The Lotus Eaters on Tommy Robinson’s Film about Telford Grooming Gang and the Counterdemonstration

As I hope I’ve made clear, I’m am very definitely no fan or supporter of Tommy Robinson. He’s a thuggish Islamophobe, with a background in the BNP as well as various anti-Islam groups like the EDL and Pegida UK. He’s got a string of convictions for violence and other offences, and tries to intimidate his critics into silence by doxing them while at the same time telling his supporters not to harm them and taking the details down later. Or he turns up late at night at their house with a couple of his goons demanding a quiet word. He’s been very loose with accusations of paedophilia, which he’s used to smear Mike Stuchbery, a teacher, who has been forced to leave his job. According to the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Robinson’s in court today trying to avoid paying damages to a Syrian schoolboy he libelled as a racist bully, whereas the child was in fact the victim.

Robinson has been concentrating on the issue of the ‘Asian’ grooming gangs, which are in reality largely Pakistani Muslim men. He’s made a documentary about the gang in Telford and appeared in Birmingham to show it to the public a few days ago. Meeting him and his supporters on the other side of the police barricades was a counterdemonstration by Stand Up To Racism, who were joined by the Communist Party. Callum from the Lotus Eaters was also up there recording the event, and the right-wing YouTube channel duly put out a video with their own take on it. And really, I know that it’s biased, but the counterdemonstration looks extremely bad. They don’t tackle Robinson on the issue he’s talking about, but simply shout slogans like ‘Fascist scum, off our streets!’ and about welcoming asylum seekers and getting the Tories out. Which would be perfectly fine elsewhere, but when Robinson is talking about the sexual exploitation of White girls, it looks like Stand Up to Racism has either nothing to say about it, or worse, doesn’t care because it’s only racist when Blacks and Asians are victimised.

According to Robinson, the Telford gang comprised 200 suspects, of whom 11 were charged. One girl identified three men as her rapists – two Muslim and one Sikh. One of the Muslims fathered a child on her, and foetal DNA links him to her and the baby. But he was not charged, only the Sikh. There was also the allegation that a police inspector also took bribes from the gang to look the other way. Robinson tried to interview the inspector and the three suspected abusers. They either said ‘No comment’ or denied the accusation.

During the showing of the film a football hooligan firm, the Chelsea Headhunters, turned up looking for a fight. They were disappointed and so left again. They supposedly had nothing to do with Robinson, but Stand Up to Racism claimed they did. Then, when the film moved on to the girls telling the story how they were raped and abused, the counterdemonstrators left. Which gives the impression that they have no interest in protecting the White victims of horrific racial abuse.

This is not the impression they want to give. Callum went up to speak with them and asked them if they condemned the grooming gangs. Of course they did. But tribal politics prevented them from making common cause with Robinson. But I don’t think they need to have gone as far as that. What the anti-racist movement needs to do is assimilate protests against anti-White racism into their campaigning alongside prejudice, abuse and violence against Blacks and Asians. This would have the result of taking away at least some of Robinson’s ammunition, and demonstrate a much needed broader anti-racism that recognised it was more complex than simply Whites against people of colour.

I was so annoyed by the deeply mistaken conduct of the counterdemonstration that I sent this email off to Stand UP To Racism:

‘Dear Sir,

I regret that I am writing to you to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the apparent conduct of your Birmingham branch and their counterdemonstration at the public showing of Tommy Robinson’s wretched documentary about the Telford Muslim grooming gang. I have absolutely no regard whatsoever for Robinson: he is indeed an islamophobe and a violent criminal with a history of far right involvement. But the conduct of the counterdemonstration appeared so mistaken in its focus and arguments to seem apparently indifferent to the suffering of the grooming gang’s White victims, that in the hands of right-wing YouTube channels like the Lotus Eaters they actually looked worse than Robinson.

The major failing was that the counterdemonstrators did not tackle Robinson on the same issue. While Robinson talked about Muslim grooming gangs and their depredations on White girls, your counterdemonstrators shouted slogans against anti-immigrant racism and general condemnations of Fascism. But ‘refugees in, Tories out’, however well-meant – and would that the Tories were out! -, wasn’t the issue. It gave the impression instead, which I’m sure was not your intention, that you are not concerned about racism when its victims are White, and that you have nothing to day against that issue. Or, worse, that you and your organisation somehow feel that the sexual exploitation and abuse of White girls isn’t racism and indeed it is actually racist to protest against it. This is the attitude of some anti-racist activists, unfortunately. Last year there was a report in the Guardian that three BAME representatives at an anti-racist meeting had complained about the inclusion of anti-White racial incidents in government statistics. As this was the reason the police forces and local authorities around Britain did not tackle the gangs the counterdemonstrators therefore seem to present themselves as holding the same attitudes that allowed the gangs to escape justice for so long.

