Tommy Robinson: The Fascist Grifter With An Addiction to Being Arrested

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. What's poorly introducing my podcast? I'm Robert Evans hosted
Behind the Bastards, the podcast with the worst introductions in
the podcasting game, and also the podcast where we've talked
about the worst people in all of history. So the
introductions are at least uh in line with the terrible
nous of the human beings we talked about. My guest

(00:21):
today is conflict journalist uh and host an operator of
Popular Front, which is a podcast about the nerdy modern
details of war. Jake Hanrahan, how you doing, Jake good? Good, good,
thank you? Yeah you and I we just spent closing
it on two weeks in Iraq and Syria together a

(00:41):
little bit earlier this year. Um. Yeah, we talked to
a lot of nice people there, and today we're gonna
talk about somebody who sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah Tommy Robinson. Yeah, um,
how would you describe Tommy Robinson? And like a sentence
or two to just some one who wanted a quick
description of who this dude is. He's like this like

(01:04):
hard right wing quasi football Hooligan's kind of a joke, um,
but it's also you know, has caused hell for the
last like god, my like ten years. I remember in
school even hearing about him, just being like, who the
fuck is this guy? You know, Yeah, he's been at
this ship a while. He's kind of like like a

(01:26):
low rent Oswald Mosley. Um yeah, really really low rent. Yeah,
and Oswald Mosley was not a high rent Oswald most exactly.
It's like the woodlouse of the Oswald Mosley. You know
it's down there. All right, Well, I'm going to get
into it. So yeah, you know, I'm just gonna read

(01:49):
this story and and and you'll comment, and you know,
one of your side jobs here, Jake, is going to
be to mock me viciously when I mispronounced one of
your country's ridiculous city names. I'm ready. Yeah, the one
I keep having trouble with. It looks like like Ster
but I know that's wrong. Lester, Lester, it's absurd. That

(02:12):
actually is absurd. But that's like my area, man, like
East Midlands. It looks like Lester. Yeah. Well we will
be talking about the Midlands at a couple of points
to um. Yeah, yeah, that is where some of this
is set. So. Stephen Christopher Yaxley was born on November nine,

(02:33):
two in Lutton, England, is it Luton or Luton Luton, Luton,
Luton and Luton, England. In interviews, he tends to focus
on the fact that his parents were with Irish immigrants
into the country. He later told The Telegraph everything in
Luton is the son of immigrants, whether it be Irish,
West Indian, Ghanaian everyone I know. His mom worked at
a bakery and his dad worked at a Vauxhall car

(02:56):
plant in Luton. I've never heard of that manufacturer, but
they're a funk now, I guess. But yeah, it was
like a big industrial employer in the town. As an adult,
Y actually has repeatedly emphasized the level of poverty and
hopelessness that was endemic to the community he grew up
in and two dozen sixteen, he's self published an autobiography
titled Enemy of the State, which I have not read

(03:18):
because I didn't want to give this guy money since
it was a self published book. However, I did read
a number of reviews of the book. One of them
was a surprisingly positive review by a guy named Daniel
Falconer who's at the book reviewer for the London School
of Economics. He chastised the books flawed in an accurate
analysis of Islam, but he praised Tommy Robinson's writing on
the economic state he and his peers grew up in

(03:40):
writing quote that portrait is bleak. Indeed, economic vulnerability, social breakdown,
and political neglect or themes that surfaced time and again. Importantly,
the drug use, crime and serious violence that frequently accompanied
these broader problems are never abstract for Robinson. Their lived
realities for him and for his broader community, and he's
not shy of describing them and disturbing detail because, as

(04:00):
he says, these things are boundary of shape me in
some way. Growing up hearing the stories and experiencing the
reality of life on the streets. You couldn't help but
have it touch your life in somewhere or another. Yeah,
And that's um, I don't know, like you you talk
about when we were chatting about like where you come up,
you talked a lot about like the kind of poverty
in that particular chunk of the UK, which is not

(04:22):
the chunk that I think you know most Americans. It's
like London. Yeah, it's kind of what you hear about.
But yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean there is one thing
you can say that like he is right about that
that like how bad that you know, I live where
he's from. It's like three train stops away, you know,
like forty minutes, and it's not a lot of difference.

(04:42):
You know, it's my area and my where he's looting.
That's like out to London but on Midlands. But still
it's it's just the kind of deprivation is just unlike
anything you can really think of, because it's it's not
like so bad that it's like dystopian or anything, but
it's just just so boring. There's just nothing to do,

(05:02):
do you know what I mean. The only thing people
do is like you know, basically when you come out
of school, you're either going to work in the factory
or be a drug dealer. You know. It's it's a
it's a it's grim, yeah, and it seems like one
of the few things to do outside of those occupations
is get into fights over whatever it is you find
to get into fights over. Yeah, And that's a big part. Yeah,

(05:26):
Like in school for me, like just growing up, it
was just I've got my head kicked in so many
times just from like you know, just just that was
what happened. You would just hit a certain age and
it's just right, you fight now, you know what I mean.
It's weird, man, it's not nice. Yeah, yeah, it sounds
it sounds shitty, and it sounds like uh, Tommy Robins

(05:46):
had had similar kind of experiences in his in his upbringing.
Although I should note that several reporters have found evidence
that Robinson comes from a more well off background and
then he tends to portray himself he definitely spent a
lot of time in Luton or Luton and grew up
there as a kid. Um, but there's also evidence that

(06:06):
like his family was one of the wealthier families in
the area. Emma moss Lee, reporting for Vice, spoke to
several people who grew up with and around him. One
of those sources claimed that he uh came up quite
well off as a result of his stepfather's family business,
which is like a plumbing business. So it kind of
seems like he was one of the more well off
people in a very poor area. Um yeah, yeah, yeah,

(06:29):
but like yeah, perhaps, but even you know, even being
well off around these areas, it's not it's not the
well off that you would think, like, certainly it's not
in the Hampton's you know what I'm saying yeah, and
he clearly had the same issue with like nothing to do,
so like why not fight? Yeah? Now. In his autobiography,
Tommy recalls growing up with an assortment of non white friends,

(06:50):
particularly Muslims. I found a very positive review of his
autobiography by a far right author on medium. The article
is titled night of the Realm, which is how the
guy refers to Tommy Robinson. Here's how that writer summarized
Tommy's recollection of his childhood friend group. Quote. In the book,
he describes his early years of a bright yet lad
racing through unchallenging schoolwork, easily distracted, and always up for

(07:13):
a scuffle. Already in his teens, he saw Muslim friends
he'd grown up with reaching age and then drift away
into big groups of Muslim youths. But a commonplace playground
tustle would see dozens of Muslim men rally soon after
brawl's injuries and the police called um. Now. This is
like an angle that Robinson pushes a lot in his
media appearance. This idea that, like as a kid, he
came to realize that whenever there were fights, Muslims reacted

(07:36):
with a group mentality and they would all habitually defend
each other. I found another quote from Tommy Robinson, this
time in a Telegraph article, stating, quote, the mentality they
have I realized when I went to the World Cup.
When an Englishman out there gets in trouble, every other
Englishman defends him. It's the mindset you're away from home
and he's your brother, and that's a brotherhood they have.
Every day you get in trouble outside a nightclub here,

(07:58):
they'll get out of their taxis, their chicken shot still
come from everywhere. They don't need to know each other
just because they're a Muslim and you're not. So yeah,
okay something, Yeah, I mean, I don't know about that
man like bullshit, Like well, I don't know. Maybe it's
just Looten is a very very different place actually to
where I'm. There's not even a mosque in my town,

(08:19):
you know what I mean? Um, oh that actually there is,
but it's very small and it's just like they also
use it for other things as well, you know what
I mean. So he's definitely yeah, he's he's an unreliable narrator. Yeah, yeah,
a little bit, I think. I mean, you know, if
your mate gets punched up. I don't think that someone's
just going to be like, wait, hang on, he's a Muslim,

(08:39):
so I'll defend him. Like it's you know, around here,
it's factional between your friends. It's more your friendship group
than anything like that. From what I've ever seen, man like,
I don't know, yeah, you know. And I could see
like people kind of hanging to friendship groups that are
based heavily around race, because that kind of happens in
a lot of places and that being but I can't
see him in into a fight outside of a nightclub

(09:01):
and some guy leaving his kebab shop to just be like,
what's time to go beat this ship? My spidy sense
is yeah, I know, I mean maybe now just because
everyone hates him, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think he's kind of creating. Certainly, I do think
there's a lot of truth to what you're saying in
that sense, but I think he's also like creating his
own perfect version of it, you know what I mean. Yeah,

(09:25):
at this point, I have no trouble imagining people crossing
the street to get in a shot at him. But
we'll explain why the course of this episode. Um so
That Telegraph article also includes the claim that Stephen did
very well in high school, scoring eleven A C S
and something called the g C S C, which I
assume is just British school test stuff. Is like what

(09:47):
you do and then you go on to college, so
it's the first big exam. Uh. Yeah, and he did
not go on to college. But he claims repeatedly everywhere
that you'll find him talking to media that he did
very well in uh, in his school stuff up until
that point. Um and uh. He also will usually emphasize
that he never needed to study. Um and I. It's

(10:09):
one of those things where this is in like every
article where Tommy talks about his childhood. And to my knowledge,
none of the journalists who repeat this have actually gotten
any records and stuff. And I assume that's kind of
difficult to do because that stuff is usually uh it's
like there probably would be no way to get his
high school grades or whatever. But like, I don't know.
It's a claim that is repeated that we can't back up.

