Tommy Robinson

UK Breitbart’s Kassam on Tommy Robinson vs. Quilliam, ”shows establishment’s grip on political narratives slipping…….


Kassam weighs in on Tommy’s recent run in with the Quilliam Foundation, and his subsequent knockdown victory.

KASSAM: Tommy Robinson vs. Quilliam Shows How the Establishment’s Grip on Political Narratives is Slipping

I first interviewed former English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) in September 2015.

The interview was panned by leftists and lauded by rightists. No surprises there. But the left was upset I did not interrupt Tommy at every possible juncture to throw baseless accusations at him. The difference between me and them was,  I had studied Tommy in depth and had understood the English Defence League (EDL), its rise, its decline, and how Tommy had got in trouble all along the way. I didn’t need to deploy whattaboutery to get a good interview. I just needed to let him talk. No one else ever had.

[…]

He noted this, in his tour de force interview on the BBC’s Daily Politics this week, where he squared off against Haras Rafiq from Quilliam, after Tommy and his Rebel Media cameraman entered the Quilliam offices to demand answers as to why one of their researchers, Julia Ebner, had tied him to “white supremacy”.

 

For a man like Tommy, the supremacist argument is a particularly galling one. He has spent his life seeking to achieve simple parity, and has done it walking alongside former Muslims, black people, brown people, whomever would listen and whomever would stand next to him knowing full well they were as likely to appear in the Guardian the next day as they were to receiving a right hook to the face as a result.

 

Ebner, however, is your classic spoiled establishment type, having studied at the London School of Economics, and worked her way up to Quilliam via various “consulting” and research gigs for the likes of the European Institute for Asian Studies — a European Union-backed institution. What would she, who was a volunteer “German tutor for Austrian high school students with migration background” just five years ago, know about life in Luton? Or Rotherham? Or Oldham? Or Dewsbury? I could keep going.

 

The answer is: nothing.

 

More here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.