyone's on top of each other,

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Speaker 1: so you don't really care. You're just like whatever, like

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Speaker 1: we're all together. But in places like Luton, it's big

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Speaker 1: enough but also like condensed enough to be able to

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Speaker 1: have segregated areas. Do you see what I'm saying, So

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Speaker 1: you can have a Muslim area in the white area,

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Speaker 1: in the black area. So there's definitely like animosity between

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Speaker 1: all them kind of groups down there, you know what

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Speaker 1: I'm saying. So I can see that something like that.

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Speaker 1: You could then he could then go like, oh, it

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Speaker 1: was because of those lot over there, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like there's definitely a small segregation that um yeah. And uh.

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Speaker 1: Stephen studied carefully at the the Luton Airport and I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna keep going back and forth on that one,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure, and managed to win a coveted apprenticeship in

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Speaker 1: aircraft engineering. Uh. This was quite an achievement. Over six

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Speaker 1: people applied to the job and Stephen was one of

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Speaker 1: only four who got in. Uh. In two thousand three,

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Speaker 1: after five years of study, he qualified for the job,

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Speaker 1: but he only actually held it for about two years

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Speaker 1: because he got in a spot of legal trouble. Uh. Now,

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Speaker 1: most mainstream news sources, including Vice, kind of breezed past

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Speaker 1: this part of his back story. Here's what they wrote

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Speaker 1: in their right up. Almost immediately, his life was turned

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Speaker 1: upside down when a criminal conviction during a drunken argument

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Speaker 1: he assaulted a man who turned out to be an

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Speaker 1: off the police officer, meant he lost his job. Now

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Speaker 1: that's a really weirdly passive way of writing about that.

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Speaker 1: Um and uh, yeah, I just found that strange, so

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Speaker 1: I went searching for a little bit more detail. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's a couple of people who cover the uh, the

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Speaker 1: attack in a little bit more detail. Now we'll talk

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Speaker 1: about in a second. Vice also notes that roughly year

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Speaker 1: before this incident, he actually joined the British National Party

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Speaker 1: or b and P. Uh. Yeah, and the BNP is

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Speaker 1: an outright fascist party. Yeah completely, the guy that, like

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Speaker 1: the RAN it was a part of n f National Front,

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Speaker 1: which was an openly white supremacist even Nazi group back

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Speaker 1: in the eighties. Yeah. Their complete scum. Yeah, they're complete scum.

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Speaker 1: They have a paramilitary mob with them called Combat eighteen. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the the eighteen is a reference to the name of

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Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler because the first letters of his first and

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Speaker 1: last name or the first and eighth letters of the

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Speaker 1: alphabet um. And that group has been tied to a

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Speaker 1: lot of murders. And as far as we know, Robinson

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Speaker 1: wasn't a member of Combat eighteen, but he did join

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Speaker 1: the BNP. And again, this is kind of weird. Most

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Speaker 1: mainstream sources I read who wrote profiles on him kind

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Speaker 1: of let Robinson whitewash this um like here's here's exactly

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Speaker 1: how Vice describes it. Quote Robinson describes his dalliances with Huluganism,

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Speaker 1: as well as a brief scent as a BNP member

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Speaker 1: in two thousand four as useful missteps and they never

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Speaker 1: like go any deeper into it. So I I found

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Speaker 1: that a little bit peculiar um. And uh, there's the

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Speaker 1: a little bit more. Robinson can't ignore this entirely because

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Speaker 1: it's one of people's big claims when they claim that

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Speaker 1: he's a fascist um. And in his autobiography, the way

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Speaker 1: he sort of whitewashes this is that he claims that

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Speaker 1: he joined the BNP because he wanted to stand up

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Speaker 1: to the Muslim gangs, and during the first meeting, he

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Speaker 1: brought along a black friend and when he saw how

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Speaker 1: racist they were to his black friend, he left the

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Speaker 1: meeting and realized that the BNP was bad, which I'm

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Speaker 1: pretty certain is a lie um. And there's some some

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Speaker 1: evidence that suggests why I found a right up on

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Speaker 1: Stephen Yactuley Lennon in the anti fascist magazine Searchlight, which

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Speaker 1: was a a project of a charity called Hope Not Hate.

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Speaker 1: And this is the like, this right up on him

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Speaker 1: is the write up that like revealed his actual name

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Speaker 1: as Stephen Yactuley Lennon because he goes by Tommy Robinson,

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Speaker 1: which is there's a couple of different names this dude has,

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Speaker 1: and it's actually kind of hard to pin down which

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Speaker 1: is his original, But that right up of him goes

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Speaker 1: into his back story and notes quote. In two thousand four,

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Speaker 1: he joined the BNP with a family membership. In the

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Speaker 1: same year, he assaulted an off duty police officer who

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Speaker 1: intervened to stop a domestic incident between Yaktuley Lennon and

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Speaker 1: his partner, Gin Avowals. During the scuffle, he actually Lennon

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Speaker 1: kicked the officer in the head. He was convicted in

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Speaker 1: April two five for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, for

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Speaker 1: which he was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment an assault

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Speaker 1: with intent to resist a rest, for which he received

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Speaker 1: a concurrent term of three months. Val was also a

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Speaker 1: BNP member and was cautioned for possession of cocaine. So

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Speaker 1: that's a different picture than I found kind of painted

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Speaker 1: of him in the you know, in the Vice articles,

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Speaker 1: not like positive towards Robinson, but it doesn't dig into

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Speaker 1: this stuff, like that's a different case. If this dude's

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Speaker 1: got a family membership in the BNP, that's a real

390
00:20:17,119 --> 00:20:20,000
Speaker 1: different story right there, from just a guy who slides

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Speaker 1: into a meeting and then slides out of it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like family membership. I didn't even know such a thing existed,

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Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's what these folks claim

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Speaker 1: as the case. And they've been right about other details

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Speaker 1: of his beast, Like I can't believe it, Like I

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Speaker 1: just didn't even know, like you would, that's the sort

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Speaker 1: of thing you would think. Yeah, it's it seems a

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Speaker 1: little bit deeper than like, oh, let me just go

399
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Speaker 1: and talking these guys for a minute, you know, Yeah,

400
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Speaker 1: Oh they didn't like my black friend. Maybe he's not

401
00:20:47,520 --> 00:20:52,719
Speaker 1: exactly um, And it's also like that assault, It's like

402
00:20:52,760 --> 00:20:55,040
Speaker 1: it's weird how passive the rite ups usually are. It's

403
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Speaker 1: like he assaulted someone who turned out to be an

404
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Speaker 1: undercover cop. It's like, no, he was abusing his girlfriend

405
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Speaker 1: and his cop walked up, but he kicked him in

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Speaker 1: the head. Yeah, yeah, that's like I'm sure that happened

407
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Speaker 1: another time as well. Like then, basically, like from what

408
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:10,320
Speaker 1: I understood, they're they're just huge coke kids. And in

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Speaker 1: fact that even the like right have accused him of

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Speaker 1: spending like all the money on coke and stuff. You know,

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Speaker 1: that would not surprise me. And it is also like

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Speaker 1: kind of the same with the a lot of the

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Speaker 1: fascists in UH in Portland and stuff, like a lot

414
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Speaker 1: of the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. Yeah, there's a

415
00:21:27,320 --> 00:21:29,520
Speaker 1: lot of rumors and a couple of like former members

416
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Speaker 1: who have alleged like, yeah, the ringleaders speed spend all

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Speaker 1: of the money they crowdfund on blow and after all

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Speaker 1: these rallies, they have big coke parties. It's just it

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Speaker 1: turns out a lot of people who like to fight

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Speaker 1: and do cocaine are also interested in far right politics. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: was just heady mix. Yeah, yeah, surprising. Um so stephen

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00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:53,600
Speaker 1: Y Actually that's still what he's going by at this point.

423
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:55,880
Speaker 1: Spent around a year in jail. When he got out,

424
00:21:55,920 --> 00:21:59,040
Speaker 1: he opened a Tanning salon and Luton and moved to Bedford.

425
00:22:00,280 --> 00:22:02,399
Speaker 1: Keep sucking it up. No, no, I'm laughing at the

426
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:07,119
Speaker 1: Tanning salon, Like, yeah, he a Tanning slide, didn't you

427
00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:11,240
Speaker 1: know that? You know? Yeah, And he moved to Bedford,

428
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 1: which is a town with near Luton, with an average

429
00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:17,120
Speaker 1: family income though of around a quarter of a million dollars.

430
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:19,680
Speaker 1: So he's clearly doing a lot pretty well at that.

431
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 1: I tell you. Bedford is literally like I don't know

432
00:22:24,320 --> 00:22:26,960
Speaker 1: if an hour drive if that, No, it's like fourty

433
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:30,399
Speaker 1: minutes away from me. Like Bedford is pretty poor, you know,

434
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 1: oh weird. Okay, so that's just yeah, there's some rich people. Yeah,

435
00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:37,959
Speaker 1: like moving to Bedford is certainly not a step up,

436
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:41,360
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Interesting? Okay, see that there

437
00:22:41,359 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 1: are no areas, don't get me wrong, you know, but

438
00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell. It's just because all I can

439
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:49,160
Speaker 1: look at is like what the average sort of Yeah, yeah,

440
00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:51,520
Speaker 1: that's that's why it's kind of it's hard to tell, right,

441
00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:54,440
Speaker 1: it's um, yeah, yeah, it's it's a good job. There's

442
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:56,560
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good job. I've been there because yeah,

443
00:22:56,600 --> 00:22:58,920
Speaker 1: it's not the best place, but certainly like if you

444
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 1: manage to start his own imagine you had a bit

445
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:03,840
Speaker 1: of money coming in. Yeah, and his stepfather, you know,

446
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 1: they had hard times after his his stepfather got laid

447
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: off from the Vohal plant, but he opened up a

448
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: plumbing business which seems to have been very successful. Um

449
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: and where Stephen also worked. And um he also made

450
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:19,880
Speaker 1: cash buying, renovating and flipping houses during this period. So

451
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:23,240
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it seems like he's doing really well actually

452
00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 1: and making a very comfortable income at this period of

453
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:29,479
Speaker 1: time in his life. Uh. Now that does not last

454
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:33,000
Speaker 1: super long because of some events that occur in two

455
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,480
Speaker 1: thousand nine, and we will talk about that. But first, Jake,

456
00:23:36,600 --> 00:23:43,480
Speaker 1: we have to break for your very favorite thing. Now. Now, Jake,

457
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: you don't do ads on your show, but is there

458
00:23:46,359 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 1: any product you would like to provide a free ad

459
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 1: plug for today? Um? Product or concept? Yeah? Product, a

460
00:23:54,320 --> 00:24:02,160
Speaker 1: concept that is a good concept. I don't know, man,

461
00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:05,840
Speaker 1: I would just say, um, don't do drugs. Get fit

462
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:09,480
Speaker 1: and care about nature. There you go. Well, you were

463
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: the first person saying don't do drugs on this really

464
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:14,679
Speaker 1: and I will say, this is one area where we

465
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 1: disagree with you. I agree with getting fit and enjoying

466
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: nature and donating to popular Front also a good also

467
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: a good idea. You should also donate to UM the

468
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:39,919
Speaker 1: corporations that ads and we're back. Uh, that was not

469
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 1: one of my better ad transitions. They're all kind of

470
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:47,440
Speaker 1: like that. So you know we left off stephen Y

471
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:51,199
Speaker 1: actually or stephen Y actually, Lennon, uh, whatever his actual

472
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: name is. He's he's doing pretty well. He's gotten at

473
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 1: a jail after in the scale of things, a pretty

474
00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: minor assault, and uh, he's got a business. He seems

475
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 1: to be making very good money. Um. But then in

476
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:07,400
Speaker 1: two thousand nine things start to change for him. UM.

477
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 1: And this starts when a group called the Royal Anglian Regiment,

478
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: which is a British military unit had been stationed in Afghanistan,

479
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: rotated home from deployment. Now, since many of them came

480
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:20,680
Speaker 1: from the Lutton area, there was a homecoming parade for

481
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: them in the town and this did not sit well

482
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 1: with members of a local Islamic extremist organization alas Suno

483
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:30,919
Speaker 1: while jama they held a counter demonstration wielding signs that

484
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: said Anglian soldiers butchers of Bozra, Anglian soldiers, cowards, killers, extremists,

485
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:39,440
Speaker 1: and similar things. Uh. They shouted that the returning soldiers

486
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: were child killers and generally did their best to troll

487
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,920
Speaker 1: the people of Lutten. Now, this small demonstration was immediately

488
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:49,040
Speaker 1: condemned and disavowed by other Muslim groups in the area,

489
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:51,160
Speaker 1: but that didn't stop At his acting from acting as

490
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 1: a radicalizing catalyst for local right wing extremists. Are right

491
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 1: up by the University of Northampton notes quote. The small

492
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: Islamist protest was specifically design to both be offensive and provocative.

493
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:04,280
Speaker 1: Although numbering no more than twenty protagonists, that offered the

494
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 1: perfect opportunity for an instance of Tit for Tat radicalization

495
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,640
Speaker 1: to develop in the town. Um, which is very much

496
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: what you see is this kind of like there will

497
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:15,199
Speaker 1: be there, There will be these extremists and Muslim groups

498
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:18,359
Speaker 1: that will like recruit people in some cases for actual

499
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:21,119
Speaker 1: like for the Taliban or whatever, and more often just

500
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: sort of um say, really if they're kind of like

501
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: the Westboro Baptist Church in the US, where like there's

502
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: exactly such a good way of describing it. Yeah, it's

503
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 1: like jad Westboro Baptists. To be honest, man, we had

504
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 1: like a good five years in England where we just

505
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:37,399
Speaker 1: had a real problem with these hate preachers. Man, Like

506
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: it was a nightmare. You would see them all the time,

507
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,919
Speaker 1: and they really really did the worst thing possible because

508
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: it did it did rather close a lot of people,

509
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: you know, people that perhaps didn't really know any Muslims

510
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: or like don't really care about them the way would

511
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:53,399
Speaker 1: then see these people and then be like oh, like

512
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: oh and then then you know what I mean, and

513
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:57,639
Speaker 1: then the bull starts rolling into this kind of radical stuff.