(10:30):
But it's definitely important for Tommy that you know that
he did very well in school before he dropped out
at sixteen. I mean, I mean, maybe I mean, certainly,
maybe I wouldn't know how to even get my g
I think I've got one GCSC and I wouldn't even
know how to get the paper for it, to be honest.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's not weird
that he there's not back up for that. Um and

(10:52):
he's he's clearly got a type of intelligence. So I
wouldn't be surprised if he did do all right in school. Um. Now,
in that Telegraph inner you, Tommy acknowledged that he had
problems outside of school, and primarily those problems were his
growing love of soccer hooliganism. Uh. As a very young lad,
he got involved with the Men in Gear or Miggs,

(11:12):
which were apparently an infamous Lutton Town football gang. One
of its leaders and most hooliguany hooligans, was a guy
who used the nickname Tommy Robinson. The constant street fights
were a hallmark of Steven's childhood, and they were also
the first time he wound up in direct confrontation with Muslims.
He told the Telegraph, look, when I was at school
and Rend and Cameron, two identical twins, were some of

(11:34):
my best mates. But there were problems with Muslim gangs,
and there were fights between the English lads and the Muslims.
Whenever you get in a problem at school, it's flooded
with Muslim men. They always seem to be waiting for trouble. Um.
So again, that's like a line that he he makes
that point a lot about the way that he thinks
these people react. Um. Now, for what it's worth, that
vice profile uh claim talked to some other people who

(11:57):
grew up around Tommy and claims that his falling out
with those twins wasn't a result of them joining a gang,
but was because they didn't invite him to a wedding. Um.
So who knows uh? From Timmy was eleven and still
named Stephen. Twenty nine year old man named Mark Sharp
was beaten to death by a group of five Muslim
men while getting kebab for his daughter. The killing seems

(12:18):
to have been tied to road rage rather than any
racial motivation, but the fact that the attackers were from
Bangladesh made it an inciting incident for racists in the area. Um,
I know, is that one you heard about? Mark Sharp's murder? Yeah?
I know about because I mean to be honest, Um,
it's not a lie that like there's certain groups that

(12:40):
it's like, okay, like don't mess with them, you know
what I mean. And you know, and it's like Bangladesh,
she's um, the Somalians, like, you know, the gangs. It's like,
don't funk with him. So there is an elemental truth
to the fact that, yeah, there are like these kind
of gangs of certain ethnicities and it's like, you know,
they will just stab you to bits, you know what
I mean. And it's not based on racism. It's just

(13:01):
based on what has been happening around the area for decades,
you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But it
doesn't seem like the Mark Sharp case was a result
of that, Like it seems like this guy got into
some traffics. Yeah. Yeah, you can just get stubbed to
bits for nothing here, like you know, people like literally
just want to stub you for nothing. It's it's it's
so sick, it's disgusted. Yeah. See here in the in

(13:25):
the civilized United States, just shoot people. Yeah yeah, yeah,
we're more gentlemanly. You know, we look on our enemies
in the face and just stab them and run off.
You know. We we kind of spray and pray with
an a R fifteen into a crowd. So yeah, I
guess I prefer y'alls way. But well, we've got acid
attacks actually you do have that. That's that's a big one, now, yeah,

(13:46):
that's yeah, Yeah, that's a big one in the UK.
And I'm I'm super excited for when somebody finally synthesizes
a drone with an acid attack. That's going to be
a great day. Yeah, it will happen. It will absolutely happen. Um,
So yeah, Stephen left school at sixteen. The Telegraph just

(14:09):
notes that despite his academic ability, nobody encouraged Robinson to
stay on for sixth form. Rather than continue his academic career,
Tommy decided to apply to study aircraft engineering at the
Letton Airport. The Voxhall plant where his father worked had
closed down right around the same time he graduated, and
the airport was basically the only blue collar game left
in town. Now, the Voxhall plant closing may have had

(14:30):
an impact on young Stephen's attitudes towards Muslims and decades past,
Letton had been a major hub of industry which had
drawn in a large immigrant population. Stephen's mother's family had
immigrated in from Ireland, and throughout his childhood, increasing numbers
of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims had also moved in. By
the year two thousand, when Stephen was eighteen and the
factory closed, Muslims made up fifteen percent of Luton's population.

(14:53):
Um today they make up like a quarter in Ltton
is one of the very few British towns where white
Britain's are an ethnic minority. So like eight as jobs
are getting tight and his dad loses his job, is
when there's like this flood of immigrants in from like
Muslim speaking countries. So it's one of those things where
Tammy doesn't claim that haven't had an impact, but you

(15:13):
look at it and you're like, yeah, that seems like
it might have had an impact. Yeah, I mean it
would piss you off, right, Like you're some kind of
angry young man and that happens, it would piss you off.
I think the thing with Luton is that there's the difference.
So I look at it and I think, I don't know.
But like where I live, it's so small, Like if
you're broke, if you're poor, you're just poor. It's not like, oh,

(15:36):
you're in the Muslim bit or you're the black bit
or the white bit. Like everyone's on top of each other,
so you don't really care. You're just like whatever, like
we're all together. But in places like Luton, it's big
enough but also like condensed enough to be able to
have segregated areas. Do you see what I'm saying, So
you can have a Muslim area in the white area,
in the black area. So there's definitely like animosity between

(15:58):
all them kind of groups down there, you know what
I'm saying. So I can see that something like that.
You could then he could then go like, oh, it
was because of those lot over there, you know what
I mean. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah,
Like there's definitely a small segregation that um yeah. And uh.
Stephen studied carefully at the the Luton Airport and I'm

(16:21):
gonna I'm gonna keep going back and forth on that one,
I'm sure, and managed to win a coveted apprenticeship in
aircraft engineering. Uh. This was quite an achievement. Over six
people applied to the job and Stephen was one of
only four who got in. Uh. In two thousand three,
after five years of study, he qualified for the job,
but he only actually held it for about two years

(16:42):
because he got in a spot of legal trouble. Uh. Now,
most mainstream news sources, including Vice, kind of breezed past
this part of his back story. Here's what they wrote
in their right up. Almost immediately, his life was turned
upside down when a criminal conviction during a drunken argument
he assaulted a man who turned out to be an
off the police officer, meant he lost his job. Now

(17:03):
that's a really weirdly passive way of writing about that.
Um and uh, yeah, I just found that strange, so
I went searching for a little bit more detail. Um,
there's a couple of people who cover the uh, the
attack in a little bit more detail. Now we'll talk
about in a second. Vice also notes that roughly year
before this incident, he actually joined the British National Party

(17:25):
or b and P. Uh. Yeah, and the BNP is
an outright fascist party. Yeah completely, the guy that, like
the RAN it was a part of n f National Front,
which was an openly white supremacist even Nazi group back
in the eighties. Yeah. Their complete scum. Yeah, they're complete scum.
They have a paramilitary mob with them called Combat eighteen. Yeah,

(17:48):
the the eighteen is a reference to the name of
Adolf Hitler because the first letters of his first and
last name or the first and eighth letters of the
alphabet um. And that group has been tied to a
lot of murders. And as far as we know, Robinson
wasn't a member of Combat eighteen, but he did join
the BNP. And again, this is kind of weird. Most
mainstream sources I read who wrote profiles on him kind
of let Robinson whitewash this um like here's here's exactly

(18:13):
how Vice describes it. Quote Robinson describes his dalliances with Huluganism,
as well as a brief scent as a BNP member
in two thousand four as useful missteps and they never
like go any deeper into it. So I I found
that a little bit peculiar um. And uh, there's the
a little bit more. Robinson can't ignore this entirely because

(18:36):
it's one of people's big claims when they claim that
he's a fascist um. And in his autobiography, the way
he sort of whitewashes this is that he claims that
he joined the BNP because he wanted to stand up
to the Muslim gangs, and during the first meeting, he
brought along a black friend and when he saw how
racist they were to his black friend, he left the
meeting and realized that the BNP was bad, which I'm

(18:59):
pretty certain is a lie um. And there's some some
evidence that suggests why I found a right up on
Stephen Yactuley Lennon in the anti fascist magazine Searchlight, which
was a a project of a charity called Hope Not Hate.
And this is the like, this right up on him
is the write up that like revealed his actual name

(19:21):
as Stephen Yactuley Lennon because he goes by Tommy Robinson,
which is there's a couple of different names this dude has,
and it's actually kind of hard to pin down which
is his original, But that right up of him goes
into his back story and notes quote. In two thousand four,
he joined the BNP with a family membership. In the
same year, he assaulted an off duty police officer who
intervened to stop a domestic incident between Yaktuley Lennon and

(19:42):
his partner, Gin Avowals. During the scuffle, he actually Lennon
kicked the officer in the head. He was convicted in
April two five for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, for
which he was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment an assault
with intent to resist a rest, for which he received
a concurrent term of three months. Val was also a
BNP member and was cautioned for possession of cocaine. So

(20:03):
that's a different picture than I found kind of painted
of him in the you know, in the Vice articles,
not like positive towards Robinson, but it doesn't dig into
this stuff, like that's a different case. If this dude's
got a family membership in the BNP, that's a real
different story right there, from just a guy who slides
into a meeting and then slides out of it. Yeah,
like family membership. I didn't even know such a thing existed,

(20:26):
you know. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's what these folks claim
as the case. And they've been right about other details
of his beast, Like I can't believe it, Like I
just didn't even know, like you would, that's the sort
of thing you would think. Yeah, it's it seems a
little bit deeper than like, oh, let me just go
and talking these guys for a minute, you know, Yeah,
Oh they didn't like my black friend. Maybe he's not

(20:47):
exactly um, And it's also like that assault, It's like
it's weird how passive the rite ups usually are. It's
like he assaulted someone who turned out to be an
undercover cop. It's like, no, he was abusing his girlfriend
and his cop walked up, but he kicked him in
the head. Yeah, yeah, that's like I'm sure that happened
another time as well. Like then, basically, like from what

(21:08):
I understood, they're they're just huge coke kids. And in
fact that even the like right have accused him of
spending like all the money on coke and stuff. You know,
that would not surprise me. And it is also like
kind of the same with the a lot of the
fascists in UH in Portland and stuff, like a lot
of the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. Yeah, there's a
lot of rumors and a couple of like former members

(21:29):
who have alleged like, yeah, the ringleaders speed spend all
of the money they crowdfund on blow and after all
these rallies, they have big coke parties. It's just it
turns out a lot of people who like to fight
and do cocaine are also interested in far right politics. Yeah,
was just heady mix. Yeah, yeah, surprising. Um so stephen

