'My support will be stronger than ever ... either way I win,' activist said before sentencing
Tommy Robinson has described being jailed for contempt of court as a “win” after appealing for more money from supporters.
Despite claiming he would be killed in prison and appealing publicly for asylum in the US, Robinson said that imprisoning him would be “the best thing [judges] can do for our cause”.
The anti-Islam activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, received hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations and a surge in international support after being jailed last year.
Robinson was freed when the Court of Appeal quashed the case because of procedural failings in August, but High Court judges found he had committed contempt following a re-hearing last week.
In a video filmed ahead of his sentencing on Thursday, he said: “I genuinely believe that the best thing they can do for our cause is send me to jail.”
“You’ve added more support for me and for my cause,” Robinson added, addressing judges who considered the case.
“Depending what decision you make on Thursday, my support will be stronger than ever … either way I win.”
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The Russian foreign ministry has commented on his current case, with a spokesperson telling the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper it was “watching the situation” and suggesting that Robinson had been prosecuted for his “political convictions”.
High-profile figures including Donald Trump Jr, Steve Bannon, Dutch populist Geert Wilders and internet personalities associated with the global far right flocked to Robinson’s cause last year, while the US ambassador for international religious freedom lobbied the British government over the case.
Julia Ebner, a research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said Robinson had been able to “frame himself as a martyr and political prisoner” in countries without comparable contempt of court laws.
“During the case he has been able to gain both attention and money, which has allowed him to catapult his messages to a much wider audience around the world,” she told The Independent.
“He is very skilful at framing any outcome as him being the victim of a corrupt elite.”
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The Society of Editors has responded to Robinson's claim that he was "convicted of journalism", referring to the slogan he wore on a T-shirt as he arrived at court, saying it was a "dangerous distortion of the truth".
Executive director Ian Murray said that Robinson had broken the law by ignoring the laws of contempt that any junior reporter working for a reputable news provider would be aware of.
He said: "While anyone can claim to be a journalist in this country, and there is no appetite nor should there be for the licensing of journalists in the UK, the mainstream British media adheres to the laws of the land, is correctly regulated and ensures its journalists are highly trained.
"I am not aware that Robinson has any formal training as a journalist, and to claim his trial and sentencing is an attack of journalism itself is a farce.
"Sadly there are people who wish to see the media in the UK emasculated and these sorts of claims are so obviously unfounded they provide ammunition to attack us with."
Exclusive: Sharp increase in concern comes in wake of atrocities in Pittsburgh and Christchurch
The British public now sees far-right groups as a greater threat to public order than Islamist extremists, a new poll has revealed.
For the first time in recent years, a regular poll for the campaign group Hope Not Hate (HNH) found that more people named the nationalist and anti-immigrant groups of the far right as their biggest public order worry.
Some 33 per cent named far-right groups or organisations as the “biggest threat to community cohesion and public order”, up from 28 per cent when the same question was asked in February. Over the same period, the proportion naming Islamist extremist groups as the biggest threat declined by 35 per cent to 28 per cent.
The polling – seen exclusively by The Independent – forms part of HNH’s annual Fear And Hope report, due for publication on Tuesday. The study comes just days after the jailing of Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, for contempt of court after he breached reporting restrictions by filming suspects in a child sex grooming trial.
Hope Not Hate’s senior policy officer Rosie Carter said: “The turnaround in views on which groups pose a threat has happened in a very short period of time.”
Ms Carter said the shift in sentiment may have resulted from the relative scarcity of large-scale Islamist attacks on British soil at a time when media headlines worldwide have been grabbed by far-right atrocities like the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings last October and the murder spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
At the same time, far-right nationalistic and racist material has become increasingly visible on social media, drawing more people’s attention to a problem which had slipped below the radar for some years. “There is a growing sense of danger linked to these groups, and it’s not just a preoccupation of liberals,” said Ms Carter.
“Home Office data from this year shows there were more convictions of white people for terrorism-related offences than any other ethnicity. MI5 director general Andrew Parker and Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick recently spoke about the rise in far-right activity as a real threat.”
Concern about the far right was greatest among communities who feel under threat from such organisations, with 57 per cent of Jewish respondents and 62 per cent of Muslims naming them as the biggest worry. People with more conservative social values were less likely to see the far right as a problem. Just 3 per cent of people who regard Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – favourably and 18 per cent of those who voted Conservative in 2017 consider the far right the greatest threat.
The poll suggested that the far right’s shift from outright racial nationalism to an “identity politics” approach has struck a chord with large numbers of voters who support such groups’ anti-Muslim messages, anti-elite populism and complaints of being denied their right to free speech.
Just as many people strongly agreed with the proposition that “discrimination against white people has become as big a problem as discrimination against non-white people” as strongly agreed that discrimination against ethnic minorities remained more significant.