514
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: It was really bad, man. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what

515
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: happens here, and like but it happens to this whole

516
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: town as a result of this, like the kind of

517
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:11,440
Speaker 1: series of events that this group like starts into being um.

518
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: The extremist Muslim protest of the Anglian Soldiers homecoming let

519
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:16,719
Speaker 1: do a huge amount of press coverage, which riled up

520
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: local hooligans and provided an opportunity for right wing extremists

521
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:23,440
Speaker 1: to organize them encounter demonstrations. One of those extremists was

522
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 1: a dude named Paul Ray. Now, Paul is an anti

523
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:28,920
Speaker 1: Muslim blogger who wrote under the pseudonym Lion Heart and

524
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: would later be found to have had ties with Anders Brevick. Yeah,

525
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 1: the notorious shooter. You've heard of Paul Ray. Yeah, man,

526
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: so I I really really went deep into the under

527
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: Bravy stuff years ago, and yeah, he I don't know,

528
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:45,920
Speaker 1: there's no one quite knows what his role was, but

529
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: it does seem like there was something some kind of

530
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:52,280
Speaker 1: connection to Bravick. Yeah, and there's yeah, I haven't, I haven't,

531
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: you know. Obviously I was digging on Tommy, so I

532
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: didn't get deep into Paul. I didn't find like a

533
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: clear connection. But it's like a lot of people say

534
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: they were definitely in communication. There was some sort of

535
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 1: role the guy had and claims to have met a

536
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: British guy cooled Lion High. If I remember rightly, you know,

537
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: it's just already dodgy. But again, yeah, like his I

538
00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: read his manifesto. It's the whole thing is bond because

539
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: it's made up of things, so you never know, you know,

540
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:21,400
Speaker 1: but possibly if I'm if I'm if I'm criticizing manifestos

541
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: on quality, it's definitely one of the lower writing quality,

542
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: one of the worst manifestoes. Um yeah, Now, Ted Kazinski,

543
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: that guy could write a fucking manifesto, Ted man Solid Manifesto.

544
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: Solid manifesto really like the gold standard of trying to

545
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: radicalize people with so um So, this guy Paul Ray,

546
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: who were just talking about, helps organize a rejoinder protest

547
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: to the the initial like Muslim counter protest of the

548
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:57,280
Speaker 1: homecoming parade, and he gets about a hundred and fifty

549
00:28:57,320 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 1: activists to show up in April two thousand nine. And

550
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from that University of Northampton right

551
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: up on the founding of the English Defense League, which

552
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,160
Speaker 1: is the group Tommy's about to found quote at this point,

553
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:11,000
Speaker 1: the demonstration included figures previously linked to the extreme right

554
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: wing group Combat eighteen, symptomatic of the wider far right's

555
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: early interest in the Lutton area at this time. The

556
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: next demonstration in Lutton came on the twenty four of May.

557
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 1: This protest developed when another nationalist protesting organization, March for

558
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: England mf E, began to organize a protest directed primarily

559
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 1: against one of the local Islamists present at the tenth

560
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 1: of March demonstration Cifle Islam. In the lead up to

561
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: the event, a moss linked to Cifle Islam was the

562
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: target of an arson attack, which is revealing of the

563
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: growing anti Muslim tensions within the town during the e

564
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: d l's initial year of formalization. After securing permission to

565
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: hold this event, m f E formally withdrew, although the

566
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: march still went ahead with smaller unofficial m f E presence.

567
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: The event resulted in a more violent confrontations. A breakaway

568
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 1: group targeted Muslim areas of Luttin, which itself inspired a

569
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: counter response by around a hundred and fifty young Muslims.

570
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: So that's the tip for tat stuff. Like we're seeing,

571
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,480
Speaker 1: like the key different groups start holding these rallies, people

572
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: get assaulted, you know, the right wing extremist assault Muslims.

573
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,040
Speaker 1: Then like some young Muslims will assault white people are

574
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: right wing extremist or whoever, like they credit as being that,

575
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: and like it just leads to more and more fighting.

576
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 1: It's the same thing we've seen up in like Portland.

577
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: It's just kind of what happens when this ship goes down.

578
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: It got really violent though, man Like, it was crazy.

579
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: They were like big, big groups. You know, it spreads

580
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: so fast over the region as well, Like it's spread

581
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: man like. It ended up even there was like when

582
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: I was just finishing school, there was a few people

583
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 1: were like we're d L and like, you know, we

584
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:37,719
Speaker 1: would fight with them, but but like it was kind

585
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: of a foreign like you know, like right wing Nazi

586
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: stuff or whatever or whatever. It was was like really

587
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: weird concept in our town and in a lot of towns.

588
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 1: But now they kind of set the groundwork, you know

589
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, yeah, and it just hasn't quite

590
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: got It's like Ebden flowed since then, but it hasn't

591
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: gone away. And it was like yeah, yeah. So the

592
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: process can tenued for several weeks and culminated in the

593
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: founding of the English Defense League that summer. Now the

594
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 1: e d L, as its most commonly known, held their

595
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: first event on August eight. This was widely seen as

596
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: being a dog whistle to British neo Nazis. Since August

597
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 1: eight is eight eight, and if you listen to this

598
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: podcast regularly, you know what double eights mean. The Neo Nazis.

599
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 1: Some organizers of the e d L including Paul Ray,

600
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: actually pulled out of the event because of the dog whistling.

601
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: Ray stated, anybody with the slightest bit of knowledge about

602
00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: neo Nazism knows the meaning of eight eight, which is

603
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: why I pulled out of any active participation. So Paul

604
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 1: Ray decides that the the E. D L Is too

605
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:39,720
Speaker 1: Nazi for him to be around. Um. Yeah, Paul Ray

606
00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: was from a different kind of strund. He was like

607
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: far right, sure, but like anti Nazi because he's like

608
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: a Christian, you know what I mean, like a real

609
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: Christian fundamentalist type, crusaders and all of that ship. So

610
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 1: certainly he's like a far right guy, but he was

611
00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:57,479
Speaker 1: like not involved with the Nazi stuff. It's not like

612
00:31:57,560 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: he was like that's too much from me. I think

613
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: it was just like that's not my that's not my thing,

614
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, it's not my cup

615
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:05,960
Speaker 1: of cup of tea. Yeah, it's not you know, I

616
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: want the other. So someone who did not pull out

617
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: of active participation in the rally was Stephen Yaxley, who

618
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 1: at that point adopted the moniker Tommy Robinson. Now, he

619
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: started out as just kind of one of a couple

620
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: of prominent people. At early e d L protests, he

621
00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: would always wear a mask and he was kind of

622
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: the clothing he wore with war was very identifiable. UM.

623
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 1: And he gradually kind of wound up in control of

624
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: the largest group of Jolians with it within this like

625
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: forming organization as they carried out anti Muslim rallies and

626
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 1: had a bunch of street fights. Um. And so you know,

627
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: by the time the e d L is a formal thing,

628
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: Tommy Robinson is its head UM. So calling him the

629
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: founder might not be accurate, but he's certainly like the

630
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: guy who winds up in charge of it once it

631
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:54,719
Speaker 1: becomes like a real concrete organization. Um. Now, in the

632
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: offing of it, the British fascist right community saw the

633
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: e d L as a useful tool for directing device

634
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: towards more extreme groups like the BNP and National Front. However,

635
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: the e d l is more moderate appearance and more

636
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 1: diverse membership allowed it to accrue vastly more public sympathy

637
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: and support than any explicitly fascist organization ever could. As

638
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:15,959
Speaker 1: the months went on, Tommy Robinson made the wise decision

639
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: to explicitly reject the Nazi roots of his organization. At

640
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: one point burning a swastika flag on BBC Newsnight as

641
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 1: a symbolic rejection of the ideology. Um, and this this works.

642
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:30,479
Speaker 1: The the e d L actually spreads very rapidly at

643
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 1: this point, and Facebook was utterly critical to that. Robinson

644
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: was very effective though it building a grassroots movement. Um.

645
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: You know, there was no real clear political ideology in

646
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: the e d L in its early days, just a

647
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: hatred for radical Islam and probably more than anything, a

648
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 1: desire to get into street fights. Um, certainly, you know

649
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 1: id L, it's it's you know, Tommy, he's not a Nazi,

650
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. He might be a fascist,

651
00:33:56,040 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's you're right like there, Like certainly what

652
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: he did there, it wasn't like he was hiding it that,

653
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: you're right. Like the way he got it to spread

654
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 1: was because you know, he's not a Nazi. People to do.

655
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: You know, to this day, people are very aware of,

656
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:11,439
Speaker 1: you know, the sacrifices the troops of our country gave

657
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,720
Speaker 1: to fight the Nazis. So it's never been as huge

658
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 1: as you might think, you know what I mean. So

659
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 1: he was clever in you know, firstly he was he

660
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 1: was honest that he's not a Nazi. But secondly he

661
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 1: was clever in being like, hey, we're not racist or Nazi.

662
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: Anyone can join and that yeah, that's what made it spread. Man,

663
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:31,360
Speaker 1: Like I knew a lad one of my friends brothers

664
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,359
Speaker 1: who's half Pakistani, was like, oh, I might join it.

665
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: And we were like, are you mad? You know what

666
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:38,280
Speaker 1: I mean? And he was like, no, man, they're not racist,

667
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: like you know, and it was you know what I mean.

668
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 1: It really a lot of kids really started to believe it,

669
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, and that's I mean that that's

670
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: part of like because you've obviously you've seen the same

671
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: thing with like the Proud Boys and with Patriot Prayer

672
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:52,759
Speaker 1: here in Portland, where like they always focused on like,

673
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:55,800
Speaker 1: you know, let's get our black members and our Asian

674
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,239
Speaker 1: members up front so that you know when that group

675
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: American Guard try to drive an armored bus into downtown

676
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 1: Portland was the group that's been tied to nine murders,

677
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:05,839
Speaker 1: and it is very much like a serioust extremist white

678
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: supremacist group. The guy who was swinging a hammer at

679
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 1: people during the rally was an Asian man, So like

680
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:13,920
Speaker 1: I mean, and that goes like that's um, it's not

681
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: an ineffective tactic to sort of like no, no, no,

682
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 1: we're not Nazis. Like, look at how much more racially

683
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: accepting we are than Nazis. And yeah, I wouldn't call

684
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: Tommy Robinson and Nazi. I think he might be a fascist.

685
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: I think more than anything, he's a grifter. But you

686
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: know we we're telling today, Yeah, like he's like a

687
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: grift of that's like, you know, pretty racist. He's just

688
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: like that. That's what it is to certain people. It's

689
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: I go back and forth on a lot of these guys.

690
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: I do think Steve Bannon's a true believer, um whatever

691
00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: you want to call him politically, I think he believes it.

692
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: I think Kevin McGinnis probably believes a lot of it

693
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 1: because he could have pretty easily pulled himself away from

694
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 1: this group before it got into legal trouble. I don't

695
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 1: think it's profitable anymore. I don't know. I don't really

696
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: know Gavin that well. Um, but I had That's my

697
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: suspicion is that he believes more than a guy like

698
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,719
Speaker 1: Tommy does. But I really don't know. Yeah, um, so yeah,

699
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a quote from a two eighteen BBC

700
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:15,440
Speaker 1: right up about the the E d L's growth in

701
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: from like two thousand nine up two eleven quote each

702
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: event appeared to draw a bigger crowd. By two thousand

703
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: and eleven, the group had gathered sufficient support to prompt

704
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: police to close Litton Town Center for a day to

705
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: facilitate the E d l's homecoming protest, But Robinson's campaign

706
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 1: was also unraveling because of his inability to control his

707
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: followers or his own behavior. Later that year, he received

708
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: a twelve month community rehabilitation order after a massive football

709
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: brawl between supporters of his blooded lutten Town FC and

710
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: those of Newport County. As the fist flew, he led

711
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 1: his followers in a chant of E d L till

712
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:50,040
Speaker 1: I die um and I will remind our American listeners

713
00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: that when you people talk about football, you mean soccer. Wow,

714
00:36:55,440 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 1: we mean football, We mean football. I One of my

715
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: favorite things about like the cussedness of my people is

716
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: our insistence on doing things that no one needs to

717
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 1: do differently differently. It's the same thing with like the

718
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: fact that we use inches and feet and why why

719
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 1: do we have miles and not kilometers? There's no point.

720
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:18,919
Speaker 1: We're just dicks. But it's just like America, we can't.

721
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: We're going to do it different. Yeah, just so rude,

722
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, I want to take

723
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: that further, Like, if I'm ever in charge of this country,

724
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna rename ours. We'll call him Charles or something,

725
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: just to like funk with people a little bit more.

726
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Now Robinson got in serious trouble

727
00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 1: because of this football brawl because a year earlier, in

728
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:47,760
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, he'd have been convicted of abusive, threatening,

729
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,359
Speaker 1: or insulting behavior during a different E. D L fight,

730
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: so he'd essentially been on probation when the football fight

731
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:55,800
Speaker 1: broke out. He was arrested for breach of bail conditions

732
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,359
Speaker 1: later that year and jailed in Bedford Prison. While there,

733
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: Tommy became incensed at the fact the prison served halal meat,

734
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:05,879
Speaker 1: and he went on a brief hunger strike. Um yeah,

735
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 1: well for ten minutes, ye, not eating breakfast. I'll never

736
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: understand like the kind of right wing obsession with like

737
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: halal being something sinister, Like no one cares the kebab

738
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:24,839
Speaker 1: shops on my area, Like we just go in. It's

739
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 1: like a boss kebab, Like like no one gives a

740
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,399
Speaker 1: funk like these people in Maniacs. Yeah, yeah, it's it's

741
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: it's frustrating. I wish every country would be better off

742
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:38,879
Speaker 1: with more kebab shops. It's the best thing to eat

743
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: when you're wasted at three in the more. Absolutely nothing

744
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: nothing comes close. Just a big pocket account I love them. Um. Yeah,

745
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,800
Speaker 1: fucking Donner with just everything. I'll dress that son of

746
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: a bit. Yeah, I missed Donors. So in September of

747
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: two eleven, after pretty shortly I think, after getting out

748
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,760
Speaker 1: of jail, Tommy was convicted assault again after he headbutted

749
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: one of his own marchers during a two thousand man

750
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: rally in Blackburn. Lennon Kuli or Robinson claims that the

751
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:09,840
Speaker 1: guy was a Nazi uh, and it's really hard for

752
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: me to tell precisely what went down. It's possible the

753
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: dude was doing Nazi ship and Tommy didn't want him

754
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,720
Speaker 1: as rally. It's possible to fight was about something else. Um.