(21:51):
Y Actually that's still what he's going by at this point.
Spent around a year in jail. When he got out,
he opened a Tanning salon and Luton and moved to Bedford.
Keep sucking it up. No, no, I'm laughing at the
Tanning salon, Like, yeah, he a Tanning slide, didn't you
know that? You know? Yeah, And he moved to Bedford,
which is a town with near Luton, with an average

(22:14):
family income though of around a quarter of a million dollars.
So he's clearly doing a lot pretty well at that.
I tell you. Bedford is literally like I don't know
if an hour drive if that, No, it's like fourty
minutes away from me. Like Bedford is pretty poor, you know,
oh weird. Okay, so that's just yeah, there's some rich people. Yeah,

(22:35):
like moving to Bedford is certainly not a step up,
you know what I mean? Interesting? Okay, see that there
are no areas, don't get me wrong, you know, but
it's hard to tell. It's just because all I can
look at is like what the average sort of Yeah, yeah,
that's that's why it's kind of it's hard to tell, right,
it's um, yeah, yeah, it's it's a good job. There's
you know, it's a good job. I've been there because yeah,

(22:56):
it's not the best place, but certainly like if you
manage to start his own imagine you had a bit
of money coming in. Yeah, and his stepfather, you know,
they had hard times after his his stepfather got laid
off from the Vohal plant, but he opened up a
plumbing business which seems to have been very successful. Um
and where Stephen also worked. And um he also made
cash buying, renovating and flipping houses during this period. So

(23:20):
it's yeah, it seems like he's doing really well actually
and making a very comfortable income at this period of
time in his life. Uh. Now that does not last
super long because of some events that occur in two
thousand nine, and we will talk about that. But first, Jake,
we have to break for your very favorite thing. Now. Now, Jake,

(23:43):
you don't do ads on your show, but is there
any product you would like to provide a free ad
plug for today? Um? Product or concept? Yeah? Product, a
concept that is a good concept. I don't know, man,
I would just say, um, don't do drugs. Get fit

(24:06):
and care about nature. There you go. Well, you were
the first person saying don't do drugs on this really
and I will say, this is one area where we
disagree with you. I agree with getting fit and enjoying
nature and donating to popular Front also a good also
a good idea. You should also donate to UM the

(24:27):
corporations that ads and we're back. Uh, that was not
one of my better ad transitions. They're all kind of
like that. So you know we left off stephen Y

(24:47):
actually or stephen Y actually, Lennon, uh, whatever his actual
name is. He's he's doing pretty well. He's gotten at
a jail after in the scale of things, a pretty
minor assault, and uh, he's got a business. He seems
to be making very good money. Um. But then in
two thousand nine things start to change for him. UM.
And this starts when a group called the Royal Anglian Regiment,

(25:10):
which is a British military unit had been stationed in Afghanistan,
rotated home from deployment. Now, since many of them came
from the Lutton area, there was a homecoming parade for
them in the town and this did not sit well
with members of a local Islamic extremist organization alas Suno
while jama they held a counter demonstration wielding signs that

(25:30):
said Anglian soldiers butchers of Bozra, Anglian soldiers, cowards, killers, extremists,
and similar things. Uh. They shouted that the returning soldiers
were child killers and generally did their best to troll
the people of Lutten. Now, this small demonstration was immediately
condemned and disavowed by other Muslim groups in the area,
but that didn't stop At his acting from acting as

(25:51):
a radicalizing catalyst for local right wing extremists. Are right
up by the University of Northampton notes quote. The small
Islamist protest was specifically design to both be offensive and provocative.
Although numbering no more than twenty protagonists, that offered the
perfect opportunity for an instance of Tit for Tat radicalization
to develop in the town. Um, which is very much
what you see is this kind of like there will

(26:12):
be there, There will be these extremists and Muslim groups
that will like recruit people in some cases for actual
like for the Taliban or whatever, and more often just
sort of um say, really if they're kind of like
the Westboro Baptist Church in the US, where like there's
exactly such a good way of describing it. Yeah, it's
like jad Westboro Baptists. To be honest, man, we had
like a good five years in England where we just

(26:35):
had a real problem with these hate preachers. Man, Like
it was a nightmare. You would see them all the time,
and they really really did the worst thing possible because
it did it did rather close a lot of people,
you know, people that perhaps didn't really know any Muslims
or like don't really care about them the way would
then see these people and then be like oh, like
oh and then then you know what I mean, and
then the bull starts rolling into this kind of radical stuff.

(26:57):
It was really bad, man. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what
happens here, and like but it happens to this whole
town as a result of this, like the kind of
series of events that this group like starts into being um.
The extremist Muslim protest of the Anglian Soldiers homecoming let
do a huge amount of press coverage, which riled up
local hooligans and provided an opportunity for right wing extremists

(27:19):
to organize them encounter demonstrations. One of those extremists was
a dude named Paul Ray. Now, Paul is an anti
Muslim blogger who wrote under the pseudonym Lion Heart and
would later be found to have had ties with Anders Brevick. Yeah,
the notorious shooter. You've heard of Paul Ray. Yeah, man,
so I I really really went deep into the under
Bravy stuff years ago, and yeah, he I don't know,

(27:42):
there's no one quite knows what his role was, but
it does seem like there was something some kind of
connection to Bravick. Yeah, and there's yeah, I haven't, I haven't,
you know. Obviously I was digging on Tommy, so I
didn't get deep into Paul. I didn't find like a
clear connection. But it's like a lot of people say
they were definitely in communication. There was some sort of
role the guy had and claims to have met a

(28:05):
British guy cooled Lion High. If I remember rightly, you know,
it's just already dodgy. But again, yeah, like his I
read his manifesto. It's the whole thing is bond because
it's made up of things, so you never know, you know,
but possibly if I'm if I'm if I'm criticizing manifestos
on quality, it's definitely one of the lower writing quality,

(28:26):
one of the worst manifestoes. Um yeah, Now, Ted Kazinski,
that guy could write a fucking manifesto, Ted man Solid Manifesto.
Solid manifesto really like the gold standard of trying to
radicalize people with so um So, this guy Paul Ray,

(28:48):
who were just talking about, helps organize a rejoinder protest
to the the initial like Muslim counter protest of the
homecoming parade, and he gets about a hundred and fifty
activists to show up in April two thousand nine. And
I'm gonna quote now from that University of Northampton right
up on the founding of the English Defense League, which
is the group Tommy's about to found quote at this point,

(29:08):
the demonstration included figures previously linked to the extreme right
wing group Combat eighteen, symptomatic of the wider far right's
early interest in the Lutton area at this time. The
next demonstration in Lutton came on the twenty four of May.
This protest developed when another nationalist protesting organization, March for
England mf E, began to organize a protest directed primarily
against one of the local Islamists present at the tenth

(29:29):
of March demonstration Cifle Islam. In the lead up to
the event, a moss linked to Cifle Islam was the
target of an arson attack, which is revealing of the
growing anti Muslim tensions within the town during the e
d l's initial year of formalization. After securing permission to
hold this event, m f E formally withdrew, although the
march still went ahead with smaller unofficial m f E presence.
The event resulted in a more violent confrontations. A breakaway

(29:51):
group targeted Muslim areas of Luttin, which itself inspired a
counter response by around a hundred and fifty young Muslims.
So that's the tip for tat stuff. Like we're seeing,
like the key different groups start holding these rallies, people
get assaulted, you know, the right wing extremist assault Muslims.
Then like some young Muslims will assault white people are
right wing extremist or whoever, like they credit as being that,

(30:12):
and like it just leads to more and more fighting.
It's the same thing we've seen up in like Portland.
It's just kind of what happens when this ship goes down.
It got really violent though, man Like, it was crazy.
They were like big, big groups. You know, it spreads
so fast over the region as well, Like it's spread
man like. It ended up even there was like when
I was just finishing school, there was a few people

(30:33):
were like we're d L and like, you know, we
would fight with them, but but like it was kind
of a foreign like you know, like right wing Nazi
stuff or whatever or whatever. It was was like really
weird concept in our town and in a lot of towns.
But now they kind of set the groundwork, you know
what I mean. Yeah, yeah, and it just hasn't quite
got It's like Ebden flowed since then, but it hasn't

(30:55):
gone away. And it was like yeah, yeah. So the
process can tenued for several weeks and culminated in the
founding of the English Defense League that summer. Now the
e d L, as its most commonly known, held their
first event on August eight. This was widely seen as
being a dog whistle to British neo Nazis. Since August
eight is eight eight, and if you listen to this
podcast regularly, you know what double eights mean. The Neo Nazis.

(31:18):
Some organizers of the e d L including Paul Ray,
actually pulled out of the event because of the dog whistling.
Ray stated, anybody with the slightest bit of knowledge about
neo Nazism knows the meaning of eight eight, which is
why I pulled out of any active participation. So Paul
Ray decides that the the E. D L Is too
Nazi for him to be around. Um. Yeah, Paul Ray

(31:39):
was from a different kind of strund. He was like
far right, sure, but like anti Nazi because he's like
a Christian, you know what I mean, like a real
Christian fundamentalist type, crusaders and all of that ship. So
certainly he's like a far right guy, but he was
like not involved with the Nazi stuff. It's not like
he was like that's too much from me. I think
it was just like that's not my that's not my thing,

(32:01):
you know what I mean. Yeah, it's not my cup
of cup of tea. Yeah, it's not you know, I
want the other. So someone who did not pull out
of active participation in the rally was Stephen Yaxley, who
at that point adopted the moniker Tommy Robinson. Now, he
started out as just kind of one of a couple
of prominent people. At early e d L protests, he

(32:22):
would always wear a mask and he was kind of
the clothing he wore with war was very identifiable. UM.
And he gradually kind of wound up in control of
the largest group of Jolians with it within this like
forming organization as they carried out anti Muslim rallies and
had a bunch of street fights. Um. And so you know,
by the time the e d L is a formal thing,
Tommy Robinson is its head UM. So calling him the

(32:45):
founder might not be accurate, but he's certainly like the
guy who winds up in charge of it once it
becomes like a real concrete organization. Um. Now, in the
offing of it, the British fascist right community saw the
e d L as a useful tool for directing device
towards more extreme groups like the BNP and National Front. However,
the e d l is more moderate appearance and more

(33:06):
diverse membership allowed it to accrue vastly more public sympathy
and support than any explicitly fascist organization ever could. As
the months went on, Tommy Robinson made the wise decision
to explicitly reject the Nazi roots of his organization. At
one point burning a swastika flag on BBC Newsnight as
a symbolic rejection of the ideology. Um, and this this works.