It could also be considered that the counterdemonstrators also did themselves no favours by including the Communist party. For many people the Communist Party will forever be tainted with the horrors of the Soviet state and particularly Stalin’s gulags. Stalin’s regime was also responsible for the mass deportation of whole nations to Siberia and the Holodomor, the artificial famine in the Ukraine, as documented in Robert Conquest’s book The Nation Killers. I do not feel that such people have anything to say about racism without being hypocritical.

The counterdemonstrators also made themselves look extremely bad by marching off when the film moved on to the girls telling their side of the story. This looks like a gesture of contempt and again another demonstration that you are not interested in anti-White racism or its victims.

I realise that this is not the impression you wanted to give and that you are sympathetic to the plight of the abused girls. But this is certainly the impression many people will get.

I feel very strongly that, rather than covering up anti-White racism, it needs to be included in mainstream anti-racist activism and scholarship. Robinson has been able to exploit the issue of Muslim grooming gangs because they are ignored by mainstream, genuine anti-racist organisations. This has to change. I do remember how other anti-racist organisations did accept that Whites could also be victims of racism back in the 1990s, when the CRE published its report on Black and Asian anti-White racism. But this attitude seems to have changed. There is a fear to acknowledge that such racism exists in case it is exploited by racists and Nazis like Robinson and the BNP. But I believe it is disastrous not to include anti-White racism. If ‘silence is violence’, then the silence of the mainstream anti-racist organisations is a form of complicity with the criminals. I therefore feel that the best way to deal with this issue and others like it is to hold multi-faith, multiracial demonstrations against it, as you would against White racism, abuse and violence against Blacks and Asians. There should be no reason why Blacks and Asians wouldn’t join such a demonstration provided it is done in good faith by an organisation such as your with a proven record of genuine anti-racist action. Whites have been marching under the banner ‘Black and White, unite and fight’ against racism for decades. Now it seems to me that it should be the time for Blacks and Asians to do the same. The counterdemonstrators could therefore have marched under a banner showing White, Black and Asian victims of racist abuse saying, ‘Support All the Victims of Racism, Not the Fascists’ or something like it.

Here is a link to the Lotus Eaters video: The Bad Man’s Telford Documentary – YouTube

I hope you will give my criticisms and suggestions proper consideration. I would be very grateful indeed for a reply from you on this matter, as I am intending to put this up on my blog.

Yours faithfully,’

I’ll be very interested to see what reply I get back, if any.

Desperate GB News Hosts Notorious Fascist Jack Buckby

Hat tip once again to Tim Fenton for his excellent article on yet another grotty point on GB News’ downward trajectory. As he points out, the channel must be really desperate if one of its presenters, Patrick Christys, has far-right activist Jack Buckby as a guest, and even boasts about it on Twitter. The wretched station even called Buckby a ‘counter-extremism researcher’ and proudly boasted of his praise for Christys, tweeting “‘People on the right are so scared of being smeared as being far-right extremists to the point where they say the far-right doesn’t exist’ … [Jack Buckby], counter-extremism researcher, praises Patrick Christys for talking about extremism”. Well, the real counter-extremism researchers over at Hope Not Hate have been following Buckby for years along with the Islamists Buckby is claimed to be an expert on. Because Buckby may himself be justly described as a far-right extremist. Citing pieces from the Liverpool Tab and Examiner Live, Zelo Street then proceeds to give a brief precis of Buckby’s career.