A huge 44 per cent agreed Islam poses a threat to western civilisation; 31 per cent thought Islam poses a threat to the British way of life; and 35 per cent believed there are no-go zones in Britain where sharia law dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter.
But the poll indicated most people draw a line at violence, putting groups like the EDL beyond the pale. Robinson was regarded very positively by just 2 per cent of those questioned, against 42 per cent who saw him in an “extremely negative” light.
Numbers who saw far-left groups as the biggest threat fell from 10 per cent to 8 per cent since February. And those who believed that none of these groups pose a threat rose sharply from 4 per cent to 16 per cent.
Far-right protests are attracting the largest number of supporters since the 1930s as Brexit fuels anger against the “elite”, a report has warned.
Research for the Commission for Countering Extremism, seen exclusively by The Independent, said tens of thousands of people have descended on London since the start of 2018 over Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment and delays to Britain’s departure from the EU.
Some “Free Tommy” protests spilled over into violent attacks on police officers, while “Brexit betrayal” marches saw demonstrators carry nooses and drag effigies of politicians through the streets.
A report by Dr Joe Mulhall, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, warned that “the inability of politicians to manage Brexit competently and decisively” was undermining faith in the political system.
“When people feel that the system is broken, they look outside of it and step into a political arena where the far right is able to capitalise on these fears, offering simplistic answers to complex problems,” the report said.
I think that there are certain 'push and pull factors'.
Push factors are personal characteristics that make a person particularly susceptible to radicalisation. For example, exclusion.
Pull factors like a strong sense of community emanating from extremist groups, a sense of something new, or the feeling of being part of something bigger for the first time, are as important as the push factors.
The growing threat from “extreme right-wing” terrorism will be included in official threat-level warnings for the first time, the home secretary has announced.
Until now, the alerts – which tell the public if the risk is low, substantial or critical – have taken into account the threat of attack from Islamists only.
The change follows growing recognition of the rising threat from the far-right, since the murder of 50 Muslims in Christchurch, in New Zealand, in March.
Abuse of female politicians is rife online - and much of it is being directed by established far-right groups and figures, a Newsnight investigation has found.
Female politicians across Europe have been targeted with threatening and misogynist content.
On both mainstream and fringe social media platforms, analysis of selected profiles found women in politics faced frequent comments targeting their gender, race and physical appearance.
According to Newsnight's investigation, which used comparative studies of politicians in the UK and Europe, the abuse aimed at female MPs exceeds that directed at their male counterparts, and differed in its focus and content.
Newsnight worked with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank that investigates online extremism and polarisation, to examine the nature and content of comments about prominent politicians across Europe.
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A man from Dublin has been charged with illegally importing firearms after 60 weapons were found in a car arriving in Dover from Calais.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the guns were found concealed in a Volkswagen Passat by the Border Force and NCA on Friday.
It is believed to be the largest seizure of lethal-purpose weapons at a UK port.
Robert Keogh, 37, is due to appear at Margate Magistrates' Court on Monday.
The NCA said "there's little doubt that these weapons would have gone on the criminal market and into the hands of seriously dangerous individuals".
It said its investigation into the seizure is ongoing.
Nick Drinkal, regional director of Border Force South East and Europe, said: "The actions of the officers involved in this event have undoubtedly saved many lives."
The Metropolitan police have circulated images of two men they are seeking in connection with an assault on an officer who was dragged to the ground and kicked in the head during a protest by supporters of Tommy Robinson.
The officer, a medic, was attacked when supporters of the jailed rightwing activist – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – tried to breach a police cordon and attack counter-protesters during the demonstration on Saturday afternoon, police said.
Video footage circulated on social media appears to show the moment the officer was dragged to the ground and surrounded by protesters. The incident was also captured on the officer’s body-worn camera. Police are now asking for the public’s help to identify two men they would like to speak to in connection with the attack.
He (Farage) also discussed Prince Harry and Meghan's relationship, claiming the "young, brave, boisterous, all-male" prince's popularity had plummeted since they met.
"Here was Harry, here he was this young, brave, boisterous, all-male, getting into trouble, turning up at stag parties inappropriately dressed, drinking too much and causing all sorts of mayhem," he said.
"And then - a brave British officer who did his bit in Afghanistan - he was the most popular royal of a younger generation that we've seen for 100 years.
"And then he met Meghan Markle, and it's fallen off a cliff."
He went on to discuss Prince Harry's remarks last month that he and Meghan plan to have no more than two children to help fight against climate change.
Mr Farage said the move was "irrelevant" because the "population of the globe is exploding" in areas including China and India.
His spokesman added that Mr Farage's comments were not delivered as part of a speech.