(33:27):
The the e d L actually spreads very rapidly at
this point, and Facebook was utterly critical to that. Robinson
was very effective though it building a grassroots movement. Um.
You know, there was no real clear political ideology in
the e d L in its early days, just a
hatred for radical Islam and probably more than anything, a
desire to get into street fights. Um, certainly, you know

(33:51):
id L, it's it's you know, Tommy, he's not a Nazi,
you know what I mean. He might be a fascist,
but yeah, that's you're right like there, Like certainly what
he did there, it wasn't like he was hiding it that,
you're right. Like the way he got it to spread
was because you know, he's not a Nazi. People to do.
You know, to this day, people are very aware of,
you know, the sacrifices the troops of our country gave

(34:11):
to fight the Nazis. So it's never been as huge
as you might think, you know what I mean. So
he was clever in you know, firstly he was he
was honest that he's not a Nazi. But secondly he
was clever in being like, hey, we're not racist or Nazi.
Anyone can join and that yeah, that's what made it spread. Man,
Like I knew a lad one of my friends brothers
who's half Pakistani, was like, oh, I might join it.

(34:34):
And we were like, are you mad? You know what
I mean? And he was like, no, man, they're not racist,
like you know, and it was you know what I mean.
It really a lot of kids really started to believe it,
you know, yeah, yeah, and that's I mean that that's
part of like because you've obviously you've seen the same
thing with like the Proud Boys and with Patriot Prayer
here in Portland, where like they always focused on like,
you know, let's get our black members and our Asian

(34:55):
members up front so that you know when that group
American Guard try to drive an armored bus into downtown
Portland was the group that's been tied to nine murders,
and it is very much like a serioust extremist white
supremacist group. The guy who was swinging a hammer at
people during the rally was an Asian man, So like
I mean, and that goes like that's um, it's not
an ineffective tactic to sort of like no, no, no,

(35:17):
we're not Nazis. Like, look at how much more racially
accepting we are than Nazis. And yeah, I wouldn't call
Tommy Robinson and Nazi. I think he might be a fascist.
I think more than anything, he's a grifter. But you
know we we're telling today, Yeah, like he's like a
grift of that's like, you know, pretty racist. He's just
like that. That's what it is to certain people. It's

(35:39):
I go back and forth on a lot of these guys.
I do think Steve Bannon's a true believer, um whatever
you want to call him politically, I think he believes it.
I think Kevin McGinnis probably believes a lot of it
because he could have pretty easily pulled himself away from
this group before it got into legal trouble. I don't
think it's profitable anymore. I don't know. I don't really
know Gavin that well. Um, but I had That's my

(36:01):
suspicion is that he believes more than a guy like
Tommy does. But I really don't know. Yeah, um, so yeah,
I'm gonna read a quote from a two eighteen BBC
right up about the the E d L's growth in
from like two thousand nine up two eleven quote each
event appeared to draw a bigger crowd. By two thousand
and eleven, the group had gathered sufficient support to prompt

(36:23):
police to close Litton Town Center for a day to
facilitate the E d l's homecoming protest, But Robinson's campaign
was also unraveling because of his inability to control his
followers or his own behavior. Later that year, he received
a twelve month community rehabilitation order after a massive football
brawl between supporters of his blooded lutten Town FC and
those of Newport County. As the fist flew, he led

(36:43):
his followers in a chant of E d L till
I die um and I will remind our American listeners
that when you people talk about football, you mean soccer. Wow,
we mean football, We mean football. I One of my
favorite things about like the cussedness of my people is

(37:04):
our insistence on doing things that no one needs to
do differently differently. It's the same thing with like the
fact that we use inches and feet and why why
do we have miles and not kilometers? There's no point.
We're just dicks. But it's just like America, we can't.
We're going to do it different. Yeah, just so rude,
you know what I mean. Yeah, I want to take

(37:27):
that further, Like, if I'm ever in charge of this country,
I'm just gonna rename ours. We'll call him Charles or something,
just to like funk with people a little bit more.
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Now Robinson got in serious trouble
because of this football brawl because a year earlier, in
two thousand ten, he'd have been convicted of abusive, threatening,

(37:47):
or insulting behavior during a different E. D L fight,
so he'd essentially been on probation when the football fight
broke out. He was arrested for breach of bail conditions
later that year and jailed in Bedford Prison. While there,
Tommy became incensed at the fact the prison served halal meat,
and he went on a brief hunger strike. Um yeah,
well for ten minutes, ye, not eating breakfast. I'll never

(38:14):
understand like the kind of right wing obsession with like
halal being something sinister, Like no one cares the kebab
shops on my area, Like we just go in. It's
like a boss kebab, Like like no one gives a
funk like these people in Maniacs. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
it's frustrating. I wish every country would be better off

(38:36):
with more kebab shops. It's the best thing to eat
when you're wasted at three in the more. Absolutely nothing
nothing comes close. Just a big pocket account I love them. Um. Yeah,
fucking Donner with just everything. I'll dress that son of
a bit. Yeah, I missed Donors. So in September of
two eleven, after pretty shortly I think, after getting out

(38:58):
of jail, Tommy was convicted assault again after he headbutted
one of his own marchers during a two thousand man
rally in Blackburn. Lennon Kuli or Robinson claims that the
guy was a Nazi uh, and it's really hard for
me to tell precisely what went down. It's possible the
dude was doing Nazi ship and Tommy didn't want him
as rally. It's possible to fight was about something else. Um.

(39:18):
Either way, the whole fight sounds very silly, which I
think is exampled by the fact that his form of
assault chosen was a head butt. Um. What's not silly
is that E d L members during this time got
up to a lot of much more sinister ship UM,
so as the number of folks who should have that
Blackburn rally should tell you. By late two thousand eleven,
Tommy's little band of hooligans had turned into a national

(39:41):
movement and the rise of the E d L saw
a corresponding rise in hate crimes against British Muslims. Faith Matters,
an organization aimed at reducing extremism, launched a program to
track hate crimes against Muslims in March of two thousand twelve,
largely as a result of the increase in hate crimes
that happened after the e d l s growth. In
the first twelve months after start in that program, they
received six hundred and thirty two reports of separate hate

(40:03):
crime incidents of perpetrators had far right ties. Nearly all
of those were either to the e d L or
to the British National Party UM. But numbers are boring,
so let's look at a specific incident of violence from
old tom Rob's mob. In June of two thousand eleven,
a bunch of activists in Yorkshire held a rage against
racism concert. The E d L showed up and I'm

(40:25):
going to quote the Yorkshire Evening Post on what happened next.
Two people were injured at Saturday's all day Rage against
Racism event. One man had teeth knocked out. Kevin Barry,
assistant manager at the Well formerly Joseph's Well, suffered an
injured risk during the fracas while shielding himself from a
missile as he stood behind the bar. He said, a
group of around fifteen people estimated to be aged between
sixteen and twenty three, barged into the premises, shouting and

(40:48):
chanting E d L. So yeah, said away chan is,
Well they do they go e E E d L
like that, Like it's just you. I've been a rally before,
um like against it, like like covering it, you know
what I mean. And you just hear it coming from
down the road. It's just like, oh, it's horrible, man,
you know what I mean. Yeah, that sounds uh foreboding. Yeah, exactly.

(41:12):
That's the white word for you. Yeah, I'm sure that's
the goal. Now. Around the same time in Dagenham, two
young Muslimen were walking down the street when they had
the bad luck to happen onto a mob of probably
drunken E d L men on their way back from
a rally. One victim later recalled quote, we were walking
home and we spotted the d L march. The next minute,
somebody starts shouting at us Muslim bombers off our streets.

(41:34):
Suddenly everything changed. I was pushed in five minute, attacked me.
I was punched. I could see a much larger group
of between thirty and fifty of them surrounding my brother.
He was on the floor. They were kicking him and
punching him all over. He couldn't move. I was terrified.
I didn't know if he was alive. And one of
the or several of the E d L guys later
like we're given jail time. They were like broken bones,
like pretty serious assault. Like those loads of loads, loads

(41:58):
of those just kept going on. Yeah. I just picked
two cases to kind of highlight what was going on
because I don't want to just run through a laundry
list of ship like that. Um yeah, yeah, that's enough
color on E d L violence. You get the point. Um,
So let's get back to their leader, Tommy. In May
of two thousand twelve, Tommy Robinson was caught flirting with
a fifteen year old girl on Twitter. As these things go.

