左派迫害百姓反弹: 英国近代第一位政治犯被判入狱，民众征集百万签名要求释放 Tommy Robinson

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Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, at Speakers’ Corner, London in March. Photograph: Steve Parkins/REX/Shutterstock

They are the victimisers who clothe themselves in the garb of victimhood. “Free speech” is their mantra, but it is nothing more than a political ploy, a ruse, a term the far right wilfully abuse to spread hatred. The arrest and jailing for contempt of court of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – not “Tommy Robinson”, a name he revealingly took from another football hooligan when he founded the far-right English Defence League – has quickly been mythologised by the international far right as yet more martyrdom. It is victimisation of brave truth-tellers, they screech, by an establishment at war with western culture.

I am heavily restricted in what I can write about Yaxley-Lennon. That’s because I too could be in contempt of court for fatally undermining the right of people to a fair trial. Yaxley-Lennon already had a suspended sentence for this offence, and was warned he would go to jail if his behaviour again risked the collapse of a trial. He is no martyr to freedom of speech, just a career criminal with a history of mortgage fraud, football hooliganism and assault whose craving for publicity put a critical court case at risk.

And here is the wider point: the obsessive tactical misuse of “free speech” by an ascendant far right. Roseanne Barr, a once celebrated US comedian, has had her primetime ABC show dropped because of a gratuitously racist tweet. “Alt-right” campaigners abound on social media screeching about yet another assault on freedom. But Barr remains entitled to spray her bigotry across social media, and to keep retweeting self-pitying justifications for her behaviour, and ABC is entitled not to give her a show. US far-right types such as Richard Spencer hold “free speech rallies”, while Yaxley-Lennon held a “day for freedom” in Britain. When Katie Hopkins was fired by a leading radio station, her far-right supporters again construed it as an attack on free speech.

There is a chasm separating the right to free speech and the privilege of being given a platform to make your views known. No one has a right to a platform. If I offer you a megaphone, and then take it back off you, you can continue to say what you like, just not with my megaphone. The vast majority of people do not have regular TV slots, or newspaper columns, or radio shows – that does not mean their freedom of speech is under assault. Yes, I would argue that platforms are not fairly distributed: the vast majority of Britons support renationalisation of utilities, for example, or higher taxes on the rich, but those opinions are not adequately represented in the media. But that is a separate argument from freedom of expression.

If student unions refuse to provide a platform to those they deem bigots, that is not an attack on freedom of speech. They are simply telling the bigots: you may have the legal right to say things we find offensive or even disgraceful, but that does not mean we are compelled to provide you with the advantage of amplifying such bigotry to our audience. It is striking that when the bigotry of a far-right figure is verbally challenged, their apologists will screech that freedom of speech is under attack. For the far right, “freedom of speech” means “the right to say hateful things without being challenged”.

But those on the far right do not believe in freedom at all. They call for the banning of mosques, banning of burqas, mass deportation of migrants and refugees, clamping down on civil liberties. They portray their opponents as traitors. Condemning the likes of Yaxley-Lennon instantly brings threats of violence on social media: recent messages I’ve received include “Owen Jones your get what’s coming to you very soon you prick”, “Until one day one of us bumps into you I can’t wait”, “I hope someone fills your jaw you little prick”, “Remember places, traitors’ faces, you will pay for crimes”, ad infinitum..

They know that the struggles of women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people have shifted attitudes. Once-acceptable prejudices that rationalised overt discrimination and persecution have been driven from the mainstream. The cry of “free speech” is simply a ruse to turn back the clock and in doing so justify stripping away hard-won rights and freedoms from women and minorities. The far right surfs the backlash, claiming that people are oppressed because they are white in societies where minorities are more likely to be in poverty, in low-paid jobs and underrepresented in politics and the media. It feeds on the grievances of white people who are oppressed and exploited but not because of their whiteness, but because of their class.