Mohammed Saleem was murdered by a terrorist, and yet you’ve probably never even heard of him. It was April 2013, and the 82-year-old was walking home from evening prayers at a mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham. A Ukrainian neo-Nazi terrorist – who had bombed three mosques – stabbed him three times from behind. “He was a very beautiful, educated man who empowered all of his five daughters – and his sons as well – to pursue education, and loved and appreciated everything Britain gave him,” says Maz Saleem, his daughter. “I’ve spent six years tirelessly campaigning for him to be recognised in a mainstream platform.”
Three weeks later, the murder of Lee Rigby by Islamist fundamentalists sparked national outrage and an emergency Cobra meeting: not so for Saleem. “It was brushed under the mat,” Maz tells me. Or what of Mushin Ahmed, an 81-year-old grandfather who was killed by two British racists in August 2015 as he walked to pray at a Rotherham mosque? As one of his assailants screamed that he was a “groomer”, he was kicked with such force that his dentures shattered and the imprint of a trainer was left in his face. Or what of a 32-year-old black man in east London who, in June 2018, had to crawl on his knees to the A12 to escape a racist attack: he’d been stabbed five times.
I was on the receiving end of an attack in the early hours of last Saturday: my friends were punched defending me and I suffered very minor injuries. But as a white man with a media platform, what happened to me garnered far more interest than the racist murders or serious hate crimes that have far worse consequences than bumped heads and bruises. The far right is emboldened, legitimised and ever more violent, and hate crimes are surging. When we discuss Islamist fundamentalist terrorists, we ask: who are the hate preachers radicalising them in mosques or the internet? We have yet to engage seriously in a similar debate about far-right terrorism for a simple reason: the hate preachers are mainstream politicians, commentators and media outlets.
Consider the scale of the threat. The far right has always had two principal enemies – minorities and the political left – and nothing has changed. Eight years ago, the Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Breivik slaughtered dozens of predominantly young socialists on the island of Utøya. His reason? The left’s anti-racism meant they were the driving force behind what he described as the “Islamisation” and therefore destruction of Christian Europe. This was a particularly violent expression of a persistent far-right conspiracy theory and, while leftwing teenagers died on that Norwegian island, this narrative did not. Members of the left are, according to this mindset, traitors to their nation, seeking to destroy it through mass immigration of culturally hostile aliens, and are allies of a despised enemy – Islam as a demonised religion, Muslims as a people.
Far-right terrorists feed off the hatred that is often fanned by elites when it suits them. The recent El Paso terrorist attack, in which Latin American people were slaughtered, cannot be divorced from the systematic demonisation of Mexican immigrants by rightwing media outlets and Republican politicians, and now in an undiluted form by a US president who labels them rapists and criminals. Jews – who have been targeted for 2,000 years – were butchered and maimed in Pittsburgh less than year ago. The alleged terrorist reportedly accused Jews of trying to bring “evil” Muslims to the United States – here was an ancient hatred married to a more modern manifestation: Jews as disloyal and rootless, seeking to destroy western civilisation by importing dangerous Muslims. Chillingly, in overtly antisemitic remarks, Donald Trump this week accused Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats of “great disloyalty”. The 2015 far-right terrorist attack on a black church in Charleston cannot be understood in isolation from the fact that slavery, which has bequeathed an extensive racist legacy, was abolished just two lifetimes ago. In New Zealand’s Christchurch massacre, more than 50 Muslims – people with a faith that has been targeted not just by the far right but several mainstream media outlets and politicians – were murdered.
In Britain, the Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a white far-right terrorist who gave his name in court as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. What lesson was learned? How was Nigel Farage able to brag that Brexit had been won “without a single bullet being fired”, and later declare he’d “don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines” if Brexit wasn’t delivered, without his political or media career suffering? How did the far-right terrorist plot to murder Labour MP Rosie Cooper with a machete not lead to national shock and horror – and a determination to crush the political ideology behind it? What of the far-right attack on Muslim worshippers in Finsbury Park, whose perpetrator expressed a desire to murder Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan as terrorist supporters?
The hate preachers radicalising far-right extremists are not ranting on soap boxes on street corners: they get splashed on front pages. They use rhetoric such as “Enemies of the people” and “Crush the saboteurs”; they deploy distortions, myths, half-truths and lies to whip up hatred against Muslims, migrants and refugees, and to scapegoat them for crimes committed by the powerful.
In the clash between fascists and antifascists in Charlottesville, Trump infamously declared there “were very fine people on both sides”, and in doing so founded “both-sideism”: the idea that advocating white supremacy is morally equivalent to opposing racism and wanting rich people to pay higher taxes. Yet this moral equivalence – which includes claiming that the left is equally violent – is beyond dangerous. The far right might be committing murderous terrorist atrocities against minorities, but some guy poured a banana and salted caramel milkshake on Nigel Farage’s favourite suit! Sure, there are members of minorities being murdered on the streets by racists with little media coverage, but the US neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was punched once, so who is to say who is worse?