(42:21):
It was. It was a fairly minor incident, and he
was not charged with committing any crime, but the whole
interaction is worth reading. A teenaged girl named Asia posted
a selfie to Twitter, to which Tommy responded, you're pretty
fit for a Muslim. Oh my god. The young woman

(42:44):
who I think his name is Asia, or at least
that's what I'm guessing from her her her account name, responds,
I'm fifteen, and you got the cheek to call Muslims petos.
Tommy responds, how does it feel to be nearly twice
the age Aisha was when your prophet raped her, and
then adds Mohammed was fifty six, Aisha was nine. Now,
stop flirting with me, okay, Roberson Thirsty Tommy is the

(43:10):
worst thing ever. Yeah, it's pretty grass. Yeah I can
just imagine, you know, like he's I laugh at him
like me and my best friend we um we we
watched him every now and then, like we'll just sit
there and just fucking laugh. Like one time, my friend
he was smoking weed and he just put like Tommy's

(43:30):
interview one when he got out of prison, and like
he lost the load of weight and for some reason,
it was just the funniest thing, you know, like he's
kind of over here now he's kind of like you
laugh at him, you know, but like I forget all
of this happened, you know, like now you're bringing it up.
It's like, yeah, DL was huge, and they caused so
much chaos, you know what I mean. Yeah, it's kind

(43:53):
of nice that he's I mean, obviously it's better that
he'd be a figure of ridicule than than a leader
of a powerful street movement. And I hope that's kind
of where all these guys wind up. Yeah, it is
like for a time they were fucking huge, huge. Yeah.
Now you know what else is massive? Jake go on

(44:17):
the gigantic corporations that support this podcast with their ad dollars. Yeah,
it's an ad break time. It is products and we're back. Uh,
we're back, and we're talking about Tommy Robinson now. Shortly

(44:38):
after uh going to jail several more times. Uh, in
early two or in two thirteen, Tommy began to pull
away from far right politics. In October of that year,
he was caught with a false passport and found who
have traveled to the United States under the name Andrew
McMaster using a friends passport. As a repeat criminal with

(45:00):
violent convictions, he'd been barred from entering the country. He
was caught at JFK Airport, and the whole incident added
a wrinkle to the already confusing and winding story of
what the funk Tommy's real name actually is um and
I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from some coverage of that.
When he arrived at New York's JFK Airport, customs officials
who took his fingerprints realized he was not Mr McMaster.
Lennon was asked to attend a second interview, but left

(45:21):
the airport, entering the US illegally. He stayed just one
night and traveled back to the UK the following day
to use his own legitimate passport, which bears the name
Paul Harris. The court heard that is the name that
appears in the IDEO leader's passport, although he uses aliases. Sentencing,
the third year old judge Alistair Mcreith told him, I'm
going to sentence you under the name of Stephen Lennon,
although I suspect that it's not actually your true name,

(45:42):
in the sense that it is not the name that
appears on your passport. So again, I really don't know
what his fucking real name is. It's probably Stephen you
actually Lennon or Stephen Lennon. Um, it's definitely not Tommy
Robinson Stephen Actual. Everyone kind of believes it to be.
He got he took the name of that other football
who Loogan, right, I think his uncle, Yeah, Tommy Robinson. Yeah,

(46:05):
uncle said take it for some reason. I hadn't heard that,
but that seems plausible something like that. Yeah. Yeah, Like
him and his uncle were very involved with at the start,
and if I remember right, they were like, you're like
Tommy or something because of the fighting, and he was like,
all right, I'll take that name or something like that.
Something weird. It's such a weird thing to do though, Yeah, yeah,

(46:26):
it's it's a weird name, um to pick for that.
And like, I guess I don't know enough about soccer
who Loogan culture to know why you'd pick that guy's name. Oh,
it's a very it's a very football who looking kind
of name. M like as a brit I don't even
know how to explain why, but it just did, do
you know what I mean? He it is does sound

(46:47):
like the name of somebody who would chuck a bottle
at a celebration of his team's scoring a goal or whatever.
Yeah definitely, um so uh yeah. As a result of
the passport fraud, Tommy Robinson spent another ten months in jail.
E d L members held regular vigils outside of the
jail and called him a political prisoner. Now, Robinson's time

(47:10):
behind bars was tough. He spent eighteen weeks in solitary
confinement because of issues with him and Muslim gangs inside
the prison. They were worried he might get murdered, which
is probably a real fear to have um. When he
was released in October two thirteen, he appeared at least
to be a somewhat changed man. That's certainly the impression
reporters with the Telegraph walked away with when they interviewed

(47:30):
him about his decision to quit the e d L. Quote.
Going to prison was the best thing that ever happened
to me, declares Tommy Robinson. I am sitting in a
hotel bar in Litton Town Center listening to him explain
why he has quit the English Defense League. Before his imprisonment,
he had been receiving death threats from his Lamists neo
Nazis and Neo Nazis were threatening to take over the
e d L. As a result, he says he was
drinking alcohol, going out three times a week, neglecting my wife.

(47:53):
I thought I was dealing with the pressures of the
English Defense League, but I was pretty much just binging
my way through it. So this is is what he
claims to be at this point. Um Robinson told The
Telegraph that his time in solitary provided him with an
opportunity to finally look at where his life was headed.
And that's when I started to question where's the e
d L going? Because you know, we march up and
down this country, but what is it we want to

(48:14):
get out of it and how do we succeed Now.
This article was part of a brief press tour Robinson
carried out in order to convince the world that he
had changed and was now dedicated to anti radicalization. He
started working with Quilliam, which is an builds itself at
least as an anti extremist think tank and is run
by a former Islamic extremist named Magid Nowas. Uh now

(48:35):
Nowas talked to Robinson while he was filming a BBC
documentary After getting out of the clink, Tommy recalls he
said to me, Tommy, if you ever think about leaving
the E d L and you want to chat, I'm
here for you. So at this point, after getting out
of jail from his passport fraud, Tommy starts to claim that,
like his time in solitary and his friendship with this
guy Majid had convinced him that he had been wrong

(48:57):
to call Islama disease and that, like the right, the
real way to fight the danger of radical Islam was
to work with moderate Muslims and reformers to de radicalize extremists. Um.
So he starts saying things that at least seemed like
they might be reasonable. Um. Yeah, that's that's That's kind
of the twist that Tommy Robinson's life takes at this point.

(49:17):
It was it was a shock that I remember, like
loads of video types were fuming with him. Obviously you
know what I mean. But I'll be honest. Back then
I was quite young and that happen, but I did
he did seem kind of genuine at the time. I
think he he had like a very brief moment of
um clarity, and you know, I realized that like oh,
like this is radical. Islam is a very specific thing.

(49:40):
It doesn't mean Islam, you know what I mean? Um?
But then, yeah, he didn't last long. No, it did
not last long. Uh. And part of that is because
in November of two thousand thirteen, like a month after
that Telegraph article, Tommy Robinson pled guilty to mortgage fraud. Um.

(50:00):
He just can't stop, can't. He just loves it, like
he's acted to just getting himself in petty crimes, like
it's just his favorite thing. But it's so weird, always petty,
and he's never any good at it. Like how do
you even do mortgage fraud? Like what? Yeah, I don't.
I'm not going to claim to understand the ins and

(50:22):
outs of this particular case, but the basics of it
is he worked with a crooked mortgage broker to obtain
mortgages under false pretenses. Um. It's like the authorities think
that Tommy probably made about the equivalent about you know,
three d thousand U S. Dollars something like that, about
a hundred and sixty pounds um part as a part

(50:44):
of this scheme, and the broker he worked with made
about four times that much money. She she she came
out very well other than going to prison with um. Now,
this would be an entirely nondescript story of white collar
crime if not for the fact that Tommy Robinson is
a right wing extremist and his partner in crime was
a mortgage broker with the name Deborah Rothschild. Here we go,

(51:08):
okay to get accused. Yeah, I mean as far as
I know, like, I haven't found any evidence she's actually
connected to the Rothschild family, and like, to be honest,
a crime on that smaller level would be kind of
small beans for a joke by the worst Rothchild's ever. Yeah, yea,
the very worst of the Rothschilda Like what Yeah, and

(51:32):
I'm sure they were. I'm sure you can find Nazis
in the DNP who like got all conspiracy ish about that. Yeah,
that's what I'm saying, Like, yeah, I have heard before,
like on Stormfront when I used to go in there
like for research, um and on Pole as well, they
will call him like a Jew lover and stuff, like

(51:52):
they're really like anti submitting towards him because I think
he even went to Israel and stuff as well. It
was like pro ideaf and stuff. Yeah, he's very pro Israel.
He's there's nuts will say this like, he doesn't seem
to be anti Semitic. Um yeah, like that, that's that
doesn't seem to be one of the things Tommy has pushed.
Um yeah, and he's clearly willing to work with the
Rothschild so. Um So. Tommy was sentenced to another eighteen

(52:16):
months in prison. Obviously didn't do all of that, but
he did a lot of it, and much of it.
Most of his time he had to serve in solitary
due to the perceived danger again that he would face
from Muslim gangs. By the time Tommy got out of prison,
it was two thousand sixteen, the year of everybody's favorite
election and a motherfucking boom period for the global far right.
Robinson instantly discarded all of his prior claims of working

(52:38):
towards racial reconciliation. Instead, Yeah, that did not last. Um.
You might make that out as a case that, like
all prisons do, is radicalize people. I think in this case,
Tommy just saw that there was money and being a
racist again literally like yeah. So basically, as soon as

(53:01):
he got out, he joined a group called Pegita, or
Patriotic Europeans against the Islamicization of the occident um the
s the ociden is that the yeah, the fucking yeah yeah, okay,
I know. I don't know why it ends in an
a either, other than that they decided that Pegito sounded

(53:26):
uh yeah. Yeah. They were a German far initially German.
They spread but like they started out as a German
far right anti Islam movement, and they saw a huge
early success, drawing in more than twenty five thou people
into the streets for protests before a bunch of their
leaders quit due to scandals. One example of that picture

(53:47):
surface of their founder dressed as Adolf Hitler. Yeah right, yes,
real surprising. Yeah. So all of that went down before
Tommy was out of prison. Once he was free, he
showed up to speak at several of the events in Germany.
He warned attendees that the massive Syrian refugees entering the
continent constituted a military invasion. Then he announced that he'd

(54:10):
be running the UK branch of Pegito. He started planning rallies,
which led to one of my very favorite Twitter interactions
of the entire Tommy Robinson saga. So I found this
Twitter post screen capped on an archived Facebook page for
the Midlands Anti Fascist Network So your own local group. Yeah,
and this is from January of two thousand sixteen. The

(54:31):
user named will Black says, Hey, Tommy, how is the
Pagita March going to be different from the drunken E
d L mobs? You lad? And Tommy responds, the banners
will say Pegita instead of E d L. That's pretty clever.
Not mad, not mad cow group, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(54:58):
that's not bad. So in February he held his first
and I think only Pagita March. Roughly two hundred people
showed up, which is quite a decline from his two
thousand and eleven numbers. Uh. Many of those people bore
placards that said Trump is right. Uh. The rally was uneventful,
as these things go, and Tommy's association with Pageta did
not last long. Once he was out of jail, he

(55:19):
began focusing on new fearmongering grifts. On a new fearmongering grift,
I should say, one that was even easier to cash
in on than fear of Muslim terrorists, fear of white
English kids getting raped by Muslims. During a speech at
the Oxford Union He focused on sexual grooming gangs from
Muslim nations and accused police of allowing these people to
rape children because they were scared of being called racist. Quote,