755
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:21,400
Speaker 1: Either way, the whole fight sounds very silly, which I

756
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 1: think is exampled by the fact that his form of

757
00:39:24,440 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: assault chosen was a head butt. Um. What's not silly

758
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 1: is that E d L members during this time got

759
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,280
Speaker 1: up to a lot of much more sinister ship UM,

760
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: so as the number of folks who should have that

761
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: Blackburn rally should tell you. By late two thousand eleven,

762
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:41,280
Speaker 1: Tommy's little band of hooligans had turned into a national

763
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: movement and the rise of the E d L saw

764
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:47,680
Speaker 1: a corresponding rise in hate crimes against British Muslims. Faith Matters,

765
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: an organization aimed at reducing extremism, launched a program to

766
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: track hate crimes against Muslims in March of two thousand twelve,

767
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: largely as a result of the increase in hate crimes

768
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 1: that happened after the e d l s growth. In

769
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: the first twelve months after start in that program, they

770
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:03,959
Speaker 1: received six hundred and thirty two reports of separate hate

771
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: crime incidents of perpetrators had far right ties. Nearly all

772
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 1: of those were either to the e d L or

773
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 1: to the British National Party UM. But numbers are boring,

774
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 1: so let's look at a specific incident of violence from

775
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: old tom Rob's mob. In June of two thousand eleven,

776
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: a bunch of activists in Yorkshire held a rage against

777
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: racism concert. The E d L showed up and I'm

778
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: going to quote the Yorkshire Evening Post on what happened next.

779
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: Two people were injured at Saturday's all day Rage against

780
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:34,600
Speaker 1: Racism event. One man had teeth knocked out. Kevin Barry,

781
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:37,840
Speaker 1: assistant manager at the Well formerly Joseph's Well, suffered an

782
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 1: injured risk during the fracas while shielding himself from a

783
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: missile as he stood behind the bar. He said, a

784
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,240
Speaker 1: group of around fifteen people estimated to be aged between

785
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty three, barged into the premises, shouting and

786
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: chanting E d L. So yeah, said away chan is,

787
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: Well they do they go e E E d L

788
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: like that, Like it's just you. I've been a rally before,

789
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: um like against it, like like covering it, you know

790
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:05,279
Speaker 1: what I mean. And you just hear it coming from

791
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 1: down the road. It's just like, oh, it's horrible, man,

792
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, that sounds uh foreboding. Yeah, exactly.

793
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: That's the white word for you. Yeah, I'm sure that's

794
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:19,399
Speaker 1: the goal. Now. Around the same time in Dagenham, two

795
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: young Muslimen were walking down the street when they had

796
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 1: the bad luck to happen onto a mob of probably

797
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:25,839
Speaker 1: drunken E d L men on their way back from

798
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:28,800
Speaker 1: a rally. One victim later recalled quote, we were walking

799
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 1: home and we spotted the d L march. The next minute,

800
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: somebody starts shouting at us Muslim bombers off our streets.

801
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: Suddenly everything changed. I was pushed in five minute, attacked me.

802
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:38,919
Speaker 1: I was punched. I could see a much larger group

803
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: of between thirty and fifty of them surrounding my brother.

804
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 1: He was on the floor. They were kicking him and

805
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:45,960
Speaker 1: punching him all over. He couldn't move. I was terrified.

806
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: I didn't know if he was alive. And one of

807
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:50,160
Speaker 1: the or several of the E d L guys later

808
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: like we're given jail time. They were like broken bones,

809
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: like pretty serious assault. Like those loads of loads, loads

810
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: of those just kept going on. Yeah. I just picked

811
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 1: two cases to kind of highlight what was going on

812
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:05,800
Speaker 1: because I don't want to just run through a laundry

813
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 1: list of ship like that. Um yeah, yeah, that's enough

814
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 1: color on E d L violence. You get the point. Um,

815
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: So let's get back to their leader, Tommy. In May

816
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 1: of two thousand twelve, Tommy Robinson was caught flirting with

817
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old girl on Twitter. As these things go.

818
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 1: It was. It was a fairly minor incident, and he

819
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 1: was not charged with committing any crime, but the whole

820
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:31,720
Speaker 1: interaction is worth reading. A teenaged girl named Asia posted

821
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: a selfie to Twitter, to which Tommy responded, you're pretty

822
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: fit for a Muslim. Oh my god. The young woman

823
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 1: who I think his name is Asia, or at least

824
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: that's what I'm guessing from her her her account name, responds,

825
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: I'm fifteen, and you got the cheek to call Muslims petos.

826
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:57,240
Speaker 1: Tommy responds, how does it feel to be nearly twice

827
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 1: the age Aisha was when your prophet raped her, and

828
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:03,439
Speaker 1: then adds Mohammed was fifty six, Aisha was nine. Now,

829
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: stop flirting with me, okay, Roberson Thirsty Tommy is the

830
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 1: worst thing ever. Yeah, it's pretty grass. Yeah I can

831
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 1: just imagine, you know, like he's I laugh at him

832
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: like me and my best friend we um we we

833
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:24,799
Speaker 1: watched him every now and then, like we'll just sit

834
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: there and just fucking laugh. Like one time, my friend

835
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: he was smoking weed and he just put like Tommy's

836
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 1: interview one when he got out of prison, and like

837
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: he lost the load of weight and for some reason,

838
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: it was just the funniest thing, you know, like he's

839
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 1: kind of over here now he's kind of like you

840
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 1: laugh at him, you know, but like I forget all

841
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:47,359
Speaker 1: of this happened, you know, like now you're bringing it up.

842
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, DL was huge, and they caused so

843
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 1: much chaos, you know what I mean. Yeah, it's kind

844
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 1: of nice that he's I mean, obviously it's better that

845
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 1: he'd be a figure of ridicule than than a leader

846
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:01,879
Speaker 1: of a powerful street movement. And I hope that's kind

847
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,759
Speaker 1: of where all these guys wind up. Yeah, it is

848
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: like for a time they were fucking huge, huge. Yeah.

849
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: Now you know what else is massive? Jake go on

850
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:22,880
Speaker 1: the gigantic corporations that support this podcast with their ad dollars. Yeah,

851
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: it's an ad break time. It is products and we're back. Uh,

852
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:38,760
Speaker 1: we're back, and we're talking about Tommy Robinson now. Shortly

853
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: after uh going to jail several more times. Uh, in

854
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 1: early two or in two thirteen, Tommy began to pull

855
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 1: away from far right politics. In October of that year,

856
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 1: he was caught with a false passport and found who

857
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: have traveled to the United States under the name Andrew

858
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 1: McMaster using a friends passport. As a repeat criminal with

859
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,040
Speaker 1: violent convictions, he'd been barred from entering the country. He

860
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: was caught at JFK Airport, and the whole incident added

861
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: a wrinkle to the already confusing and winding story of

862
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 1: what the funk Tommy's real name actually is um and

863
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from some coverage of that.

864
00:45:14,520 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: When he arrived at New York's JFK Airport, customs officials

865
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,760
Speaker 1: who took his fingerprints realized he was not Mr McMaster.

866
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:21,879
Speaker 1: Lennon was asked to attend a second interview, but left

867
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:24,759
Speaker 1: the airport, entering the US illegally. He stayed just one

868
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 1: night and traveled back to the UK the following day

869
00:45:27,120 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 1: to use his own legitimate passport, which bears the name

870
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 1: Paul Harris. The court heard that is the name that

871
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 1: appears in the IDEO leader's passport, although he uses aliases. Sentencing,

872
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:37,799
Speaker 1: the third year old judge Alistair Mcreith told him, I'm

873
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: going to sentence you under the name of Stephen Lennon,

874
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,359
Speaker 1: although I suspect that it's not actually your true name,

875
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:43,920
Speaker 1: in the sense that it is not the name that

876
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: appears on your passport. So again, I really don't know

877
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 1: what his fucking real name is. It's probably Stephen you

878
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:53,720
Speaker 1: actually Lennon or Stephen Lennon. Um, it's definitely not Tommy

879
00:45:53,840 --> 00:46:00,279
Speaker 1: Robinson Stephen Actual. Everyone kind of believes it to be.

880
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: He got he took the name of that other football

881
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,560
Speaker 1: who Loogan, right, I think his uncle, Yeah, Tommy Robinson. Yeah,

882
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: uncle said take it for some reason. I hadn't heard that,

883
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 1: but that seems plausible something like that. Yeah. Yeah, Like

884
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 1: him and his uncle were very involved with at the start,

885
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 1: and if I remember right, they were like, you're like

886
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: Tommy or something because of the fighting, and he was like,

887
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 1: all right, I'll take that name or something like that.

888
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,839
Speaker 1: Something weird. It's such a weird thing to do though, Yeah, yeah,

889
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:30,279
Speaker 1: it's it's a weird name, um to pick for that.

890
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: And like, I guess I don't know enough about soccer

891
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:36,879
Speaker 1: who Loogan culture to know why you'd pick that guy's name. Oh,

892
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:39,399
Speaker 1: it's a very it's a very football who looking kind

893
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:42,919
Speaker 1: of name. M like as a brit I don't even

894
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:44,800
Speaker 1: know how to explain why, but it just did, do

895
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:47,359
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? He it is does sound

896
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:49,360
Speaker 1: like the name of somebody who would chuck a bottle

897
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,760
Speaker 1: at a celebration of his team's scoring a goal or whatever.

898
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:59,840
Speaker 1: Yeah definitely, um so uh yeah. As a result of

899
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:03,240
Speaker 1: the passport fraud, Tommy Robinson spent another ten months in jail.

900
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: E d L members held regular vigils outside of the

901
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: jail and called him a political prisoner. Now, Robinson's time

902
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:12,840
Speaker 1: behind bars was tough. He spent eighteen weeks in solitary

903
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 1: confinement because of issues with him and Muslim gangs inside

904
00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:18,279
Speaker 1: the prison. They were worried he might get murdered, which

905
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 1: is probably a real fear to have um. When he

906
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: was released in October two thirteen, he appeared at least

907
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:27,760
Speaker 1: to be a somewhat changed man. That's certainly the impression

908
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,520
Speaker 1: reporters with the Telegraph walked away with when they interviewed

909
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: him about his decision to quit the e d L. Quote.

910
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: Going to prison was the best thing that ever happened

911
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 1: to me, declares Tommy Robinson. I am sitting in a

912
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 1: hotel bar in Litton Town Center listening to him explain

913
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,759
Speaker 1: why he has quit the English Defense League. Before his imprisonment,

914
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 1: he had been receiving death threats from his Lamists neo

915
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 1: Nazis and Neo Nazis were threatening to take over the

916
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 1: e d L. As a result, he says he was

917
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 1: drinking alcohol, going out three times a week, neglecting my wife.

918
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: I thought I was dealing with the pressures of the

919
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: English Defense League, but I was pretty much just binging

920
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:00,360
Speaker 1: my way through it. So this is is what he

921
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 1: claims to be at this point. Um Robinson told The

922
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: Telegraph that his time in solitary provided him with an

923
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: opportunity to finally look at where his life was headed.

924
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:10,440
Speaker 1: And that's when I started to question where's the e

925
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 1: d L going? Because you know, we march up and

926
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:14,480
Speaker 1: down this country, but what is it we want to

927
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 1: get out of it and how do we succeed Now.

928
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 1: This article was part of a brief press tour Robinson

929
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: carried out in order to convince the world that he

930
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: had changed and was now dedicated to anti radicalization. He

931
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:29,319
Speaker 1: started working with Quilliam, which is an builds itself at

932
00:48:29,400 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: least as an anti extremist think tank and is run

933
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:35,759
Speaker 1: by a former Islamic extremist named Magid Nowas. Uh now

934
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: Nowas talked to Robinson while he was filming a BBC

935
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: documentary After getting out of the clink, Tommy recalls he

936
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:43,600
Speaker 1: said to me, Tommy, if you ever think about leaving

937
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:45,439
Speaker 1: the E d L and you want to chat, I'm

938
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:49,080
Speaker 1: here for you. So at this point, after getting out

939
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: of jail from his passport fraud, Tommy starts to claim that,

940
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:54,440
Speaker 1: like his time in solitary and his friendship with this

941
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,880
Speaker 1: guy Majid had convinced him that he had been wrong

942
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: to call Islama disease and that, like the right, the

943
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 1: real way to fight the danger of radical Islam was

944
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:07,080
Speaker 1: to work with moderate Muslims and reformers to de radicalize extremists. Um.

945
00:49:07,120 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 1: So he starts saying things that at least seemed like

946
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:13,839
Speaker 1: they might be reasonable. Um. Yeah, that's that's That's kind

947
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 1: of the twist that Tommy Robinson's life takes at this point.

948
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: It was it was a shock that I remember, like

949
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:22,400
Speaker 1: loads of video types were fuming with him. Obviously you

950
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But I'll be honest. Back then

951
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:26,919
Speaker 1: I was quite young and that happen, but I did

952
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:28,920
Speaker 1: he did seem kind of genuine at the time. I

953
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:31,919
Speaker 1: think he he had like a very brief moment of

954
00:49:32,840 --> 00:49:36,280
Speaker 1: um clarity, and you know, I realized that like oh,

955
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 1: like this is radical. Islam is a very specific thing.

956
00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:43,920
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean Islam, you know what I mean? Um?

957
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:46,920
Speaker 1: But then, yeah, he didn't last long. No, it did

958
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: not last long. Uh. And part of that is because

959
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:53,719
Speaker 1: in November of two thousand thirteen, like a month after

960
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: that Telegraph article, Tommy Robinson pled guilty to mortgage fraud. Um.

961
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:05,480
Speaker 1: He just can't stop, can't. He just loves it, like

962
00:50:05,560 --> 00:50:08,839
Speaker 1: he's acted to just getting himself in petty crimes, like

963
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: it's just his favorite thing. But it's so weird, always petty,

964
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,840
Speaker 1: and he's never any good at it. Like how do

965
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 1: you even do mortgage fraud? Like what? Yeah, I don't.