Those in this new far-right wave claim to be at war with the mainstream media, but they are, in part, bastard children of it. The mainstream press endlessly propagate myths, distortions, half-truths and outright lies about Muslims, immigrants, refugees, LGBTQ people, women and benefit claimants. A few years ago, courageous reporter Richard Peppiatt resigned from the Daily Star in protest at being asked to write lies about Muslims. “The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved in down an alley in Bradford,” he wrote. Polls show Britons drastically overestimate the number of Muslims and immigrants, the level of teenage pregnancies and so forth. Why? Because of dishonest media coverage that provides fertile recruitment grounds for the far right.

Ah, let’s just debate them and defeat them that way, cry some self-identifying liberals. I spend much of my existence debating with people who, say, oppose nationalising the railways or raising taxes on the rich. These are legitimate perspectives. Bigotry is not. To debate bigotry is to legitimise hatred based on lies, as though it was like any other political perspective, to agree or disagree with as you see fit. We know where radicalisation can lead. There are the hate crimes that happen in our communities and streets every day. Then there is the murder of Jo Cox, the MP, by Thomas Mair, a neo-Nazi terrorist who gave his name to court as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. Darren Osborne, a terrorist who ploughed his van into a mosque, was partly radicalised by far-right social media. Anders Breivik, a Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist slaughtered dozens of young socialists because of the far-right trope that the left were accomplices in the Islamisation of Europe.

The far right has always embraced the discourse of victimhood and persecution. Its cynical embrace of “free speech” is a dishonest ruse to propagate hatred, nothing more. If it managed to seize power, it would swiftly strip away the rights and freedoms of those it deemed treacherous opponents. Freedom of speech is precious indeed. Just don’t be deceived by a resurgent far right for which it is a rhetorical device to attack democracy, and nothing more.
 
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LEEDS Crown Court provided an unlikely backdrop for a storm involving alt-right American blogs, a far-right Dutch MP and Donald Trump’s son. On May 25th Tommy Robinson, an anti-Islam activist and founder of the far-right English Defence League (EDL), was sentenced to 13 months in jail for contempt of court. It came after Mr Robinson—whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon—commented on an ongoing case outside the court, streaming his opinions live to his Facebook page, which has 860,000 followers. Mr Robinson had already received a three-month suspended sentence and a stark warning from a judge for pulling a similar stunt last year. But reporting restrictions, designed to prevent the collapse of the trial on which Mr Robinson was commenting, meant that these circumstances were not made public until four days later.

By then, hysteria over the “censorship” of Mr Robinson had broken out. The conservative Drudge Report, one of the world’s largest news aggregators, had the arrest as one of its lead items. Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch MP, weighed in. “The lights of freedom are going out!” he declared in a video shared 10,000 times online. Elsewhere, half a million people signed an online petition to free Mr Robinson. Even Donald Trump’s son, Donald Jr, decided to join in. “Reason #1776 for the original #brexit,” he tweeted.

Mr Robinson’s arrest fed into a wider narrative about Britain put forward by a nexus of far-right websites and politicians in America and Europe. Britain is portrayed as a police state that is overrun with Muslims and home to a sinister, “socialised” health service that delights in letting children die. Last year President Trump retweeted videos from Britain First, a far-right anti-Islam group whose leaders were jailed earlier this year for religiously aggravated harassment. (Like Mr Robinson, they too have been arrested for causing a fuss during a trial.)

Worryingly, some British politicians have started echoing these views. Gerard Batten, the leader of the populist UK Independence Party, offered a full-throated defence of Mr Robinson. Previously, UKIP had steered clear of Mr Robinson and his ilk. The party offered a tweedy, boozy image and tried to avoid the openly Islamophobic rhetoric common in other radical-right parties in Europe. Not all appear happy with how the party has changed. James Carver, a UKIP MEP, resigned earlier this week.

Before his sentence, Mr Robinson enjoyed a peculiar place in the British establishment. He appeared on Newsnight, a highbrow BBC programme, barely three months ago. In 2014 he spoke at the Oxford Union, which delights in sometimes hosting disagreeable sorts. Such invitations may now dry up. But an army of Facebook followers, and a growing profile abroad, mean that Mr Robinson will not disappear. A global—and disturbingly large—alternative establishment has already welcomed him.
 