(55:42):
we have a two tier police force that treats crimes
within the Muslim community differently. Now, when he made the statement,
Robinson was not just referring to a vague conspiracy theory.
He was harkening back to a specific crime, or rather
twenty years of crimes, the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal.
Have you heard of this? Yeah, I was gonna say
this is real, Like this isn't Yeah, this is really

(56:04):
And what he said about the police being scared to
report was actually proven to be true as well. They
basically said that we were too scared to kind of
investigate this for being accused of being like anti Muslim
or whatever. So it was absolutely a boring, boring thing.
I mean, it wasn't a Muslim sex screaming gang as
much as it was like I mean, yeah, sure, like

(56:25):
well it depends how you see. It wasn't like they
weren't doing it in the name of Islam. They just
happened it will be Muslim. But there was also like
white guys in it that weren't religious as well, but
it was whatever it was, it was a horrific, horrific
thing that honestly got very little attention in the media.
And I actually, you know, I hate to say this,
but I do think he's right that it was just
the liberal media was too scared to properly dig into it,

(56:45):
I think, um And unfortunately that allowed the right wing
to just run with it and just talk ship, you
know what I mean, turn it into something it wasn't,
which then just read the word. The biggest fallout from
this was that the victims didn't get the proper you know,
attention that they should of. Umah, really horrible situation. Yeah,
and we're gonna dig into it a bit because it's
a lot more complicated and and messed up than than

(57:08):
Tommy wants to give it credibly, because like at what
use like it's one of the factors absolutely is the
police and not just the police, actually primarily not the police,
but other authorities were scared of being seen as racist.
But there was a lot more that went on to
it as well. And like, yeah, like you said, one
of the big tragedies here is because it's got so politicized, um,
due to a mix of right wing grifting and liberal

(57:31):
being afraid to be seen as racist. Like everyone missed
a lot of the really critical lessons about like why
this was allowed to go on for so fucking long? Um,
so uh to to do? Yeah, first off, um, this
obviously it's very much a real crime. Um. The total
number of girls molested raped as a result of the

(57:52):
Rotherham trafficking ring was probably over fifteen hundred, and may
have even been significantly more than hundred even, Yeah, it's
a huge number. A sizable majority of the traffickers were
of Pakistani or other Asian heritage. And I should note
here in the UK when people like the term Asian,
when it's used often refers to Muslims specifically the way

(58:14):
that like it's used in this context, and in the
US we don't really see it that way, but like
they're generally talking about people from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Asian for you would be like kind of like I
don't know, like Chinese or Chinese Japanese. Yeah here, like
Asian you kind of mean like Indian, Pakistani, you know,
maybe even Afghans sometimes, which actually would make most sense

(58:37):
you know what I mean, it's different y yeah yeah yeah.
And here like I mean we we a lot of
times people will call like someone from Afghanistan, like a
Middle Easterner, which is like yeah, um yeah yeah, it's
uh so um yeah so yeah. A sizable majority of
the traffickers were of Pakistani or you know, Asian heritage. Um.

(59:00):
But obviously the case is not just as simple as
as Muslims running a rape gang. Paul Williamson, the senior
investigating officer on the operation that helped bring it down UH,
called the rotherham Ring quote a unique and unprecedented investigation,
challenging in its scope and complexity. Now. He claimed a
toxic mix of factors allowed the sex ring to persist.
From two thirteen. One of the in like journalistic organs

(59:24):
that actually did a pretty good job of covering this
as The Guardian, they devoted a lot of coverage to it.
And I'm gonna quote from some of that now. Quote
He said a failure by police to listen, safeguard and
investigate the reports had led to a corrosive lack of
trust among victims that the n c A was still
trying to break down. Um. And one reason why the
police failed to listen was in fact a fear that
this would damage community cohesion and cause ethnic strife and

(59:46):
be seen as racist. But this was not the only factor.
The biggest issue with getting police to take this seriously
was that these girls were being sexually trafficked, as in
they were being used as prostitutes. And while like rational
people can say at all, underage sex trafficking victims are
rape victims, not prostitutes, that does not stop them from
being treated like prostitutes by police. Um The Guardian notes

(01:00:09):
quote and this is like summarizing the findings of an
investigation into the abuse ring. In a small number of
cases which have already received media attention, the victims were arrested,
and these are the young girls were arrested for offenses
such as a breach of the piece are being drunk
and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of
rape and sexual assault against children within social care if
the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by

(01:00:29):
senior managers at an operational level, the police gave no
priority to child sexual exploitation, regarding many child victims with
contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.
Further stark evidence came in two thousand two, two thousand
and three and two thousand six, with three reports known
to the police in the Council which could not have
been clear in their description of the situation in Rotherham.
The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some

(01:00:51):
senior officers disbelieved the data it contained, so not wanting
to be seen as racist was a factor. But based
on at least all of the reporting on this, it
seems like a bigger one is cops just assumed these
young girls were prostitutes and we're more willing to arrest
them than to investigate them as victims of a crime
because they yeah, exactly. It's like it's fucked up. It's

(01:01:14):
very fucked up. Um. Now, there's a very detailed government
report on the whole cluster fuck and it does I'm
gonna read hear what it says about issues of ethnicity
and how that played into the case. Issues of ethnicity
related to child sexual exploitation have been discussed other reports,
including the Home Affair Select Committee report and the report
of the Children's Commissioner. Within the Council, we found no
evidence of children's social care staff being influenced by concerns

(01:01:36):
about the ethnic origins of suspected perpetrators when dealing with
individual child protection cases. In the broader organizational context, however,
there was a widespread perception that the messages conveyed by
some senior people in the council and also the police,
were to downplay the ethnic dimensions of c SC. Unsurprisingly,
frontline staff appeared to be confused as to what they
were supposed to say and do and what would be

(01:01:56):
interpreted as racist. From a political perspective, the approach of
a avoiding public discussion of the issues was ill judged.
So that's kind of what they have to say, is
like the fat like what sort of the desire to
not be seen as races played into it. So it
was more of an issue in yeah, like once this
was known, like the sort of inability of police to

(01:02:18):
to want to talk about it or get the word
out or like deal with this as a as a
like like systemic problem um. Whereas the difficulty, like the
reason that it wasn't caught for so long is sort
of police bias against people they saw as prostitutes. So
again it's like this mix of poltic factors is the
real mix, the only he picked out one thing, yeah yeah,

(01:02:39):
yeah yeah, and it's uh yeah, it sucks. The whole
thing sucks. Um. And because we live in the twenty
one century where nuance is dead. Uh, the only takeaway
from the story for millions of people is that gangs
of Muslims are grooming and raping white girls. Um. This
is obviously the line that Tommy Robinson has started pushing
in his public speeches, along with the idea that the
government is too scared go after this people. And it's

(01:03:02):
a line that's been helped along by research recently published
by Quillium, the anti radicalization group Robinson worked with for
a Hot Minute. They published a report in two thousand
eighteen claiming that eighty four percent of grooming gang offenders
are Asian and the majority are Pakistani Muslims. Now, this
report seems to mostly be bullshit. Ella Cockbain, a national
expert on child sexual exploitation, called it a case study

(01:03:24):
in bad science, writ with errors and consistencies, a glaring
lack of transparency, sweeping claims, and gross generalizations unfounded by
its own data. See for one thing, grooming gang, which
is what this Quillium study claims to be about is
not a legal category, so there's no actual legal data
on grooming gangs. There's just data on child sexual exploitation,
and child sexual exploitation falls under a number of different

(01:03:47):
criminal offenses depending on the exact type of sexual exploitation
that's going on. UM one issue with their report is
that the ethnicity of the culprit in these sorts of
cases is actually only recorded when that person is non white.
So finding good data on CSC is very hard to
do to begin with, and Quilliam never really tried. Their
study was based on fifty eight cases they picked from
two thousand five to two thousand seven that led to

(01:04:09):
two hundred and sixty four convictions, and they just counted
up how many of those convictions were of people from
Asian backgrounds. They provide no info on why they picked
these fifty eight cases and not any of the other
child sexual exploitation cases that like may have fit the
same criteria as being sort of like a grooming gang
uh style, you know. Attack UM critics pointed out that

(01:04:32):
there were, like if you look at the total number
of CSC cases that involved like multiple adults, there were
way more than fifty eight during that period that were
perpelled like perpetrated by white people. Um, and like if
you actually look at the data that exists, like the
conclusion that you're drawn to is that a majority of
perpetrators who in like child sex grooming in the UK

(01:04:55):
are white because the majority of the people in the UK. Again,
that's like the p who use that what all the
all the sex people they were white. Well, yeah, because
it's more white people, you know what I mean, white people. Yeah,
it doesn't work the same way the other one doesn't work,
you know what I mean. Basically, we have a huge
fucking pedophile problem exactly, and it doesn't matter what color
the kids are getting abused, Yeah, exactly, you're right, man, Like,

(01:05:19):
and it's people like, well it's white, Well it's this.
It's like kids are getting fucking raped, Like shut up,
and like let's focus on that first and then worry
about where it's coming, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
it's it's horrible. Yeah, yeah, it's it's fucked up, but
it's sucked up. Like that's the whole discussion as opposed
to like, yeah, I mean and the reality is that
like any of these kitty diddlers have way more in

(01:05:40):
common with each other than they do with like other
people who happened to share their skin color, because they're
people who are less kids, right exactly, Like yeah, oh
you're a Muslim. Yeah, like, oh, well you're like me?
Like no, like no, like my Muslim friends are not pedophile.
It was like, don't be fucking stupid, you know what
I mean. It's it's that's exactly it. My You're right,
And the only thing that they have in common is

(01:06:02):
with other fucking pedophiles. You know, this is pure evil.
It's yeah, it's it's it's just crazy how it has
been politicized. Like when you lay it out like this,
it's really the pressing actually if you think about it,
like yeah, yeah, it's super depressing. And you know what
isn't depressing is pivoting to adds of the back of pedophile.

(01:06:27):
Not the first or the last time we will pivot
to ads off the back of Peter Feeling Disney No, well,
maybe they will own us in about forty seven seconds
based on Yeah, so enjoy Disney Plus, We're back now. Uh.