966
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 1: I'm not going to claim to understand the ins and

967
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 1: outs of this particular case, but the basics of it

968
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: is he worked with a crooked mortgage broker to obtain

969
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 1: mortgages under false pretenses. Um. It's like the authorities think

970
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:37,920
Speaker 1: that Tommy probably made about the equivalent about you know,

971
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: three d thousand U S. Dollars something like that, about

972
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty pounds um part as a part

973
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: of this scheme, and the broker he worked with made

974
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:49,440
Speaker 1: about four times that much money. She she she came

975
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,839
Speaker 1: out very well other than going to prison with um. Now,

976
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: this would be an entirely nondescript story of white collar

977
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 1: crime if not for the fact that Tommy Robinson is

978
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 1: a right wing extremist and his partner in crime was

979
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:07,879
Speaker 1: a mortgage broker with the name Deborah Rothschild. Here we go,

980
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:13,879
Speaker 1: okay to get accused. Yeah, I mean as far as

981
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 1: I know, like, I haven't found any evidence she's actually

982
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: connected to the Rothschild family, and like, to be honest,

983
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:22,040
Speaker 1: a crime on that smaller level would be kind of

984
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:25,759
Speaker 1: small beans for a joke by the worst Rothchild's ever. Yeah, yea,

985
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 1: the very worst of the Rothschilda Like what Yeah, and

986
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were. I'm sure you can find Nazis

987
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:39,919
Speaker 1: in the DNP who like got all conspiracy ish about that. Yeah,

988
00:51:39,960 --> 00:51:42,280
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying, Like, yeah, I have heard before,

989
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,399
Speaker 1: like on Stormfront when I used to go in there

990
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:48,520
Speaker 1: like for research, um and on Pole as well, they

991
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:52,400
Speaker 1: will call him like a Jew lover and stuff, like

992
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:54,480
Speaker 1: they're really like anti submitting towards him because I think

993
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:56,239
Speaker 1: he even went to Israel and stuff as well. It

994
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: was like pro ideaf and stuff. Yeah, he's very pro Israel.

995
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 1: He's there's nuts will say this like, he doesn't seem

996
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: to be anti Semitic. Um yeah, like that, that's that

997
00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:07,840
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be one of the things Tommy has pushed.

998
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 1: Um yeah, and he's clearly willing to work with the

999
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: Rothschild so. Um So. Tommy was sentenced to another eighteen

1000
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 1: months in prison. Obviously didn't do all of that, but

1001
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: he did a lot of it, and much of it.

1002
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: Most of his time he had to serve in solitary

1003
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:26,399
Speaker 1: due to the perceived danger again that he would face

1004
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:29,280
Speaker 1: from Muslim gangs. By the time Tommy got out of prison,

1005
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 1: it was two thousand sixteen, the year of everybody's favorite

1006
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 1: election and a motherfucking boom period for the global far right.

1007
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:38,920
Speaker 1: Robinson instantly discarded all of his prior claims of working

1008
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:45,280
Speaker 1: towards racial reconciliation. Instead, Yeah, that did not last. Um.

1009
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:47,920
Speaker 1: You might make that out as a case that, like

1010
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 1: all prisons do, is radicalize people. I think in this case,

1011
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 1: Tommy just saw that there was money and being a

1012
00:52:54,520 --> 00:53:01,239
Speaker 1: racist again literally like yeah. So basically, as soon as

1013
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:03,840
Speaker 1: he got out, he joined a group called Pegita, or

1014
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 1: Patriotic Europeans against the Islamicization of the occident um the

1015
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:15,680
Speaker 1: s the ociden is that the yeah, the fucking yeah yeah, okay,

1016
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 1: I know. I don't know why it ends in an

1017
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 1: a either, other than that they decided that Pegito sounded

1018
00:53:26,160 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Yeah. They were a German far initially German.

1019
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: They spread but like they started out as a German

1020
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 1: far right anti Islam movement, and they saw a huge

1021
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:41,320
Speaker 1: early success, drawing in more than twenty five thou people

1022
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 1: into the streets for protests before a bunch of their

1023
00:53:44,360 --> 00:53:47,760
Speaker 1: leaders quit due to scandals. One example of that picture

1024
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:52,799
Speaker 1: surface of their founder dressed as Adolf Hitler. Yeah right, yes,

1025
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 1: real surprising. Yeah. So all of that went down before

1026
00:53:57,160 --> 00:53:59,520
Speaker 1: Tommy was out of prison. Once he was free, he

1027
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:02,240
Speaker 1: showed up to speak at several of the events in Germany.

1028
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 1: He warned attendees that the massive Syrian refugees entering the

1029
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: continent constituted a military invasion. Then he announced that he'd

1030
00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:13,440
Speaker 1: be running the UK branch of Pegito. He started planning rallies,

1031
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:16,239
Speaker 1: which led to one of my very favorite Twitter interactions

1032
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 1: of the entire Tommy Robinson saga. So I found this

1033
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:23,640
Speaker 1: Twitter post screen capped on an archived Facebook page for

1034
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:28,480
Speaker 1: the Midlands Anti Fascist Network So your own local group. Yeah,

1035
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,840
Speaker 1: and this is from January of two thousand sixteen. The

1036
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: user named will Black says, Hey, Tommy, how is the

1037
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 1: Pagita March going to be different from the drunken E

1038
00:54:36,760 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: d L mobs? You lad? And Tommy responds, the banners

1039
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 1: will say Pegita instead of E d L. That's pretty clever.

1040
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:58,879
Speaker 1: Not mad, not mad cow group, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1041
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:02,800
Speaker 1: that's not bad. So in February he held his first

1042
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: and I think only Pagita March. Roughly two hundred people

1043
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: showed up, which is quite a decline from his two

1044
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven numbers. Uh. Many of those people bore

1045
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 1: placards that said Trump is right. Uh. The rally was uneventful,

1046
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:17,480
Speaker 1: as these things go, and Tommy's association with Pageta did

1047
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 1: not last long. Once he was out of jail, he

1048
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 1: began focusing on new fearmongering grifts. On a new fearmongering grift,

1049
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:26,720
Speaker 1: I should say, one that was even easier to cash

1050
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:29,880
Speaker 1: in on than fear of Muslim terrorists, fear of white

1051
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:33,600
Speaker 1: English kids getting raped by Muslims. During a speech at

1052
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:36,799
Speaker 1: the Oxford Union He focused on sexual grooming gangs from

1053
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:39,360
Speaker 1: Muslim nations and accused police of allowing these people to

1054
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:42,520
Speaker 1: rape children because they were scared of being called racist. Quote,

1055
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:44,800
Speaker 1: we have a two tier police force that treats crimes

1056
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: within the Muslim community differently. Now, when he made the statement,

1057
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,760
Speaker 1: Robinson was not just referring to a vague conspiracy theory.

1058
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 1: He was harkening back to a specific crime, or rather

1059
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,800
Speaker 1: twenty years of crimes, the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal.

1060
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this? Yeah, I was gonna say

1061
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:04,839
Speaker 1: this is real, Like this isn't Yeah, this is really

1062
00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 1: And what he said about the police being scared to

1063
00:56:07,120 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 1: report was actually proven to be true as well. They

1064
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:12,080
Speaker 1: basically said that we were too scared to kind of

1065
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:15,960
Speaker 1: investigate this for being accused of being like anti Muslim

1066
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:19,480
Speaker 1: or whatever. So it was absolutely a boring, boring thing.

1067
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't a Muslim sex screaming gang as

1068
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:25,200
Speaker 1: much as it was like I mean, yeah, sure, like

1069
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: well it depends how you see. It wasn't like they

1070
00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 1: weren't doing it in the name of Islam. They just

1071
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:30,759
Speaker 1: happened it will be Muslim. But there was also like

1072
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: white guys in it that weren't religious as well, but

1073
00:56:33,320 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: it was whatever it was, it was a horrific, horrific

1074
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: thing that honestly got very little attention in the media.

1075
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:40,320
Speaker 1: And I actually, you know, I hate to say this,

1076
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: but I do think he's right that it was just

1077
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:45,799
Speaker 1: the liberal media was too scared to properly dig into it,

1078
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:49,399
Speaker 1: I think, um And unfortunately that allowed the right wing

1079
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: to just run with it and just talk ship, you

1080
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: know what I mean, turn it into something it wasn't,

1081
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:56,719
Speaker 1: which then just read the word. The biggest fallout from

1082
00:56:56,719 --> 00:56:58,960
Speaker 1: this was that the victims didn't get the proper you know,

1083
00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:03,200
Speaker 1: attention that they should of. Umah, really horrible situation. Yeah,

1084
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:04,920
Speaker 1: and we're gonna dig into it a bit because it's

1085
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:08,359
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated and and messed up than than

1086
00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:10,560
Speaker 1: Tommy wants to give it credibly, because like at what

1087
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:13,279
Speaker 1: use like it's one of the factors absolutely is the

1088
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:16,320
Speaker 1: police and not just the police, actually primarily not the police,

1089
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: but other authorities were scared of being seen as racist.

1090
00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:21,080
Speaker 1: But there was a lot more that went on to

1091
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: it as well. And like, yeah, like you said, one

1092
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:27,440
Speaker 1: of the big tragedies here is because it's got so politicized, um,

1093
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: due to a mix of right wing grifting and liberal

1094
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: being afraid to be seen as racist. Like everyone missed

1095
00:57:35,160 --> 00:57:37,200
Speaker 1: a lot of the really critical lessons about like why

1096
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 1: this was allowed to go on for so fucking long? Um,

1097
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:46,440
Speaker 1: so uh to to do? Yeah, first off, um, this

1098
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 1: obviously it's very much a real crime. Um. The total

1099
00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:52,280
Speaker 1: number of girls molested raped as a result of the

1100
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: Rotherham trafficking ring was probably over fifteen hundred, and may

1101
00:57:55,760 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 1: have even been significantly more than hundred even, Yeah, it's

1102
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:05,040
Speaker 1: a huge number. A sizable majority of the traffickers were

1103
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 1: of Pakistani or other Asian heritage. And I should note

1104
00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 1: here in the UK when people like the term Asian,

1105
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:14,800
Speaker 1: when it's used often refers to Muslims specifically the way

1106
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,400
Speaker 1: that like it's used in this context, and in the

1107
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 1: US we don't really see it that way, but like

1108
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 1: they're generally talking about people from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

1109
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:27,200
Speaker 1: Asian for you would be like kind of like I

1110
00:58:27,240 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: don't know, like Chinese or Chinese Japanese. Yeah here, like

1111
00:58:31,200 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 1: Asian you kind of mean like Indian, Pakistani, you know,

1112
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:37,439
Speaker 1: maybe even Afghans sometimes, which actually would make most sense

1113
00:58:37,760 --> 00:58:41,160
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it's different y yeah yeah yeah.

1114
00:58:41,240 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 1: And here like I mean we we a lot of

1115
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:45,800
Speaker 1: times people will call like someone from Afghanistan, like a

1116
00:58:45,840 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: Middle Easterner, which is like yeah, um yeah yeah, it's

1117
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:56,960
Speaker 1: uh so um yeah so yeah. A sizable majority of

1118
00:58:57,000 --> 00:59:00,520
Speaker 1: the traffickers were of Pakistani or you know, Asian heritage. Um.

1119
00:59:00,560 --> 00:59:02,480
Speaker 1: But obviously the case is not just as simple as

1120
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 1: as Muslims running a rape gang. Paul Williamson, the senior

1121
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:08,760
Speaker 1: investigating officer on the operation that helped bring it down UH,

1122
00:59:08,840 --> 00:59:12,520
Speaker 1: called the rotherham Ring quote a unique and unprecedented investigation,

1123
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:15,640
Speaker 1: challenging in its scope and complexity. Now. He claimed a

1124
00:59:15,720 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 1: toxic mix of factors allowed the sex ring to persist.

1125
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 1: From two thirteen. One of the in like journalistic organs

1126
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: that actually did a pretty good job of covering this

1127
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:28,400
Speaker 1: as The Guardian, they devoted a lot of coverage to it.

1128
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from some of that now. Quote

1129
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 1: He said a failure by police to listen, safeguard and

1130
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 1: investigate the reports had led to a corrosive lack of

1131
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:37,680
Speaker 1: trust among victims that the n c A was still

1132
00:59:37,680 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: trying to break down. Um. And one reason why the

1133
00:59:41,160 --> 00:59:43,760
Speaker 1: police failed to listen was in fact a fear that

1134
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:46,800
Speaker 1: this would damage community cohesion and cause ethnic strife and

1135
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:49,560
Speaker 1: be seen as racist. But this was not the only factor.

1136
00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:52,840
Speaker 1: The biggest issue with getting police to take this seriously

1137
00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:55,640
Speaker 1: was that these girls were being sexually trafficked, as in

1138
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 1: they were being used as prostitutes. And while like rational

1139
00:59:59,280 --> 01:00:01,920
Speaker 1: people can say at all, underage sex trafficking victims are

1140
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: rape victims, not prostitutes, that does not stop them from

1141
01:00:05,080 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 1: being treated like prostitutes by police. Um The Guardian notes

1142
01:00:09,320 --> 01:00:11,640
Speaker 1: quote and this is like summarizing the findings of an

1143
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:14,320
Speaker 1: investigation into the abuse ring. In a small number of

1144
01:00:14,320 --> 01:00:17,400
Speaker 1: cases which have already received media attention, the victims were arrested,

1145
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: and these are the young girls were arrested for offenses

1146
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:21,640
Speaker 1: such as a breach of the piece are being drunk

1147
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of

1148
01:00:24,320 --> 01:00:27,400
Speaker 1: rape and sexual assault against children within social care if

1149
01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:29,880
Speaker 1: the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by

1150
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:32,880
Speaker 1: senior managers at an operational level, the police gave no

1151
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:37,160
Speaker 1: priority to child sexual exploitation, regarding many child victims with

1152
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 1: contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.