There is a systematic campaign to delegitimise the very few leftwing voices in the mainstream media and politics, orchestrated not just by the right, but by some self-described “moderates” and “centrists” too. The attempt to construct a false equivalence between a far right that is on a murderous rampage against minorities and their allies, and a left committed to resisting its hatred and violence, is perverse. Mainstream politicians and several media outlets are legitimising ideas that fuel ideologically driven far-right terrorism and violent racist and bigoted attacks. Many more will be injured, and will die, as a consequence, and because they are not white, and because they lack a national platform, you will probably never hear their names.
Member of Identitarian Movement ‘due to start work on Navy’s nuclear Trident sub’
Two members of the Royal Navy, including one who is due to start work on a Trident nuclear submarine, are members of a far-right group with links to a banned terrorist organisation, the Observer can reveal.
An undercover informant, who infiltrated the UK branch of the pan-European Identitarian Movement and had access to thousands of internal messages, met a Royal Navy sailor who revealed that he was about to take up a posting on a submarine armed with Trident nuclear missiles.
The meeting, involving an informant for anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, took place at the annual conference of Generation Identity UK in London on 27 July.
The Identitarian Movement, which is fiercely opposed to mass migration, has expanded rapidly in the past two years and has at least 63 “regional branches” of varying sizes across Europe.
The “great replacement” theory was cited as motivation by the mass shooters in the Christchurch mosque attacks, which killed 51 people in March, and the massacre in El Paso, Texas, earlier this month, in which 22 people died.
There is no suggestion that GI UK endorses or supports violence.
Last night the identities of the naval recruit and another GI member serving at the same base were sent to the MoD, which issued a statement saying: “Any extremist ideology is completely at odds with our values.”
The infiltration, coordinated by Hope not Hate, was abruptly terminated after the group’s alleged links to Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet were discovered. “When we realised far-right activists from a group whose stated goal is the ethnic cleansing of Europe were in the navy, we decided to sound the alarm,” said the informant, who has shared the entire cache of internal messages and planning documents of the identitarian group.
The messages show that Generation Identity UK was expelled by the movement’s pan-European network for inviting an antisemite to its recent conference and is now preparing to merge with far-right party For Britain, run by Anne Marie Waters. Prominent supporters of Waters include jailed anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.
The revelation that the far right has a presence in the armed forces follows the widespread outcry last year when Robinson posed for a photograph alongside a group of military figures.
The informant, whose identity is being withheld by the Observer, added that the recruit he met at last month’s second-ever UK conference of Generation Identity, held in south Kensington, alleged that his membership of GI was widely known in the service. “He says the navy knows he is a member of GI. He claims all the officers are racist,” said the informant, who spent five months inside the group and officially left it as the Observer went to press.
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Police have said the fastest-growing threat of terrorist violence to the United Kingdom comes from the far right, with seven of the 22 plots to cause mass casualties since March 2017 being driven by extreme rightwing ideology.
They said referrals to anti-radicalisation programmes of those feared to be at risk of committing far right terrorist acts had doubled between 2016 and 2018, and were expected to rise further.
In a briefing to the media, Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer, the Met’s assistant commissioner Neil Basu, said police were battling to stop extreme rightwing terrorism getting more of a foothold than it already had.
He said: “The problem is small but it is my fastest-growing problem.” Basu said extreme rightwing terrorism had gone from 6% of the case-load two years ago to 10% now.
Some were incited by far right propaganda, such as Thomas Mair, who murdered the Labour MP Jo Cox MP in 2016.
But others, such as Darren Osborne, who attacked Muslim worshippers with a van in north London, had acted after consuming lawful material from groups such as the English Defence League and mainstream media.
Basu said: ”When nearly a third of plots foiled by police and security
services relate to rightwing ideology, it lays bare why we are taking
this threat so seriously.”
Far right terrorism has drawn in some as young as 14 and has links to extremists overseas, police revealed.
Last year the security service MI5 took the lead in investigating the most dangerous extreme rightwing terrorists, in a sign of how seriously the threat was being taken.
Police said rightwing extremists had been using guides on how to kill developed by Isis.
Weapons involved in plots, or which rightwing terrorists wanted to get hold of, include knives, explosives and firearms.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party Rife With Unpunished Anti-Semitism
A new report has found that U.K. Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn has failed to sanction members of the party who shared anti-Semitic messages online.
The Sunday Times published a report on Sunday which showed how Corbyn's office "actively interfered, delayed, and disrupted the inquiry into the hate-filled and conspiratorial posts by many Labour members," according to the Jerusalem Post.
Some posts said "Heil Hitler," accused members of Parliament who are Jewish of being "Zionist infiltrators," and even spread conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the 9/11 terror attacks.