(01:06:52):
In two thousands seventeen, Tommy Robinson got a sweet gig
writing for Rebel Media, a Canadian far right outfit in
part funded by the Mercy Serves, who are very wealthy
American business people UM who like to fund far right
media groups. UH. He received about ten thousand dollars a
month in salary from them, which he largely used to

(01:07:12):
put out videos that he hoped would ignite right wing
rage about the Islamicization of England. This led him to
Canterbury Crown Court in two thousand seventeen. He showed up
at the courthouse to film the defendants in a child
groom in case. Robinson's justification for this was essentially predicated
on the idea that law enforcement was too scared to
bring these evil Muslims to justice, and so him filming

(01:07:33):
these people was the only way to ensure that they
got their due. So Robinson Yeah solid planned. Tommy Robinson
filmed for an hour or so and approached several of
the defendants. This was all illegal, as the case was
subject to reporting restrictions that expressly forbade what Tommy was doing.
He was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison,
but given a suspended sentence, which he triggered the next

(01:07:54):
year when he showed up outside of Leeds Crown Court
to again film defendants in a child sex grooming case.
He filmed for over an hour, broadcasting confrontations with defendants
and eventually his arrest to more than ten thousand viewers.
This whole mess activated tommy suspended sentence and added another
ten months to his term in jail. Now, Tommy's fans
have claimed that this is all part of an attempt

(01:08:15):
to take Tommy down for his exposure of the dangers
of Islam and the collusion of law enforcement, and the
fact that he wasn't banned from filming this event is
like the suppression of journalism and free speech. The reality
of the situation is that by doing what he did,
Tommy nearly helped those child rapists get off without a conviction. Exactly. Yeah, yeah,
because yeah, that's exactly way he nearly did the fucking yeah. Yeah,

(01:08:38):
there's a reason you're not supposed to, like they're trying
to try these people, and like you can't prejudice the
you don't want you don't want to, like yeah, basically,
he gave them a chance to claim that it was
like a mistrial, that like there was no chance for
a fair verdict, and like they actually got a hearing
at the Court of Appeal that might have led to

(01:08:59):
them getting all for the crime because of what Tommy.
Um Fortunately they didn't. But like the only reason it
was a chance is because Tommy shut up with a
fucking camera. The best bit about that clip is where
he's like, he's all like bo He's acting like he
doesn't care, and then when he realized he's getting arrested,
he's like cool, my lawyer. Uh So for a while there,

(01:09:23):
up until this year, really Tommy did seem to have
hit upon a perfect grift and he was well on
his way to riches for out throughout two thousand seventeen
and two thousand eighteen. This is like, financially the most
successful chunk of his career. When he starts pretending to
be a journalist and like showing up and doing that
sort of thing, provoking people, like making videos for rebel media.
So I should just mention I just remember, not remember,

(01:09:47):
so you see this period of time when he was
doing that, I actually spoke to him. I contacted him
because me and my friend wanted to make a doc
about him because when we saw him doing this, like
I'm a journalist now, we were like, boy, like we
wanted to sit to him, look, let us come and
film with you, um you know, and he was like, oh,
I don't know, like you you know, you guys are
lefties or whatever, and like, yeah, we we tried to

(01:10:08):
get him to like let us go and film with him,
not to like we just wanted to do it, you know,
not to like I said to him, Look, we're going
to stitch you up. I said, but if you do
something wrong, it's fucking going in. Like we just wanted
to know, like what is this been in the end,
Like I don't know, we kind of went off the idea.
But yeah, man, that was a crazy period. Sorry sorry
to but you. I just it just thought, oh man,
that I remember, Like I wish we'd got to film

(01:10:30):
with him, you know, Oh yeah, that would have been
a hoot, Like just getting to watch him get arrested,
which happens to Timmy about as often as like trips
to the gym happened for a relatively healthy person like
his hobby, you know, his hobby, just to get arrested
for stupid stuff. Um. So yeah, in two seventeen and

(01:10:52):
two does an eighteen, he's making fucking bank and an eighteen,
he put out a video called Three Boys Tragedy or Terrorism.
It was out three young London teams who were hit
by a drunk driver of Asian descent. Now, there was
no evidence of malice or terrorism in this. It was
I mean obviously like the guy's piece of ship. He
killed people because he was drunk, but like it wasn't terrorism,

(01:11:13):
and like the fact that he was drunk should be
the evidence you need that he was not a hardcore
Muslim um. But Tommy turned it into an anti an
excuse for an anti Muslim screed anyway, saying in the
video quote it's clear that these families have been systemically
failed and lied to by the police. I can't be
certain this was a terrorist attack. If this was a
terrorist attack and cover up, we could be looking at
so many more terrorist attacks than we could ever have imagined.

(01:11:36):
So yeah, I mean, like it's just I mean, it's
it's like he's trying to find a problem all the time,
you know, yeah, yeah, because that's where the money is.
It's like saying like, oh, a drunk car Irish guy
runs someone over, Like was it the IRA, Like no, yes,
yes it was. I mean, I I blame all car

(01:11:57):
accidents on the IRA well the only the one to
go boom, you know, yeah, oh oh boy. Uh, they've
been involved in some Tesla related crashes in Los Angeles.
That could be the like that that would be the future,
you know, like a like ringing up Tesla's months. Um.

(01:12:17):
So there were of course demonstrations for justice as a
result of these deaths. One of them even involved the
mother of one of the kids, who, thanks to Tommy,
now believes her son was murdered and that his murder
was covered up. Um. Which yeah, it's just just gross.
He's a gross guy. So Tommy also self published a
second book during this time, titled Mohammed's Karan, Why Muslims

(01:12:38):
Kill for Islam. The BDC notes that he and his
co author opened to the book with these lines, if
you are a Muslim, please put this book down. We
do not wish you to become a killer, because this
book leads you to understand the doctrines and history of
Islam more thoroughly. So that's what it starts. Yeah, that's
how it starts. Yeah, firstly, he's besuming the Muslim is

(01:12:59):
gonna like seecout that book, and then secondly, like oh, shoot,
I don't want to become a killer. I better put
it down, Like oh boy, yeah, oh god, I'm glad
I saw that disclaimer. Thank god. Yeah yeah. So prior
to the Trump years, Tommy had spent his whole political life,
such as it was, is very much a fringe figure. Um,

(01:13:20):
but he exploded in at least international popularity in two thousands,
seventeen and eighteen. His Facebook page hit more than a
million followers, and for months he was able to use
it to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. Donations.
He was also very active on Twitter, tweeting this on
the anniversary of the seven seven train bombings. Where was
the day of rage? After the terrorist attacks? All I

(01:13:41):
saw was lighting candles. Um, it's called a memorial, dickhead,
It's called a memorial tickeats Just how crass? Like, Yeah,
you know, like the seven seven bombings and and also
the bombings in Manchester where they those fucking jhad is
like killed our children, you know, like in this country
it was disgusting. Do you think we're going to smash
the place up? No, Like, the correct response is to

(01:14:03):
have a candlelit vigil to pay respect. You know it's crazy. Yeah,
it's yeah, and it's it's just it is a symbol
like what a gross guy he is that he's able
to say, like, look at this horrible violence and be like,
why wasn't why didn't we just do more violence in
the wake of it, because like that's that's not what
sane people want. Yeah, let's let's gather and make a
really big problem for the police, which would then allow

(01:14:25):
the jahaddies to get through even better. You know, like,
I don't think he thinks half the time he says stuff.
You know, I really don't even think that he's Like
I'm not saying he's good, but sometimes it doesn't. It
comes from a place of just not even thinking like
do you know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that
that I would say, that's fair. Um So Tommy ship

(01:14:45):
talking eventually led to a very real tragedy in two
thoen early two thousand and eighteen, a man named Darren
Osborne drove a rented truck into a crowd of Muslims
outside of the Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one. Osborne's journey
to radicalization had started a few months earlier when he
watched it BBC drama about the Rockdale sex grooming gang.
He went online to learn more and he found Tommy

(01:15:05):
Robinson's writing about the sex grooming gangs and his social
media accounts. Osbourne signed up for Robinson's newsletter and is
suspected to have indirectly quoted Robinson in the note he
wrote out before the attack. Mark Rowley, the Assistant Commissioner
of the Metropolitan Police, said that there was no doubt
that material posted by Tommy Robinson contributed to the attack,
saying of Osborne's rapid radicalization, he had grown to hate Muslims,

(01:15:27):
largely due to his consumption of large amounts of online
far right material, including as evidenced at court statements from
former e d L leader Tommy Robinson, Brittain First and others.
So and this guy, like this was a dude who
was in a very bad place in life. I think
he was addicted to drugs at this point he lost
his job. Like is that he's the kind of guy who,

(01:15:47):
you know, most of the people Tommy preaches too are
gonna want to show up to get into fist fights. Um,
this is a guy who decided to drive a truck
at sipp. It was a really weird one actually, because
like from what I at the time, I mean, correct
me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there were
people saying like he wasn't really he wasn't even like
a racist guy like he'd show. No, he just got

(01:16:08):
radicalized so quickly. Yeah, it sounds like he was like
either drunk or on drugs and like depressed one night
and watches this documentary and it enrages him and he
just like falls down a rabbit hole and decides, like
really within a couple of weeks to carry out an
attack literally rapid, yeah, really rapid process. Crazy. So so

(01:16:30):
lucky that he didn't do more damage, you know, I mean,
like one guy, you know, God rest his soul. He died,
but like funk, that was lucky that he didn't know.
It could have been a lot worse could have been,
so thankfully it was. Yeah, it was not more dead. Um. Now. Obviously,
journalists reported on this and Tommy's rolling it. Tommy collected
their information and tweeted out their names and social media

(01:16:51):
accounts to his followers. Several reporters received death threats as
a result of this. Tommy got messy enough with his
social media and the way he phrased things that by
the end of two thousand eighteen, he'd been kicked off
of every major platform, as well as PayPal for massive
and constant violations of their terms of service. He reported
at this point that his income had fallen off by
seventy Now, like most right wing provocateurs in the same situation,