1153
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:42,280
Speaker 1: Further stark evidence came in two thousand two, two thousand

1154
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 1: and three and two thousand six, with three reports known

1155
01:00:44,320 --> 01:00:46,160
Speaker 1: to the police in the Council which could not have

1156
01:00:46,160 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: been clear in their description of the situation in Rotherham.

1157
01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:51,240
Speaker 1: The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some

1158
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 1: senior officers disbelieved the data it contained, so not wanting

1159
01:00:55,640 --> 01:00:57,880
Speaker 1: to be seen as racist was a factor. But based

1160
01:00:57,880 --> 01:00:59,480
Speaker 1: on at least all of the reporting on this, it

1161
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:03,040
Speaker 1: seems like a bigger one is cops just assumed these

1162
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 1: young girls were prostitutes and we're more willing to arrest

1163
01:01:06,720 --> 01:01:09,080
Speaker 1: them than to investigate them as victims of a crime

1164
01:01:09,160 --> 01:01:14,439
Speaker 1: because they yeah, exactly. It's like it's fucked up. It's

1165
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: very fucked up. Um. Now, there's a very detailed government

1166
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:20,200
Speaker 1: report on the whole cluster fuck and it does I'm

1167
01:01:20,200 --> 01:01:22,760
Speaker 1: gonna read hear what it says about issues of ethnicity

1168
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: and how that played into the case. Issues of ethnicity

1169
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 1: related to child sexual exploitation have been discussed other reports,

1170
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:31,160
Speaker 1: including the Home Affair Select Committee report and the report

1171
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:33,680
Speaker 1: of the Children's Commissioner. Within the Council, we found no

1172
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 1: evidence of children's social care staff being influenced by concerns

1173
01:01:36,600 --> 01:01:39,480
Speaker 1: about the ethnic origins of suspected perpetrators when dealing with

1174
01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:43,840
Speaker 1: individual child protection cases. In the broader organizational context, however,

1175
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 1: there was a widespread perception that the messages conveyed by

1176
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:48,720
Speaker 1: some senior people in the council and also the police,

1177
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 1: were to downplay the ethnic dimensions of c SC. Unsurprisingly,

1178
01:01:52,680 --> 01:01:54,840
Speaker 1: frontline staff appeared to be confused as to what they

1179
01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:56,600
Speaker 1: were supposed to say and do and what would be

1180
01:01:56,640 --> 01:01:59,880
Speaker 1: interpreted as racist. From a political perspective, the approach of

1181
01:01:59,880 --> 01:02:02,240
Speaker 1: a avoiding public discussion of the issues was ill judged.

1182
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:06,440
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what they have to say, is

1183
01:02:06,480 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 1: like the fat like what sort of the desire to

1184
01:02:08,720 --> 01:02:10,480
Speaker 1: not be seen as races played into it. So it

1185
01:02:10,520 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 1: was more of an issue in yeah, like once this

1186
01:02:14,160 --> 01:02:18,040
Speaker 1: was known, like the sort of inability of police to

1187
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 1: to want to talk about it or get the word

1188
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:22,480
Speaker 1: out or like deal with this as a as a

1189
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: like like systemic problem um. Whereas the difficulty, like the

1190
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:29,560
Speaker 1: reason that it wasn't caught for so long is sort

1191
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,240
Speaker 1: of police bias against people they saw as prostitutes. So

1192
01:02:32,320 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: again it's like this mix of poltic factors is the

1193
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:39,160
Speaker 1: real mix, the only he picked out one thing, yeah yeah,

1194
01:02:39,880 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and it's uh yeah, it sucks. The whole

1195
01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:45,920
Speaker 1: thing sucks. Um. And because we live in the twenty

1196
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,120
Speaker 1: one century where nuance is dead. Uh, the only takeaway

1197
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:51,320
Speaker 1: from the story for millions of people is that gangs

1198
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 1: of Muslims are grooming and raping white girls. Um. This

1199
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:56,720
Speaker 1: is obviously the line that Tommy Robinson has started pushing

1200
01:02:56,720 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 1: in his public speeches, along with the idea that the

1201
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:02,000
Speaker 1: government is too scared go after this people. And it's

1202
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 1: a line that's been helped along by research recently published

1203
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:08,280
Speaker 1: by Quillium, the anti radicalization group Robinson worked with for

1204
01:03:08,360 --> 01:03:10,640
Speaker 1: a Hot Minute. They published a report in two thousand

1205
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:14,080
Speaker 1: eighteen claiming that eighty four percent of grooming gang offenders

1206
01:03:14,200 --> 01:03:18,240
Speaker 1: are Asian and the majority are Pakistani Muslims. Now, this

1207
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:21,800
Speaker 1: report seems to mostly be bullshit. Ella Cockbain, a national

1208
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:24,640
Speaker 1: expert on child sexual exploitation, called it a case study

1209
01:03:24,680 --> 01:03:27,760
Speaker 1: in bad science, writ with errors and consistencies, a glaring

1210
01:03:27,840 --> 01:03:31,520
Speaker 1: lack of transparency, sweeping claims, and gross generalizations unfounded by

1211
01:03:31,520 --> 01:03:35,080
Speaker 1: its own data. See for one thing, grooming gang, which

1212
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: is what this Quillium study claims to be about is

1213
01:03:37,320 --> 01:03:40,720
Speaker 1: not a legal category, so there's no actual legal data

1214
01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:44,280
Speaker 1: on grooming gangs. There's just data on child sexual exploitation,

1215
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:47,640
Speaker 1: and child sexual exploitation falls under a number of different

1216
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:51,160
Speaker 1: criminal offenses depending on the exact type of sexual exploitation

1217
01:03:51,160 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 1: that's going on. UM one issue with their report is

1218
01:03:54,400 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: that the ethnicity of the culprit in these sorts of

1219
01:03:56,320 --> 01:03:59,640
Speaker 1: cases is actually only recorded when that person is non white.

1220
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:02,400
Speaker 1: So finding good data on CSC is very hard to

1221
01:04:02,400 --> 01:04:05,160
Speaker 1: do to begin with, and Quilliam never really tried. Their

1222
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:07,600
Speaker 1: study was based on fifty eight cases they picked from

1223
01:04:07,640 --> 01:04:09,960
Speaker 1: two thousand five to two thousand seven that led to

1224
01:04:09,960 --> 01:04:12,360
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty four convictions, and they just counted

1225
01:04:12,400 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 1: up how many of those convictions were of people from

1226
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:18,080
Speaker 1: Asian backgrounds. They provide no info on why they picked

1227
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 1: these fifty eight cases and not any of the other

1228
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:24,200
Speaker 1: child sexual exploitation cases that like may have fit the

1229
01:04:24,240 --> 01:04:26,680
Speaker 1: same criteria as being sort of like a grooming gang

1230
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:32,080
Speaker 1: uh style, you know. Attack UM critics pointed out that

1231
01:04:32,120 --> 01:04:34,520
Speaker 1: there were, like if you look at the total number

1232
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:37,920
Speaker 1: of CSC cases that involved like multiple adults, there were

1233
01:04:37,960 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 1: way more than fifty eight during that period that were

1234
01:04:41,400 --> 01:04:44,920
Speaker 1: perpelled like perpetrated by white people. Um, and like if

1235
01:04:44,960 --> 01:04:48,040
Speaker 1: you actually look at the data that exists, like the

1236
01:04:48,080 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 1: conclusion that you're drawn to is that a majority of

1237
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:54,800
Speaker 1: perpetrators who in like child sex grooming in the UK

1238
01:04:55,000 --> 01:04:58,560
Speaker 1: are white because the majority of the people in the UK. Again,

1239
01:04:58,640 --> 01:05:00,880
Speaker 1: that's like the p who use that what all the

1240
01:05:01,040 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 1: all the sex people they were white. Well, yeah, because

1241
01:05:03,640 --> 01:05:06,280
Speaker 1: it's more white people, you know what I mean, white people. Yeah,

1242
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:08,640
Speaker 1: it doesn't work the same way the other one doesn't work,

1243
01:05:08,680 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Basically, we have a huge

1244
01:05:10,400 --> 01:05:14,840
Speaker 1: fucking pedophile problem exactly, and it doesn't matter what color

1245
01:05:14,920 --> 01:05:18,920
Speaker 1: the kids are getting abused, Yeah, exactly, you're right, man, Like,

1246
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 1: and it's people like, well it's white, Well it's this.

1247
01:05:20,840 --> 01:05:24,360
Speaker 1: It's like kids are getting fucking raped, Like shut up,

1248
01:05:24,400 --> 01:05:27,240
Speaker 1: and like let's focus on that first and then worry

1249
01:05:27,240 --> 01:05:29,440
Speaker 1: about where it's coming, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,

1250
01:05:29,480 --> 01:05:33,000
Speaker 1: it's it's horrible. Yeah, yeah, it's it's fucked up, but

1251
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:35,560
Speaker 1: it's sucked up. Like that's the whole discussion as opposed

1252
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:38,040
Speaker 1: to like, yeah, I mean and the reality is that

1253
01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:40,720
Speaker 1: like any of these kitty diddlers have way more in

1254
01:05:40,760 --> 01:05:44,240
Speaker 1: common with each other than they do with like other

1255
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:46,480
Speaker 1: people who happened to share their skin color, because they're

1256
01:05:46,480 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 1: people who are less kids, right exactly, Like yeah, oh

1257
01:05:49,520 --> 01:05:51,360
Speaker 1: you're a Muslim. Yeah, like, oh, well you're like me?

1258
01:05:51,480 --> 01:05:55,720
Speaker 1: Like no, like no, like my Muslim friends are not pedophile.

1259
01:05:55,720 --> 01:05:57,680
Speaker 1: It was like, don't be fucking stupid, you know what

1260
01:05:57,720 --> 01:06:00,360
Speaker 1: I mean. It's it's that's exactly it. My You're right,

1261
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:02,720
Speaker 1: And the only thing that they have in common is

1262
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:05,320
Speaker 1: with other fucking pedophiles. You know, this is pure evil.

1263
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:08,840
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's it's it's just crazy how it has

1264
01:06:08,880 --> 01:06:11,040
Speaker 1: been politicized. Like when you lay it out like this,

1265
01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:13,200
Speaker 1: it's really the pressing actually if you think about it,

1266
01:06:13,240 --> 01:06:16,919
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, it's super depressing. And you know what

1267
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:25,200
Speaker 1: isn't depressing is pivoting to adds of the back of pedophile.

1268
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:29,440
Speaker 1: Not the first or the last time we will pivot

1269
01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 1: to ads off the back of Peter Feeling Disney No, well,

1270
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:37,640
Speaker 1: maybe they will own us in about forty seven seconds

1271
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:52,000
Speaker 1: based on Yeah, so enjoy Disney Plus, We're back now. Uh.

1272
01:06:52,040 --> 01:06:55,240
Speaker 1: In two thousands seventeen, Tommy Robinson got a sweet gig

1273
01:06:55,280 --> 01:06:58,480
Speaker 1: writing for Rebel Media, a Canadian far right outfit in

1274
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:01,240
Speaker 1: part funded by the Mercy Serves, who are very wealthy

1275
01:07:01,600 --> 01:07:06,160
Speaker 1: American business people UM who like to fund far right

1276
01:07:06,360 --> 01:07:09,440
Speaker 1: media groups. UH. He received about ten thousand dollars a

1277
01:07:09,520 --> 01:07:12,320
Speaker 1: month in salary from them, which he largely used to

1278
01:07:12,320 --> 01:07:14,640
Speaker 1: put out videos that he hoped would ignite right wing

1279
01:07:14,720 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: rage about the Islamicization of England. This led him to

1280
01:07:18,360 --> 01:07:22,120
Speaker 1: Canterbury Crown Court in two thousand seventeen. He showed up

1281
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:24,240
Speaker 1: at the courthouse to film the defendants in a child

1282
01:07:24,240 --> 01:07:28,240
Speaker 1: groom in case. Robinson's justification for this was essentially predicated

1283
01:07:28,240 --> 01:07:30,440
Speaker 1: on the idea that law enforcement was too scared to

1284
01:07:30,440 --> 01:07:33,280
Speaker 1: bring these evil Muslims to justice, and so him filming

1285
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:35,400
Speaker 1: these people was the only way to ensure that they

1286
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:41,280
Speaker 1: got their due. So Robinson Yeah solid planned. Tommy Robinson

1287
01:07:41,320 --> 01:07:43,280
Speaker 1: filmed for an hour or so and approached several of

1288
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:45,800
Speaker 1: the defendants. This was all illegal, as the case was

1289
01:07:45,840 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 1: subject to reporting restrictions that expressly forbade what Tommy was doing.

1290
01:07:49,760 --> 01:07:52,200
Speaker 1: He was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison,

1291
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:54,600
Speaker 1: but given a suspended sentence, which he triggered the next

1292
01:07:54,680 --> 01:07:56,880
Speaker 1: year when he showed up outside of Leeds Crown Court

1293
01:07:57,080 --> 01:07:59,880
Speaker 1: to again film defendants in a child sex grooming case.

1294
01:08:00,200 --> 01:08:03,400
Speaker 1: He filmed for over an hour, broadcasting confrontations with defendants

1295
01:08:03,520 --> 01:08:06,080
Speaker 1: and eventually his arrest to more than ten thousand viewers.

1296
01:08:06,440 --> 01:08:09,560
Speaker 1: This whole mess activated tommy suspended sentence and added another

1297
01:08:09,600 --> 01:08:13,360
Speaker 1: ten months to his term in jail. Now, Tommy's fans

1298
01:08:13,400 --> 01:08:15,120
Speaker 1: have claimed that this is all part of an attempt

1299
01:08:15,160 --> 01:08:17,160
Speaker 1: to take Tommy down for his exposure of the dangers

1300
01:08:17,200 --> 01:08:19,680
Speaker 1: of Islam and the collusion of law enforcement, and the

1301
01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:21,960
Speaker 1: fact that he wasn't banned from filming this event is

1302
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:25,760
Speaker 1: like the suppression of journalism and free speech. The reality

1303
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:27,960
Speaker 1: of the situation is that by doing what he did,

1304
01:08:28,240 --> 01:08:33,679
Speaker 1: Tommy nearly helped those child rapists get off without a conviction. Exactly. Yeah, yeah,

1305
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:38,360
Speaker 1: because yeah, that's exactly way he nearly did the fucking yeah. Yeah,

1306
01:08:38,400 --> 01:08:40,840
Speaker 1: there's a reason you're not supposed to, like they're trying

1307
01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:43,519
Speaker 1: to try these people, and like you can't prejudice the

1308
01:08:43,640 --> 01:08:50,040
Speaker 1: you don't want you don't want to, like yeah, basically,

1309
01:08:50,040 --> 01:08:51,960
Speaker 1: he gave them a chance to claim that it was

1310
01:08:52,040 --> 01:08:54,479
Speaker 1: like a mistrial, that like there was no chance for

1311
01:08:54,520 --> 01:08:56,840
Speaker 1: a fair verdict, and like they actually got a hearing

1312
01:08:56,880 --> 01:08:59,200
Speaker 1: at the Court of Appeal that might have led to

1313
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:01,840
Speaker 1: them getting all for the crime because of what Tommy.