Buckby is a former member of the BNP, getting mixed up with them when he was at school and then going on to study briefly at Liverpool University before he was thrown out for his views. Buckby said, “I initially got involved with the BNP in high school. I wasn’t very political, but I had my opinions, as everyone does. I saw Nick Griffin and the real bias that he was facing on the television and I thought, ‘That can’t be right.’ I did my own research and thought, ‘Shit, I agree with him. He actually seems like a good bloke.’ I started supporting it and went through college being the notorious BNP guy. It was later that I met Nick and started talking about these culturist ideas”. He was expelled eight years ago in 2013, and went on from the BNP to Liberty GB, which describes itself as an anti-Islamisation party and a radical patriotic conservative organisation. Following the murder of MP Jo Cox, Buckby stood for Liberty GB against Labour in the Batley and Spen by-election, stating that Labour could not go unchallenged. He also claimed that Labour had duped working class people and were walking into the election with smug little grins on their faces. He also issued tweet stating that if Jo Cox’s murder was true, it was either a case of the ‘moronic’ Britain First damaging the cause of the far right, or a false flag attack by the Remain campaign. He was also strongly criticised for a rant on Channel 4 News in which he said to Barbara Ntumy, ‘Take in a Syrian refugee, I hope you don’t get raped’”. The good peeps of Batley and Spen weren’t impressed, and Buckby got 1.1 per cent of the vote and lost his deposit. Tim’s article also quotes tweets from Dr. Louise Raw and anti-racism campaigner Mike Stuchbery. Dr. Raw was horrified at the platforming of Buckby, because he had called for terror attacks in the Netherlands and was in the BNP, as was David Copeland, the man who radicalised Jo Cox’s assassin. Stuchbery has also been a victim of fanatics claiming to fight Islamisation. He was targeted for harassment by the noxious Tommy Robinson. Stuchbery also wondered why GB News was platforming him, ending his tweet with“Disgraceful from [GB News] … A known fascist with despicable views on the murder of Jo Cox & much more that should shame [GB News], who clearly did no background checks here”.

Tim, on the other hand, ends his piece with the conclusion that GB News knew exactly what they were doing, and should hang their heads in shame. But they won’t, because they don’t have any.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2021/10/gb-news-platforms-known-fascist.html

I’m afraid Tim’s precisely right. A quick search on Google reveals this article on For Britain, its leader Anne-Marie Waters, and Jack Buckby. https://hopenothate.org.uk/research-old/investigations/undercover-inside-britains-far-right/for-britain/. I realise that neither Buckby nor Hope Not Hate are exactly household names, but the researchers at GB News would have known of them and who Buckby was when gathering information for the show. Even if they didn’t come across Hope Not Hate, they would have been able to get the facts about Buckby. It looks very much like the broadcaster wanted someone controversial to talk about Islamisation in the aftermath of David Amess’ murder, and weren’t particular about who they were inviting.

As for describing Buckby as an anti-Islamisation expert, this strikes me as nonsense. I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the Islamophobic far right, as from my own reading of their web pages there are people there who do have a deep knowledge of Islam. This is apart from the football hooligans and other thugs who simply want to beat up brown people. There are issues with Islam in Britain. I think some sections of it are very alienated from mainstream British society and there is a danger of the creation of parallel societies. But the vast majority of British Muslims aren’t terrorists and have very publicly condemned it. The problem is that Fascists and Islamophobes like Buckby don’t distinguish between Islam and Islamism.

From what I’ve read and watched, many of the Islamist activists and terrorists have a similar background. Apart from those radicalised abroad, they seem to be individuals, who’ve been radicalised over the Web or from particular hate preachers. A number had connections to Anjem Chaudhury, a grotty individual who’s spent time in the slammer for supporting terrorism. I don’t know if this the case with Amess’ alleged killer, but quite often they’ve spent their lives drinking, taking drugs and having sex before their conversion to radical Islam. Chaudhury, if I’m correct, is a case in point. Some of them, like those responsible for attacks in France, seem to have been violent criminals. Quite often they’ve precious little connection to their local mosque, the congregation of which haven’t seen them in years.

As for the political motivations behind the attacks, some of it simply seems to be rage at the west’s repeated invasions and attacks on Muslim nations, such as the invasion of Iraq. While there’s more to the ideology than simply this – it also seems to be coupled to stupid conspiracy theories about the Jews plotting against Islam and Mohammed from the foundation of the religion in the 7th century onward, cultural shock and dislocation caused by the massive changes in Middle Eastern and broader Islamic society, as well as an idealisation of pre-modern, traditional Islam – that seems to be the primary motive.

This is a tense time. Our Muslim brothers and sisters are naturally afraid of increased prejudice and abuse following Mr. Amess’ horrendous murder. I saw a piece on the internet news page yesterday stating that Muslim organisations were giving them advice on handling this increased suspicion and hate. We need informed, sane experts, who can properly explain the issues, drawing people together to dispel such prejudice and unite against violence and hatred.

This means real experts, not bigots and Nazis like Buckby.

GB News risk increasing tension simply by platforming him. It seems to be a publicity stunt, though I also wonder if the broadcaster couldn’t get anyone who really knew about Islamist terror and radicalisation on.

Either way, it shows how low it really is going on its way to being eventually wound up.