(01:17:14):
Tommy has attempted to rebrand himself now as a free
speech crusader. His last post on Twitter before being banned
was the truth has to be told. I can't do
it without you. After he was banned, he held a
Day for Freedom march on Downing Street with a Breitbart
London editor and Milo Yanopolis. Now Breitbart, I should note,
also received a lot of funding from the Mercer family,

(01:17:35):
so did the US based think tank the Middle East Forum,
which curiously enough has fronted Tommy's legal bills for his
you know, illegally filming defendants in a court case and
nearly getting child molesters off on a technicality things. Let's
who's paying for his legal bills right now is the
Middle East Forum, which is backed by the Mercers, who
also backed Rebel Media. UM. Now, it's unclear exactly how

(01:17:56):
much money Tommy made off of his grift before the
crowdfunding part of it dried up, and it's unclear if
he's still receiving money directly from people like the mercers.
We do know that earlier this year he put his
one point eight million dollar house up for sale. The
BBC reported that real estate agencies agency pictures showed a
range rover in the driveway, a hot tub in the
garden and a TV above the bath. So he did

(01:18:19):
very well for a time, although the fact that it's
all on sale now suggests that maybe he overspent um
and his you know, I he might be broke at
this point. Yeah, he's just moving, you know what I mean,
He's just fucking moving. He just needs more yeah, or
he needs more coke and it's really expensive when you're
in jail. Um in July to nineteen is a result

(01:18:40):
of a second to legal court filming arrest and violation
of his suspended sentence. Tommy Robinson was sentenced to another
nine months in prison. Before his sentencing, he sent out
this plea to President Trump. I feel I am two
days away from being sentenced to death in the UK
for journalism today, I call on Donald Trump, his administration
and the Republican Party to grant me and my family
political asylum in the USA. He thought. He was like yeah,

(01:19:04):
like Bobby Sands, you know, he really believed that he
was this political prisoner. He had a fucking T shirt on.
I saw it on social media and it said the
UK is North Korea basically like okay, it's a prison.
And then suddenly the uker like it was bonkers man,

(01:19:24):
and he said like convicted for journalism, like convicted so good,
Like he really went like he just jumped the shark,
like he became this fucking like like I don't know,
just the caricature of himself, you know what I mean.
And it's the kind of thing if they were the
slightest bit of doubt in anyone's mind that he like,

(01:19:45):
like if he had been a little bit smarter about
how he got in trouble or something, he might have
gotten a response from the President. But it was just
like so obvious that he know, you just committed a
crime and you're doing time for the crime you committed,
like even Donald Trump didn't want any part of And
when you're wearing a T shirt comparing like America's biggest
ally to like, you know, the biggest dictatorship going like

(01:20:10):
we like them now, oh yeah, right, special friend, he
might change his mind in ten minutes. So yeah, now, Jake,
that would be a nice fun note to end on
Tommy going to jail. But rather than that, I think
I'm going to close out with this footage I found
in an article by the Independent of Tommy Robinson that

(01:20:32):
he apparently filmed himself of himself on vacation in Italy
on what appears to be an enormous amount of cocaine. Um,
so we're just gonna watch this video and I need
my my listeners should know that in the UK, the
word gear is slang for drugs. Yeah, yeah, so I
just sent you the link. Why don't you click that

(01:20:52):
and and play it. The thumbnail is already just gold.
It's just like a big like shot. He looks like
a shouting baald baby and the thumbnail pick like he's
got a head like a bowling ball with like geel
on it. Okay, come on, let me watch this. Let's see.
Let's see Stephen you actually Lennon, Yeah, okay, I've got it.

(01:21:15):
Contain some foul language, yeah, true, does move because me
coming to and this's what me I'm going to look
gonna punch your head kick in the faith, because I
am the king of the whole ways. Like race, no
matter where I've gone in the world, I score. Oh
so it's not as soon as we're getting this pub
I'm gonna record it for you. I've gone to I've

(01:21:37):
gone to guitar pup, I've got to do the school
gear of the Seste. While they will praying I've gone everywhere, everywhere,
everything I've gone to. When we went to Germany for
the World Cup, I was like saying that that's intended.
He's just I can almost feel the sweat on his forehead.
Oh yeah, yeah, you can smell him in that video. Yeah,

(01:22:01):
he's clearly been like he's clearly done enough cocaine that
it would probably have killed someone who hasn't been eating
cocaine every week for the last week. He's the guy,
you know. You see him at like three am and
you're like, right, lads, were going in and he's the
guy that you don't even know. He's like, come on, boys,
come on, boys, just haven't ever drink. And you're like, mate,
like you know what I mean, get a taxi man.

(01:22:23):
Good god. Yeah, he's really well. I didn't even know
about this. I'm so glad I found this. Yeah, yeah,
I incredible. Yeah he played. He talks about starting a
world war. Uh and yeah you get him like talking
about how he wants to go fight for Israel if
there's a war. Bet tweet Israel so I love. He

(01:22:44):
says I'm the king of the whole Islam race. Do
you mean and then bragging about buying drugs in Doha
school anywhere. Mate, Oh man, like you would go to
jail for so long if they caught him doing that.
Oh yeah, he would never he would never see the
bottom of that whole. It's one of those things like yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:23:08):
we call it like gap like they call it gack.
He's a fucking gackhead, you know what I mean. Like
he's clearly a big coke head. He does a lot
of like I think one of like Laurens Southern or
one of them ones like we're saying recently in a
letter that like he's just been fucking no actually might
have been. I don't know. One of them was just
saying that, like they know for a fact that he

(01:23:29):
just gets fucking high on cooke all the time from
all the donations he gets, you know, and it's so
expensive in England, like cocaine is like I don't even know,
like what I don't know, like sixty pounds seventy pounds
of Graham, you know. So it's a lot of money.
So yeah, he must be really off, is not. Yeah,
I think he's spent I think he made hundreds of

(01:23:50):
thousands of pounds and I think he's spent the bulk
of it on keeping his nose fair, wouldn't. Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, which,
you know, if a guy like Tommy Robinson is going
to spend money on something, poisoning himself with cocaine is
not the worst way he could spend the money. Um.
And it's not like if if if I had to

(01:24:11):
choose where all of those right wing grifters dollars should go,
some random coke dealer probably better than them continuing to
have the money. So yeah, I mean it's got to
be better than like you're going to rebel or ship
you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's either that or they spend
it on funding some armed militia in the U s
or whatever. I'll let it go to a coke dealer. Um.

(01:24:35):
So this episode is dedicated to Tommy Robinson's coke dealer.
Real hero of the story. Now, Jake, Uh, we're at
the end of the episode and you have a very
special thing to plug, not just Popular Front, but this
fundraiser that you are currently running for it. Yeah man, thanks,
um so yeah, so so my my platform, Popular Front.

(01:24:57):
It's it's grassroots journalism, conflict journalism, independent And right now
we're trying to raise ten grands, ten thousand pounds because basically,
we all our our equipment is fucked. Um. We you know,
we just don't have a lot of money to do
anything with it the minute. So we want to raise
ten grand to like buy new equipment, make everything more

(01:25:18):
efficient and certainly like the rate of which Popular Front
is growing, which is rapid, I can I need some
money to just go hey, like you know, bring people
on board or whatever. So yeah, so we're trying to
raise ten grands to make more content um and put
it out quicker basically, So if you go to um
popular Front dot ceo slash ten k, you can get

(01:25:39):
involved there. And what Popular Front does that I think
is so valuable. I mean, number one, you guys put
out a lot of or gea I should say at
this point put out a lot of of really interesting
content and valuable work at a very quick race, considering
like what a what a shoe string you currently harbor
it on, And I can say that, like my other podcast,

(01:26:00):
it could happen here, like a good number of the
things that the details that I included when I was
like trying to figure out like what a hypothetical US
civil war would be, Like we're based on things that
I heard about in episodes of Popular Front, like that
episode you did UM talking about like drone warfare and stuff,
and like how um much that's evolved in like Syria
with all these like off the shelf drones, Like there's

(01:26:21):
UM the it's really important work. Like it's not just
um like most war journalism UM it's either like too
broad to be super useful UM or it focuses entirely
on the stuff that uh, I don't know is like
what some editor sitting in an office thinks is going

(01:26:41):
to get clicks UM. And I think Popular Front provide
like it's way more interesting and provides really critical context
on like how war is evolving in this this decade
that we're in. So I think what you're doing is
greatly from human and yeah, that's that's definitely what we do.
You know, we focus on the very nice things and

(01:27:04):
we go into the detail that, like you said, the
commissioner at the big legacy media won't allow their journalists
to do no, no, they're gonna want another story about
some isis guy. Um yeah, and uh yeah, so um
you know you you do good work. Um, donate to
Popular Front listeners. Unlike Tommy Robinson, Jake will not spend

(01:27:25):
your money on cocaine. Yeah. Yeah, it's a a good cause. Um,
there's a reason, you know, I went with you to Syria. Um,
we had a great fucking time. Then we we did
have a great fun time. It's gonna be a great
fucking podcast. Yeah. So uh donate to Popular Front. And um, Jake,

(01:27:49):
where can they find you on on the on the twits,
the grams, the Twinstagrams. Yeah, so Twitter, I'm active on their,
Um it's at Jake Underscore hand r hand which is
h A n A h A n uh. And then Instagram.
I don't have a personal one, but we're on the
Popular Front Popular Front dot no sorry Instagram. The Instagram

(01:28:11):
is at popular dot front. And when Jake says h
he means, h fellow American, I don't know. I think
I don't know. I don't think I do. UM, I'm
Robert Evans. You can find this podcast on mind the
bast dot com or we'll have all these sources for
this episode. If you want to watch Tommy Robinson uh

(01:28:33):
on a lot of cocaine for yourself. Um, you can
find us on Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pod.
Buy t shirts at Behind the Bast or at the
t Public and yeah, these shirts. Shirts are good. Everybody
loves a shirt. Um, that's the episode. Go fucking uh,
you know, go listen to Popular Front or pett a
cat Um ideally both both. All right, that's the episode, Jake,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Tommy Robinson: The Fascist Grifter With An Addiction to Being Arrested