1314
01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: Um Fortunately they didn't. But like the only reason it

1315
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:07,120
Speaker 1: was a chance is because Tommy shut up with a

1316
01:09:07,120 --> 01:09:09,719
Speaker 1: fucking camera. The best bit about that clip is where

1317
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:12,200
Speaker 1: he's like, he's all like bo He's acting like he

1318
01:09:12,240 --> 01:09:14,960
Speaker 1: doesn't care, and then when he realized he's getting arrested,

1319
01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:23,240
Speaker 1: he's like cool, my lawyer. Uh So for a while there,

1320
01:09:23,320 --> 01:09:25,600
Speaker 1: up until this year, really Tommy did seem to have

1321
01:09:25,680 --> 01:09:28,000
Speaker 1: hit upon a perfect grift and he was well on

1322
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:30,879
Speaker 1: his way to riches for out throughout two thousand seventeen

1323
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:33,320
Speaker 1: and two thousand eighteen. This is like, financially the most

1324
01:09:33,320 --> 01:09:36,080
Speaker 1: successful chunk of his career. When he starts pretending to

1325
01:09:36,120 --> 01:09:38,479
Speaker 1: be a journalist and like showing up and doing that

1326
01:09:38,600 --> 01:09:43,880
Speaker 1: sort of thing, provoking people, like making videos for rebel media.

1327
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:46,839
Speaker 1: So I should just mention I just remember, not remember,

1328
01:09:47,240 --> 01:09:48,760
Speaker 1: so you see this period of time when he was

1329
01:09:48,800 --> 01:09:52,200
Speaker 1: doing that, I actually spoke to him. I contacted him

1330
01:09:52,240 --> 01:09:54,080
Speaker 1: because me and my friend wanted to make a doc

1331
01:09:54,160 --> 01:09:56,280
Speaker 1: about him because when we saw him doing this, like

1332
01:09:56,640 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist now, we were like, boy, like we

1333
01:10:00,040 --> 01:10:01,760
Speaker 1: wanted to sit to him, look, let us come and

1334
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:04,599
Speaker 1: film with you, um you know, and he was like, oh,

1335
01:10:04,640 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 1: I don't know, like you you know, you guys are

1336
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:08,880
Speaker 1: lefties or whatever, and like, yeah, we we tried to

1337
01:10:08,880 --> 01:10:10,840
Speaker 1: get him to like let us go and film with him,

1338
01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:13,000
Speaker 1: not to like we just wanted to do it, you know,

1339
01:10:13,160 --> 01:10:14,800
Speaker 1: not to like I said to him, Look, we're going

1340
01:10:14,880 --> 01:10:16,960
Speaker 1: to stitch you up. I said, but if you do

1341
01:10:17,120 --> 01:10:20,280
Speaker 1: something wrong, it's fucking going in. Like we just wanted

1342
01:10:20,320 --> 01:10:21,800
Speaker 1: to know, like what is this been in the end,

1343
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:23,719
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, we kind of went off the idea.

1344
01:10:23,760 --> 01:10:26,360
Speaker 1: But yeah, man, that was a crazy period. Sorry sorry

1345
01:10:26,360 --> 01:10:27,960
Speaker 1: to but you. I just it just thought, oh man,

1346
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:30,320
Speaker 1: that I remember, Like I wish we'd got to film

1347
01:10:30,320 --> 01:10:32,439
Speaker 1: with him, you know, Oh yeah, that would have been

1348
01:10:32,479 --> 01:10:36,360
Speaker 1: a hoot, Like just getting to watch him get arrested,

1349
01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:42,120
Speaker 1: which happens to Timmy about as often as like trips

1350
01:10:42,160 --> 01:10:45,240
Speaker 1: to the gym happened for a relatively healthy person like

1351
01:10:45,240 --> 01:10:47,679
Speaker 1: his hobby, you know, his hobby, just to get arrested

1352
01:10:47,720 --> 01:10:52,479
Speaker 1: for stupid stuff. Um. So yeah, in two seventeen and

1353
01:10:52,880 --> 01:10:55,960
Speaker 1: two does an eighteen, he's making fucking bank and an eighteen,

1354
01:10:55,960 --> 01:10:59,640
Speaker 1: he put out a video called Three Boys Tragedy or Terrorism.

1355
01:10:59,680 --> 01:11:01,720
Speaker 1: It was out three young London teams who were hit

1356
01:11:01,760 --> 01:11:04,640
Speaker 1: by a drunk driver of Asian descent. Now, there was

1357
01:11:04,760 --> 01:11:07,160
Speaker 1: no evidence of malice or terrorism in this. It was

1358
01:11:07,240 --> 01:11:09,519
Speaker 1: I mean obviously like the guy's piece of ship. He

1359
01:11:09,600 --> 01:11:13,200
Speaker 1: killed people because he was drunk, but like it wasn't terrorism,

1360
01:11:13,200 --> 01:11:14,920
Speaker 1: and like the fact that he was drunk should be

1361
01:11:14,920 --> 01:11:16,839
Speaker 1: the evidence you need that he was not a hardcore

1362
01:11:16,960 --> 01:11:20,559
Speaker 1: Muslim um. But Tommy turned it into an anti an

1363
01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:23,160
Speaker 1: excuse for an anti Muslim screed anyway, saying in the

1364
01:11:23,280 --> 01:11:26,280
Speaker 1: video quote it's clear that these families have been systemically

1365
01:11:26,280 --> 01:11:28,120
Speaker 1: failed and lied to by the police. I can't be

1366
01:11:28,880 --> 01:11:30,760
Speaker 1: certain this was a terrorist attack. If this was a

1367
01:11:30,840 --> 01:11:32,840
Speaker 1: terrorist attack and cover up, we could be looking at

1368
01:11:32,880 --> 01:11:35,440
Speaker 1: so many more terrorist attacks than we could ever have imagined.

1369
01:11:36,240 --> 01:11:40,479
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, like it's just I mean, it's

1370
01:11:40,560 --> 01:11:44,639
Speaker 1: it's like he's trying to find a problem all the time,

1371
01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:47,320
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, because that's where the money is.

1372
01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:49,479
Speaker 1: It's like saying like, oh, a drunk car Irish guy

1373
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:54,200
Speaker 1: runs someone over, Like was it the IRA, Like no, yes,

1374
01:11:54,320 --> 01:11:57,040
Speaker 1: yes it was. I mean, I I blame all car

1375
01:11:57,080 --> 01:12:00,080
Speaker 1: accidents on the IRA well the only the one to

1376
01:12:00,160 --> 01:12:05,400
Speaker 1: go boom, you know, yeah, oh oh boy. Uh, they've

1377
01:12:05,400 --> 01:12:08,719
Speaker 1: been involved in some Tesla related crashes in Los Angeles.

1378
01:12:09,200 --> 01:12:12,040
Speaker 1: That could be the like that that would be the future,

1379
01:12:12,120 --> 01:12:17,720
Speaker 1: you know, like a like ringing up Tesla's months. Um.

1380
01:12:17,800 --> 01:12:20,479
Speaker 1: So there were of course demonstrations for justice as a

1381
01:12:20,520 --> 01:12:22,960
Speaker 1: result of these deaths. One of them even involved the

1382
01:12:23,000 --> 01:12:24,799
Speaker 1: mother of one of the kids, who, thanks to Tommy,

1383
01:12:24,840 --> 01:12:27,320
Speaker 1: now believes her son was murdered and that his murder

1384
01:12:27,400 --> 01:12:30,920
Speaker 1: was covered up. Um. Which yeah, it's just just gross.

1385
01:12:31,240 --> 01:12:34,519
Speaker 1: He's a gross guy. So Tommy also self published a

1386
01:12:34,520 --> 01:12:38,200
Speaker 1: second book during this time, titled Mohammed's Karan, Why Muslims

1387
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:40,840
Speaker 1: Kill for Islam. The BDC notes that he and his

1388
01:12:40,920 --> 01:12:43,439
Speaker 1: co author opened to the book with these lines, if

1389
01:12:43,479 --> 01:12:45,680
Speaker 1: you are a Muslim, please put this book down. We

1390
01:12:45,720 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 1: do not wish you to become a killer, because this

1391
01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:49,680
Speaker 1: book leads you to understand the doctrines and history of

1392
01:12:49,720 --> 01:12:54,400
Speaker 1: Islam more thoroughly. So that's what it starts. Yeah, that's

1393
01:12:54,400 --> 01:12:58,960
Speaker 1: how it starts. Yeah, firstly, he's besuming the Muslim is

1394
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:03,360
Speaker 1: gonna like seecout that book, and then secondly, like oh, shoot,

1395
01:13:03,360 --> 01:13:04,880
Speaker 1: I don't want to become a killer. I better put

1396
01:13:04,880 --> 01:13:08,800
Speaker 1: it down, Like oh boy, yeah, oh god, I'm glad

1397
01:13:08,800 --> 01:13:14,719
Speaker 1: I saw that disclaimer. Thank god. Yeah yeah. So prior

1398
01:13:14,720 --> 01:13:17,360
Speaker 1: to the Trump years, Tommy had spent his whole political life,

1399
01:13:17,400 --> 01:13:20,280
Speaker 1: such as it was, is very much a fringe figure. Um,

1400
01:13:20,320 --> 01:13:24,360
Speaker 1: but he exploded in at least international popularity in two thousands,

1401
01:13:24,360 --> 01:13:27,240
Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen. His Facebook page hit more than a

1402
01:13:27,280 --> 01:13:29,280
Speaker 1: million followers, and for months he was able to use

1403
01:13:29,320 --> 01:13:33,040
Speaker 1: it to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. Donations.

1404
01:13:33,160 --> 01:13:35,439
Speaker 1: He was also very active on Twitter, tweeting this on

1405
01:13:35,479 --> 01:13:38,720
Speaker 1: the anniversary of the seven seven train bombings. Where was

1406
01:13:38,760 --> 01:13:41,120
Speaker 1: the day of rage? After the terrorist attacks? All I

1407
01:13:41,160 --> 01:13:45,040
Speaker 1: saw was lighting candles. Um, it's called a memorial, dickhead,

1408
01:13:45,160 --> 01:13:49,960
Speaker 1: It's called a memorial tickeats Just how crass? Like, Yeah,

1409
01:13:50,680 --> 01:13:53,280
Speaker 1: you know, like the seven seven bombings and and also

1410
01:13:53,360 --> 01:13:56,360
Speaker 1: the bombings in Manchester where they those fucking jhad is

1411
01:13:56,400 --> 01:13:58,679
Speaker 1: like killed our children, you know, like in this country

1412
01:13:59,120 --> 01:14:01,040
Speaker 1: it was disgusting. Do you think we're going to smash

1413
01:14:01,040 --> 01:14:03,880
Speaker 1: the place up? No, Like, the correct response is to

1414
01:14:03,880 --> 01:14:07,200
Speaker 1: have a candlelit vigil to pay respect. You know it's crazy. Yeah,

1415
01:14:07,280 --> 01:14:09,280
Speaker 1: it's yeah, and it's it's just it is a symbol

1416
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:11,320
Speaker 1: like what a gross guy he is that he's able

1417
01:14:11,360 --> 01:14:13,920
Speaker 1: to say, like, look at this horrible violence and be like,

1418
01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:15,960
Speaker 1: why wasn't why didn't we just do more violence in

1419
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:19,439
Speaker 1: the wake of it, because like that's that's not what

1420
01:14:19,600 --> 01:14:22,600
Speaker 1: sane people want. Yeah, let's let's gather and make a

1421
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:25,120
Speaker 1: really big problem for the police, which would then allow

1422
01:14:25,120 --> 01:14:27,320
Speaker 1: the jahaddies to get through even better. You know, like,

1423
01:14:27,760 --> 01:14:30,400
Speaker 1: I don't think he thinks half the time he says stuff.

1424
01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:32,240
Speaker 1: You know, I really don't even think that he's Like

1425
01:14:32,720 --> 01:14:34,920
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he's good, but sometimes it doesn't. It

1426
01:14:34,960 --> 01:14:37,439
Speaker 1: comes from a place of just not even thinking like

1427
01:14:37,520 --> 01:14:40,840
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that

1428
01:14:41,000 --> 01:14:45,240
Speaker 1: that I would say, that's fair. Um So Tommy ship

1429
01:14:45,360 --> 01:14:48,040
Speaker 1: talking eventually led to a very real tragedy in two

1430
01:14:47,960 --> 01:14:50,599
Speaker 1: thoen early two thousand and eighteen, a man named Darren

1431
01:14:50,640 --> 01:14:53,080
Speaker 1: Osborne drove a rented truck into a crowd of Muslims

1432
01:14:53,080 --> 01:14:56,960
Speaker 1: outside of the Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one. Osborne's journey

1433
01:14:57,080 --> 01:14:59,559
Speaker 1: to radicalization had started a few months earlier when he

1434
01:14:59,560 --> 01:15:02,800
Speaker 1: watched it BBC drama about the Rockdale sex grooming gang.