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Tommy Robinson, the founder of the far-right English Defence League, has been jailed for 13 months for contempt of court.

The 35-year-old’s sentence can be revealed after a judge lifted reporting restrictions on the case on Tuesday. The case had been widely discussed on social media, where rightwing activists claimed that the restrictions amounted to state censorship.

Robinson was arrested on Friday after broadcasting an hour-long video over Facebook from outside Leeds crown court. In the video he made comments that risked causing a trial to collapse.

Robinson pleaded guilty to contempt of court. He was arrested, charged and sentenced within five hours.

A court order is in place to prevent any reporting of the details of the trial in question. Another court order preventing reporting of Robinson’s arrest and the subsequent court proceedings was lifted on Tuesday after a challenge by Leeds Live and the Independent.

The restriction was put in place temporarily to prevent reporting on the Robinson case prejudicing the outcome of the first trial. It was lifted after a judge heard submissions that the order was already being widely violated by members of the public online.

Robinson attempted to film defendants entering the court and spoke about the case. The video was viewed more than 250,000 times.

Robinson’s arrest provoked protests in Whitehall on Saturday. Supporters were seen carrying placards reading “#FreeTommy” and shouting “shame on you”. A change.org petition calling for his release had received nearly 500,000 signatures by Tuesday afternoon.

Last year Robinson was given a suspended sentence for committing contempt during a rape trial in Canterbury, after he attempted to film the defendants. He had been told that he would go to prison if he broke the law again.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, was sentenced to 10 months for contempt of court and a further three months for breaching the terms of the previous suspended sentence.

Robinson’s supporters had posted online that his arrest was an infringement of his freedom of speech. On Sunday Donald Trump Jr, the US president’s son, retweeted one of Robinson’s supporters, adding: “Don’t let America follow in those footsteps.”

The Dutch far-right opposition leader Geert Wilders posted a video on Twitter, filmed from outside the British embassy in The Hague, describing Robinson’s prison sentence as “an absolute disgrace”.

He accused the judge of issuing a gagging order and said that freedom of speech was being violated all over Europe. “The lights of freedom are going out,” he said. “The authorities are trying to silence us.”
 
明的凡 说:
左派迫害百姓反弹: 英国近代第一位政治犯被判入狱，民众征集百万签名要求释放 Tommy Robinson
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英国法院的判决，到了你这里成了"左派迫害百姓"。
 
村长交作业了。哈哈。比九教授强出多少？
 
极左政策下，导致的一些列反弹。英国如果出现极右。当前的极左体系就是致命的导火索。
又是一个尽失民心的警告而已。签名到58万说明问题了。

就好像美国选举不可能一半人都是弱智或者都是红脖。一样。数字大了，不是一两篇洗地文章能够曲直的了。
 
春风吹 说:
极左政策下，导致的一些列反弹。英国如果出现极右。当前的极左体系就是致命的导火索。
又是一个尽失民心的警告而已。签名到58万说明问题了。

就好像美国选举不可能一半人都是弱智或者都是红脖。一样。数字大了，不是一两篇洗地文章能够曲直的了。
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历史把欧洲包括英国带到了又一个十字路口。继续衰落下去还是拨乱反正？如何选择意义重大。
 
New Person 说:
如果你把这几个字写到你教会的門口去，保证你不会见到穆斯林法官。但你们教会一定把你踢出去。:D
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If you bring such thing to my home, I would kick you out as well.
 
New Person 说:
If I brought such thing to your home, I'd like to see a 穆斯林法官.
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不论你们讨论的事。没兴趣看。没兴趣聊。

但是“I'd like to see a 穆斯林法官”。就是问题。为什么你一定要见M法官？难道种族歧视其他族裔法官？
我没真没听说过案件挑法官的。如果案件涉及种族因素，可以挑律师，如果需要上听陪审制，律师可以提出要求选择合适的陪审员。

唯独没听说过挑法官的。这事听着太种族歧视了。深度种族歧视。怪不得英国有50多万人抗议签名。真的恐怖啊。

言尽于此，不讨论其他。
 
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