1435
01:15:03,240 --> 01:15:05,400
Speaker 1: He went online to learn more and he found Tommy

1436
01:15:05,479 --> 01:15:08,320
Speaker 1: Robinson's writing about the sex grooming gangs and his social

1437
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:11,479
Speaker 1: media accounts. Osbourne signed up for Robinson's newsletter and is

1438
01:15:11,479 --> 01:15:14,160
Speaker 1: suspected to have indirectly quoted Robinson in the note he

1439
01:15:14,160 --> 01:15:17,600
Speaker 1: wrote out before the attack. Mark Rowley, the Assistant Commissioner

1440
01:15:17,600 --> 01:15:20,320
Speaker 1: of the Metropolitan Police, said that there was no doubt

1441
01:15:20,360 --> 01:15:23,479
Speaker 1: that material posted by Tommy Robinson contributed to the attack,

1442
01:15:23,800 --> 01:15:27,400
Speaker 1: saying of Osborne's rapid radicalization, he had grown to hate Muslims,

1443
01:15:27,479 --> 01:15:29,879
Speaker 1: largely due to his consumption of large amounts of online

1444
01:15:29,920 --> 01:15:33,240
Speaker 1: far right material, including as evidenced at court statements from

1445
01:15:33,280 --> 01:15:36,400
Speaker 1: former e d L leader Tommy Robinson, Brittain First and others.

1446
01:15:37,400 --> 01:15:40,120
Speaker 1: So and this guy, like this was a dude who

1447
01:15:40,320 --> 01:15:41,680
Speaker 1: was in a very bad place in life. I think

1448
01:15:41,720 --> 01:15:44,120
Speaker 1: he was addicted to drugs at this point he lost

1449
01:15:44,160 --> 01:15:47,759
Speaker 1: his job. Like is that he's the kind of guy who,

1450
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:50,320
Speaker 1: you know, most of the people Tommy preaches too are

1451
01:15:50,320 --> 01:15:53,080
Speaker 1: gonna want to show up to get into fist fights. Um,

1452
01:15:53,720 --> 01:15:55,639
Speaker 1: this is a guy who decided to drive a truck

1453
01:15:55,640 --> 01:15:58,280
Speaker 1: at sipp. It was a really weird one actually, because

1454
01:15:58,560 --> 01:16:01,400
Speaker 1: like from what I at the time, I mean, correct

1455
01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:02,960
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there were

1456
01:16:03,000 --> 01:16:05,200
Speaker 1: people saying like he wasn't really he wasn't even like

1457
01:16:05,200 --> 01:16:08,320
Speaker 1: a racist guy like he'd show. No, he just got

1458
01:16:08,439 --> 01:16:12,840
Speaker 1: radicalized so quickly. Yeah, it sounds like he was like

1459
01:16:14,200 --> 01:16:17,559
Speaker 1: either drunk or on drugs and like depressed one night

1460
01:16:17,600 --> 01:16:20,240
Speaker 1: and watches this documentary and it enrages him and he

1461
01:16:20,320 --> 01:16:22,640
Speaker 1: just like falls down a rabbit hole and decides, like

1462
01:16:22,680 --> 01:16:24,559
Speaker 1: really within a couple of weeks to carry out an

1463
01:16:24,560 --> 01:16:30,280
Speaker 1: attack literally rapid, yeah, really rapid process. Crazy. So so

1464
01:16:30,360 --> 01:16:32,760
Speaker 1: lucky that he didn't do more damage, you know, I mean,

1465
01:16:32,760 --> 01:16:35,280
Speaker 1: like one guy, you know, God rest his soul. He died,

1466
01:16:35,640 --> 01:16:38,479
Speaker 1: but like funk, that was lucky that he didn't know.

1467
01:16:38,479 --> 01:16:39,840
Speaker 1: It could have been a lot worse could have been,

1468
01:16:40,760 --> 01:16:45,920
Speaker 1: so thankfully it was. Yeah, it was not more dead. Um. Now. Obviously,

1469
01:16:46,000 --> 01:16:49,240
Speaker 1: journalists reported on this and Tommy's rolling it. Tommy collected

1470
01:16:49,280 --> 01:16:51,719
Speaker 1: their information and tweeted out their names and social media

1471
01:16:51,720 --> 01:16:54,600
Speaker 1: accounts to his followers. Several reporters received death threats as

1472
01:16:54,640 --> 01:16:57,080
Speaker 1: a result of this. Tommy got messy enough with his

1473
01:16:57,160 --> 01:16:59,160
Speaker 1: social media and the way he phrased things that by

1474
01:16:59,160 --> 01:17:01,479
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand eighteen, he'd been kicked off

1475
01:17:01,479 --> 01:17:04,639
Speaker 1: of every major platform, as well as PayPal for massive

1476
01:17:04,720 --> 01:17:08,000
Speaker 1: and constant violations of their terms of service. He reported

1477
01:17:08,040 --> 01:17:10,120
Speaker 1: at this point that his income had fallen off by

1478
01:17:10,160 --> 01:17:14,760
Speaker 1: seventy Now, like most right wing provocateurs in the same situation,

1479
01:17:14,800 --> 01:17:17,639
Speaker 1: Tommy has attempted to rebrand himself now as a free

1480
01:17:17,720 --> 01:17:21,040
Speaker 1: speech crusader. His last post on Twitter before being banned

1481
01:17:21,160 --> 01:17:23,240
Speaker 1: was the truth has to be told. I can't do

1482
01:17:23,280 --> 01:17:26,000
Speaker 1: it without you. After he was banned, he held a

1483
01:17:26,080 --> 01:17:28,639
Speaker 1: Day for Freedom march on Downing Street with a Breitbart

1484
01:17:28,720 --> 01:17:32,760
Speaker 1: London editor and Milo Yanopolis. Now Breitbart, I should note,

1485
01:17:32,800 --> 01:17:35,040
Speaker 1: also received a lot of funding from the Mercer family,

1486
01:17:35,520 --> 01:17:38,320
Speaker 1: so did the US based think tank the Middle East Forum,

1487
01:17:38,439 --> 01:17:42,040
Speaker 1: which curiously enough has fronted Tommy's legal bills for his

1488
01:17:42,280 --> 01:17:44,960
Speaker 1: you know, illegally filming defendants in a court case and

1489
01:17:45,040 --> 01:17:47,639
Speaker 1: nearly getting child molesters off on a technicality things. Let's

1490
01:17:47,640 --> 01:17:49,800
Speaker 1: who's paying for his legal bills right now is the

1491
01:17:49,840 --> 01:17:52,479
Speaker 1: Middle East Forum, which is backed by the Mercers, who

1492
01:17:52,520 --> 01:17:56,840
Speaker 1: also backed Rebel Media. UM. Now, it's unclear exactly how

1493
01:17:56,920 --> 01:17:59,240
Speaker 1: much money Tommy made off of his grift before the

1494
01:17:59,280 --> 01:18:01,760
Speaker 1: crowdfunding part of it dried up, and it's unclear if

1495
01:18:01,760 --> 01:18:04,919
Speaker 1: he's still receiving money directly from people like the mercers.

1496
01:18:05,560 --> 01:18:07,800
Speaker 1: We do know that earlier this year he put his

1497
01:18:07,840 --> 01:18:10,559
Speaker 1: one point eight million dollar house up for sale. The

1498
01:18:10,600 --> 01:18:14,080
Speaker 1: BBC reported that real estate agencies agency pictures showed a

1499
01:18:14,200 --> 01:18:16,160
Speaker 1: range rover in the driveway, a hot tub in the

1500
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:19,519
Speaker 1: garden and a TV above the bath. So he did

1501
01:18:19,640 --> 01:18:21,599
Speaker 1: very well for a time, although the fact that it's

1502
01:18:21,600 --> 01:18:25,559
Speaker 1: all on sale now suggests that maybe he overspent um

1503
01:18:25,600 --> 01:18:27,439
Speaker 1: and his you know, I he might be broke at

1504
01:18:27,439 --> 01:18:30,559
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, he's just moving, you know what I mean,

1505
01:18:30,800 --> 01:18:34,640
Speaker 1: He's just fucking moving. He just needs more yeah, or

1506
01:18:34,680 --> 01:18:37,040
Speaker 1: he needs more coke and it's really expensive when you're

1507
01:18:37,040 --> 01:18:40,880
Speaker 1: in jail. Um in July to nineteen is a result

1508
01:18:40,880 --> 01:18:43,320
Speaker 1: of a second to legal court filming arrest and violation

1509
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:46,479
Speaker 1: of his suspended sentence. Tommy Robinson was sentenced to another

1510
01:18:46,560 --> 01:18:49,320
Speaker 1: nine months in prison. Before his sentencing, he sent out

1511
01:18:49,360 --> 01:18:52,000
Speaker 1: this plea to President Trump. I feel I am two

1512
01:18:52,080 --> 01:18:54,120
Speaker 1: days away from being sentenced to death in the UK

1513
01:18:54,320 --> 01:18:57,240
Speaker 1: for journalism today, I call on Donald Trump, his administration

1514
01:18:57,280 --> 01:18:59,360
Speaker 1: and the Republican Party to grant me and my family

1515
01:18:59,400 --> 01:19:04,479
Speaker 1: political asylum in the USA. He thought. He was like yeah,

1516
01:19:04,600 --> 01:19:08,240
Speaker 1: like Bobby Sands, you know, he really believed that he

1517
01:19:08,280 --> 01:19:10,760
Speaker 1: was this political prisoner. He had a fucking T shirt on.

1518
01:19:11,200 --> 01:19:13,280
Speaker 1: I saw it on social media and it said the

1519
01:19:13,439 --> 01:19:19,639
Speaker 1: UK is North Korea basically like okay, it's a prison.

1520
01:19:20,920 --> 01:19:24,559
Speaker 1: And then suddenly the uker like it was bonkers man,

1521
01:19:24,680 --> 01:19:30,840
Speaker 1: and he said like convicted for journalism, like convicted so good,

1522
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 1: Like he really went like he just jumped the shark,

1523
01:19:34,000 --> 01:19:37,240
Speaker 1: like he became this fucking like like I don't know,

1524
01:19:37,400 --> 01:19:39,519
Speaker 1: just the caricature of himself, you know what I mean.

1525
01:19:40,040 --> 01:19:41,360
Speaker 1: And it's the kind of thing if they were the

1526
01:19:41,439 --> 01:19:45,360
Speaker 1: slightest bit of doubt in anyone's mind that he like,

1527
01:19:45,360 --> 01:19:47,880
Speaker 1: like if he had been a little bit smarter about

1528
01:19:47,880 --> 01:19:50,479
Speaker 1: how he got in trouble or something, he might have

1529
01:19:50,520 --> 01:19:52,360
Speaker 1: gotten a response from the President. But it was just

1530
01:19:52,400 --> 01:19:54,600
Speaker 1: like so obvious that he know, you just committed a

1531
01:19:54,640 --> 01:19:57,320
Speaker 1: crime and you're doing time for the crime you committed,

1532
01:19:57,400 --> 01:20:01,519
Speaker 1: like even Donald Trump didn't want any part of And

1533
01:20:01,680 --> 01:20:05,280
Speaker 1: when you're wearing a T shirt comparing like America's biggest

1534
01:20:05,280 --> 01:20:09,639
Speaker 1: ally to like, you know, the biggest dictatorship going like

1535
01:20:10,400 --> 01:20:15,120
Speaker 1: we like them now, oh yeah, right, special friend, he

1536
01:20:15,200 --> 01:20:20,360
Speaker 1: might change his mind in ten minutes. So yeah, now, Jake,

1537
01:20:21,160 --> 01:20:23,320
Speaker 1: that would be a nice fun note to end on

1538
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:26,800
Speaker 1: Tommy going to jail. But rather than that, I think

1539
01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:29,320
Speaker 1: I'm going to close out with this footage I found

1540
01:20:29,320 --> 01:20:31,960
Speaker 1: in an article by the Independent of Tommy Robinson that

1541
01:20:32,000 --> 01:20:35,160
Speaker 1: he apparently filmed himself of himself on vacation in Italy

1542
01:20:35,479 --> 01:20:39,760
Speaker 1: on what appears to be an enormous amount of cocaine. Um,

1543
01:20:39,800 --> 01:20:43,040
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna watch this video and I need

1544
01:20:43,040 --> 01:20:45,760
Speaker 1: my my listeners should know that in the UK, the

1545
01:20:45,800 --> 01:20:50,400
Speaker 1: word gear is slang for drugs. Yeah, yeah, so I

1546
01:20:50,439 --> 01:20:52,519
Speaker 1: just sent you the link. Why don't you click that

1547
01:20:52,760 --> 01:20:56,799
Speaker 1: and and play it. The thumbnail is already just gold.

1548
01:20:58,280 --> 01:21:01,120
Speaker 1: It's just like a big like shot. He looks like

1549
01:21:01,120 --> 01:21:04,080
Speaker 1: a shouting baald baby and the thumbnail pick like he's

1550
01:21:04,080 --> 01:21:06,639
Speaker 1: got a head like a bowling ball with like geel

1551
01:21:06,680 --> 01:21:10,519
Speaker 1: on it. Okay, come on, let me watch this. Let's see.

1552
01:21:10,600 --> 01:21:15,920
Speaker 1: Let's see Stephen you actually Lennon, Yeah, okay, I've got it.

1553
01:21:15,920 --> 01:21:21,519
Speaker 1: Contain some foul language, yeah, true, does move because me

1554
01:21:21,600 --> 01:21:23,080
Speaker 1: coming to and this's what me I'm going to look

1555
01:21:23,280 --> 01:21:25,439
Speaker 1: gonna punch your head kick in the faith, because I

1556
01:21:25,439 --> 01:21:28,360
Speaker 1: am the king of the whole ways. Like race, no

1557
01:21:28,360 --> 01:21:31,920
Speaker 1: matter where I've gone in the world, I score. Oh

1558
01:21:31,920 --> 01:21:33,720
Speaker 1: so it's not as soon as we're getting this pub

1559
01:21:34,160 --> 01:21:37,519
Speaker 1: I'm gonna record it for you. I've gone to I've

1560
01:21:37,560 --> 01:21:40,240
Speaker 1: gone to guitar pup, I've got to do the school

1561
01:21:40,280 --> 01:21:44,360
Speaker 1: gear of the Seste. While they will praying I've gone everywhere, everywhere,

1562
01:21:44,400 --> 01:21:46,000
Speaker 1: everything I've gone to. When we went to Germany for

1563
01:21:46,040 --> 01:21:51,040
Speaker 1: the World Cup, I was like saying that that's intended.

1564
01:21:51,479 --> 01:21:54,960
Speaker 1: He's just I can almost feel the sweat on his forehead.

1565
01:21:55,360 --> 01:22:01,880
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you can smell him in that video. Yeah,

1566
01:22:01,920 --> 01:22:05,599
Speaker 1: he's clearly been like he's clearly done enough cocaine that

1567
01:22:05,680 --> 01:22:08,360
Speaker 1: it would probably have killed someone who hasn't been eating

1568
01:22:08,400 --> 01:22:10,960
Speaker 1: cocaine every week for the last week. He's the guy,

1569
01:22:11,280 --> 01:22:13,600
Speaker 1: you know. You see him at like three am and

1570
01:22:13,600 --> 01:22:15,360
Speaker 1: you're like, right, lads, were going in and he's the

1571
01:22:15,400 --> 01:22:17,479
Speaker 1: guy that you don't even know. He's like, come on, boys,

1572
01:22:17,520 --> 01:22:19,400
Speaker 1: come on, boys, just haven't ever drink. And you're like, mate,

1573
01:22:20,120 --> 01:22:22,679
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, get a taxi man.

1574
01:22:23,200 --> 01:22:26,160
Speaker 1: Good god. Yeah, he's really well. I didn't even know

1575
01:22:26,160 --> 01:22:29,920
Speaker 1: about this. I'm so glad I found this. Yeah, yeah,

1576
01:22:30,400 --> 01:22:34,200
Speaker 1: I incredible. Yeah he played. He talks about starting a

1577
01:22:34,240 --> 01:22:37,200
Speaker 1: world war. Uh and yeah you get him like talking

1578
01:22:37,200 --> 01:22:39,559
Speaker 1: about how he wants to go fight for Israel if

1579
01:22:39,560 --> 01:22:44,160
Speaker 1: there's a war. Bet tweet Israel so I love. He

1580
01:22:44,240 --> 01:22:47,840
Speaker 1: says I'm the king of the whole Islam race. Do

1581
01:22:47,920 --> 01:22:54,479
Speaker 1: you mean and then bragging about buying drugs in Doha

1582
01:22:55,720 --> 01:22:58,320
Speaker 1: school anywhere. Mate, Oh man, like you would go to

1583
01:22:58,400 --> 01:23:00,280
Speaker 1: jail for so long if they caught him doing that.

1584
01:23:00,439 --> 01:23:02,519
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he would never he would never see the

1585
01:23:02,520 --> 01:23:08,639
Speaker 1: bottom of that whole. It's one of those things like yeah, yeah, yeah,

1586
01:23:08,720 --> 01:23:12,200
Speaker 1: we call it like gap like they call it gack.

1587
01:23:12,280 --> 01:23:14,240
Speaker 1: He's a fucking gackhead, you know what I mean. Like

1588
01:23:14,280 --> 01:23:17,040
Speaker 1: he's clearly a big coke head. He does a lot

1589
01:23:17,080 --> 01:23:19,960
Speaker 1: of like I think one of like Laurens Southern or

1590
01:23:20,000 --> 01:23:22,560
Speaker 1: one of them ones like we're saying recently in a

1591
01:23:22,680 --> 01:23:25,280
Speaker 1: letter that like he's just been fucking no actually might

1592
01:23:25,320 --> 01:23:27,360
Speaker 1: have been. I don't know. One of them was just

1593
01:23:27,400 --> 01:23:29,320
Speaker 1: saying that, like they know for a fact that he

1594
01:23:29,400 --> 01:23:31,840
Speaker 1: just gets fucking high on cooke all the time from

1595
01:23:31,840 --> 01:23:34,400
Speaker 1: all the donations he gets, you know, and it's so

1596
01:23:34,479 --> 01:23:37,000
Speaker 1: expensive in England, like cocaine is like I don't even know,

1597
01:23:37,080 --> 01:23:41,400
Speaker 1: like what I don't know, like sixty pounds seventy pounds

1598
01:23:41,439 --> 01:23:44,280
Speaker 1: of Graham, you know. So it's a lot of money.

1599
01:23:44,439 --> 01:23:47,719
Speaker 1: So yeah, he must be really off, is not. Yeah,

1600
01:23:47,760 --> 01:23:50,040
Speaker 1: I think he's spent I think he made hundreds of

1601
01:23:50,080 --> 01:23:52,360
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds and I think he's spent the bulk

1602
01:23:52,400 --> 01:23:59,400
Speaker 1: of it on keeping his nose fair, wouldn't. Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, which,

1603
01:23:59,439 --> 01:24:01,400
Speaker 1: you know, if a guy like Tommy Robinson is going

1604
01:24:01,439 --> 01:24:05,360
Speaker 1: to spend money on something, poisoning himself with cocaine is

1605
01:24:05,439 --> 01:24:08,760
Speaker 1: not the worst way he could spend the money. Um.

1606
01:24:08,800 --> 01:24:11,040
Speaker 1: And it's not like if if if I had to

1607
01:24:11,120 --> 01:24:14,160
Speaker 1: choose where all of those right wing grifters dollars should go,

1608
01:24:15,120 --> 01:24:18,680
Speaker 1: some random coke dealer probably better than them continuing to

1609
01:24:18,720 --> 01:24:21,960
Speaker 1: have the money. So yeah, I mean it's got to

1610
01:24:21,960 --> 01:24:25,160
Speaker 1: be better than like you're going to rebel or ship

1611
01:24:25,280 --> 01:24:28,120
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's either that or they spend

1612
01:24:28,120 --> 01:24:30,880
Speaker 1: it on funding some armed militia in the U s

1613
01:24:30,960 --> 01:24:35,360
Speaker 1: or whatever. I'll let it go to a coke dealer. Um.

1614
01:24:35,400 --> 01:24:39,200
Speaker 1: So this episode is dedicated to Tommy Robinson's coke dealer.

1615
01:24:42,880 --> 01:24:46,320
Speaker 1: Real hero of the story. Now, Jake, Uh, we're at

1616
01:24:46,360 --> 01:24:48,439
Speaker 1: the end of the episode and you have a very

1617
01:24:48,479 --> 01:24:50,960
Speaker 1: special thing to plug, not just Popular Front, but this

1618
01:24:51,040 --> 01:24:54,519
Speaker 1: fundraiser that you are currently running for it. Yeah man, thanks,

1619
01:24:54,640 --> 01:24:57,519
Speaker 1: um so yeah, so so my my platform, Popular Front.

1620
01:24:57,560 --> 01:25:02,519
Speaker 1: It's it's grassroots journalism, conflict journalism, independent And right now

1621
01:25:02,560 --> 01:25:07,440
Speaker 1: we're trying to raise ten grands, ten thousand pounds because basically,

1622
01:25:08,000 --> 01:25:12,320
Speaker 1: we all our our equipment is fucked. Um. We you know,

1623
01:25:12,360 --> 01:25:13,840
Speaker 1: we just don't have a lot of money to do

1624
01:25:13,880 --> 01:25:15,599
Speaker 1: anything with it the minute. So we want to raise

1625
01:25:15,640 --> 01:25:18,439
Speaker 1: ten grand to like buy new equipment, make everything more

1626
01:25:18,479 --> 01:25:21,760
Speaker 1: efficient and certainly like the rate of which Popular Front

1627
01:25:21,840 --> 01:25:24,960
Speaker 1: is growing, which is rapid, I can I need some

1628
01:25:25,000 --> 01:25:27,800
Speaker 1: money to just go hey, like you know, bring people

1629
01:25:27,800 --> 01:25:29,280
Speaker 1: on board or whatever. So yeah, so we're trying to

1630
01:25:29,360 --> 01:25:32,320
Speaker 1: raise ten grands to make more content um and put

1631
01:25:32,320 --> 01:25:34,719
Speaker 1: it out quicker basically, So if you go to um

1632
01:25:35,000 --> 01:25:39,000
Speaker 1: popular Front dot ceo slash ten k, you can get

1633
01:25:39,000 --> 01:25:42,360
Speaker 1: involved there. And what Popular Front does that I think

1634
01:25:42,479 --> 01:25:44,519
Speaker 1: is so valuable. I mean, number one, you guys put

1635
01:25:44,560 --> 01:25:46,760
Speaker 1: out a lot of or gea I should say at

1636
01:25:46,760 --> 01:25:50,720
Speaker 1: this point put out a lot of of really interesting

1637
01:25:51,200 --> 01:25:54,400
Speaker 1: content and valuable work at a very quick race, considering

1638
01:25:54,439 --> 01:25:56,599
Speaker 1: like what a what a shoe string you currently harbor

1639
01:25:56,680 --> 01:26:00,759
Speaker 1: it on, And I can say that, like my other podcast,

1640
01:26:00,800 --> 01:26:02,760
Speaker 1: it could happen here, like a good number of the

1641
01:26:02,800 --> 01:26:04,960
Speaker 1: things that the details that I included when I was

1642
01:26:05,000 --> 01:26:07,960
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out like what a hypothetical US

1643
01:26:08,000 --> 01:26:10,040
Speaker 1: civil war would be, Like we're based on things that

1644
01:26:10,080 --> 01:26:12,040
Speaker 1: I heard about in episodes of Popular Front, like that

1645
01:26:12,080 --> 01:26:15,479
Speaker 1: episode you did UM talking about like drone warfare and stuff,

1646
01:26:15,520 --> 01:26:18,960
Speaker 1: and like how um much that's evolved in like Syria

1647
01:26:19,040 --> 01:26:21,040
Speaker 1: with all these like off the shelf drones, Like there's

1648
01:26:21,160 --> 01:26:25,880
Speaker 1: UM the it's really important work. Like it's not just

1649
01:26:26,439 --> 01:26:30,639
Speaker 1: um like most war journalism UM it's either like too

1650
01:26:30,680 --> 01:26:36,000
Speaker 1: broad to be super useful UM or it focuses entirely

1651
01:26:36,040 --> 01:26:38,880
Speaker 1: on the stuff that uh, I don't know is like

1652
01:26:38,960 --> 01:26:41,680
Speaker 1: what some editor sitting in an office thinks is going

1653
01:26:41,720 --> 01:26:45,879
Speaker 1: to get clicks UM. And I think Popular Front provide

1654
01:26:45,920 --> 01:26:50,360
Speaker 1: like it's way more interesting and provides really critical context

1655
01:26:50,400 --> 01:26:53,519
Speaker 1: on like how war is evolving in this this decade

1656
01:26:53,520 --> 01:26:55,680
Speaker 1: that we're in. So I think what you're doing is

1657
01:26:55,720 --> 01:27:01,559
Speaker 1: greatly from human and yeah, that's that's definitely what we do.

1658
01:27:01,600 --> 01:27:04,080
Speaker 1: You know, we focus on the very nice things and

1659
01:27:04,240 --> 01:27:06,760
Speaker 1: we go into the detail that, like you said, the

1660
01:27:06,800 --> 01:27:09,839
Speaker 1: commissioner at the big legacy media won't allow their journalists

1661
01:27:09,840 --> 01:27:12,960
Speaker 1: to do no, no, they're gonna want another story about

1662
01:27:13,040 --> 01:27:17,479
Speaker 1: some isis guy. Um yeah, and uh yeah, so um

1663
01:27:17,520 --> 01:27:20,840
Speaker 1: you know you you do good work. Um, donate to

1664
01:27:20,880 --> 01:27:25,599
Speaker 1: Popular Front listeners. Unlike Tommy Robinson, Jake will not spend

1665
01:27:25,640 --> 01:27:34,240
Speaker 1: your money on cocaine. Yeah. Yeah, it's a a good cause. Um,

1666
01:27:34,280 --> 01:27:38,560
Speaker 1: there's a reason, you know, I went with you to Syria. Um,

1667
01:27:38,640 --> 01:27:40,840
Speaker 1: we had a great fucking time. Then we we did

1668
01:27:40,840 --> 01:27:42,400
Speaker 1: have a great fun time. It's gonna be a great

1669
01:27:42,400 --> 01:27:49,200
Speaker 1: fucking podcast. Yeah. So uh donate to Popular Front. And um, Jake,

1670
01:27:49,240 --> 01:27:51,599
Speaker 1: where can they find you on on the on the twits,

1671
01:27:52,040 --> 01:27:55,880
Speaker 1: the grams, the Twinstagrams. Yeah, so Twitter, I'm active on their,

1672
01:27:56,120 --> 01:27:59,960
Speaker 1: Um it's at Jake Underscore hand r hand which is

1673
01:28:00,280 --> 01:28:04,839
Speaker 1: h A n A h A n uh. And then Instagram.

1674
01:28:04,840 --> 01:28:06,320
Speaker 1: I don't have a personal one, but we're on the

1675
01:28:06,479 --> 01:28:10,920
Speaker 1: Popular Front Popular Front dot no sorry Instagram. The Instagram

1676
01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:15,880
Speaker 1: is at popular dot front. And when Jake says h

1677
01:28:16,040 --> 01:28:18,840
Speaker 1: he means, h fellow American, I don't know. I think

1678
01:28:19,240 --> 01:28:24,439
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think I do. UM, I'm

1679
01:28:24,520 --> 01:28:26,760
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. You can find this podcast on mind the

1680
01:28:26,760 --> 01:28:29,080
Speaker 1: bast dot com or we'll have all these sources for

1681
01:28:29,080 --> 01:28:33,200
Speaker 1: this episode. If you want to watch Tommy Robinson uh

1682
01:28:33,600 --> 01:28:37,200
Speaker 1: on a lot of cocaine for yourself. Um, you can

1683
01:28:37,200 --> 01:28:39,400
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pod.

1684
01:28:39,680 --> 01:28:42,240
Speaker 1: Buy t shirts at Behind the Bast or at the

1685
01:28:42,320 --> 01:28:45,960
Speaker 1: t Public and yeah, these shirts. Shirts are good. Everybody

1686
01:28:46,000 --> 01:28:50,479
Speaker 1: loves a shirt. Um, that's the episode. Go fucking uh,

1687
01:28:50,640 --> 01:28:53,439
Speaker 1: you know, go listen to Popular Front or pett a

1688
01:28:53,479 --> 01:28:59,000
Speaker 1: cat Um ideally both both. All right, that's the episode, Jake,